Bargaining During War

Abstract

How leaders fight--the arsenals they deploy and the objectives they pursue--determines how leaders bargain while fighting. My dissertation examines this dynamic in three article-length chapters. In "Symbolic Victory," I draw on the Second World War and the Second Punic War to explore how policymakers use military engagements to affect their allies' and enemies' beliefs. In "War has its own Momentum," I explain why conflicts often outlast their original causes and prove that, for purely rational reasons, a negotiated settlement tends to become less likely the longer a war lasts. Finally, in "A Bargain Might not Exist," I show how the distributions of power and wealth among states can cause diplomacy to fail---even in the absence of all existing explanations for conflict. I conclude by outlining the implications of these models for policy and for future research.