When Fighting Is More Rational Than Peacemaking

Matt Kroenig: Hi, Emma! I’m sorry I’m late. I drove into the office this morning and got stuck in traffic. It seems that D.C. rush hour has returned to pre-COVID levels.

Emma Ashford: Wasn’t it Benjamin Franklin who said that there are only three things inevitable in life: death, taxes, and Washington traffic?

I suppose we could add national security leaks, revolutions failing to lead to democracy, and North Korean missile launches to that list. This week’s news all seems pretty damn familiar.

MK: Indeed. This could be a throwback column to the early 2010s, but with some modern twists; the leaks were stupid, not malicious, for example. Do you want to start there?

EA: Might as well. Jack Teixeira, a young Air National Guardsman, was  accused of mishandling classified information and causing a variety of apparently classified material to spread all over the internet. If the reports are correct, this is not an Edward Snowden or Chelsea Manning-style ideological leak, but rather an attempt by a young and immature man to impress his online friends by demonstrating that he had access to classified information.

The documents that have surfaced include reports that purport to show the prospects for Ukraine’s spring offensive, disagreements among Russian elites about the war, and that some U.S. partners, most notably the United Arab Emirates, may be working with the Russians behind Washington’s back. It seems a serious breach for such tiny, unimportant stakes.

MK: One of the biggest concerns with leaks, in addition to the content of the material, is what it shows about how countries go about collecting intelligence, so-called sources and methods. If sources and methods are revealed, adversaries can shut them down—and people can die.

What is your take on what this news reveals about sources and methods?

EA: It’s bad news for the U.S. intelligence community. The Western media will be reading these leaked documents for big blockbuster stories, but you can bet Chinese and Russian intelligence will be looking for clues that help them shut down leaks from their own side.

And we should also inject a note of caution here: There may be altered documents circulating online as well, which changed out some of the numbers on Ukrainian and Russian casualties in Ukraine. The U.S. government never officially confirms or denies whether leaked documents are real, so treat anything you see with a big pinch of salt.

Have you been following what’s going on in Sudan? It’s rather hard to believe that it’s 2023 and we’re still fighting over the legacies of the Arab Spring.

Sudan’s history of civil conflict has been depressingly persistent.

MK: It has been hard to miss with the impending civil war in the headlines. And, as you know, Sudan’s history of civil conflict has been depressingly persistent. There was the civil conflict in Darfur, in the west of the country, which then-U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell declared a genocide in 2004—and it may resurface there now, given that it was the stronghold of one of the current belligerents, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, widely known as Hemeti. A prescient 2019 FP profile of him gives a sense of his brutality in Darfur and how he would seek power in Khartoum.

There was an ongoing civil conflict between the northern and southern parts of the country over oil revenue that led to an independent South Sudan in 2011. In 2019, longtime dictator Omar al-Bashir was overthrown in a military coup.

And just when many hoped that Sudan was set up for a peaceful transition to democratic rule, new violence broke out between two rival military leaders this month.

I think that the academic literature on civil wars can actually help us to make sense of what’s going on, but before I nerd out, what is your take?

EA: Well, one of the most effective ways to assess whether a country will have a civil war is whether they’ve previously had a civil war. It’s an unfortunate but widespread correlation. And in the case of Sudan, the country has had a rough couple of decades. But I think there was some genuine hope after Bashir was overthrown that a better system could result. After all, the coup wasn’t just an internal matter but was prompted by widespread pro-democracy protests in the country.

The problem has been integrating the desires of the various actors in this transition process: the military, the population, and the informal militias such as Hemeti’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) that were set up during the earlier conflicts. Fighting has now broken out between the military and the RSF over who gets to control the country’s military assets.

Peace deals often cause shifts in the balance of power between warring sides, making it irrational for rebel groups to lay down arms.

MK: Good point about past civil war correlating with future civil war. I wasn’t even thinking about that. The academic literature arbitrarily defines a civil war as a conflict with at least 1,000 casualties. So we are not quite there yet with the current spate of violence, but we are heading in that direction—and might be there before the column is published.

It also finds that civil war is most prevalent in countries that have conditions hospitable to insurgencies: weak state capacity, natural resources to fight over and to fund insurgent operations, and rough terrain that makes it hard for the government to effectively exercise control over all its sovereign territory. Check, check, check. Sudan has all three.

Most important, though, is the “credible commitment” problem in negotiating an end to civil conflict. Peace deals often cause shifts in the balance of power between warring sides, making it irrational for rebel groups to lay down arms. This has been a problem in past civil wars, including Ethiopia’s.

EA: Don’t forget the problem of security sector reform—i.e., how to integrate former militias or rebels into government structures—which research also shows is critical to post-conflict stability and which is a clear issue here. In a nutshell: What you do with rebels after victory can be hugely consequential. Integrating them into government forces is tough, but just letting them roam free with their weapons is a potential disaster waiting to happen. Honestly, it’s sort of a miracle post-Bashir Sudan didn’t combust before this.

Do you want to talk us through the credible commitment problem?

MK: Yes. And it is related to security sector reform. According to the theoretical setup, civil war is usually a conflict between a government and a rebel group. In theory, there is an imaginable agreement that both sides would prefer over fighting. For example, the government could promise the rebels a certain number of seats in government, regional autonomy, a greater share of oil revenue, or some other benefits to stop the fighting.

In order for the civil war to end, the rebel group would have to disarm, demobilize, and reintegrate into society. That is the rub. The government is only willing to provide concessions because the rebel group is strong. Once the rebel group disarms, the balance of power rapidly shifts. The rebel group is now impotent, but the government remains in control of its military and is still strong.

What, then, is the government’s incentive to uphold its end of the bargain? Its rational incentive is to renege on the deal and take away the benefits from the former rebels. The rebels know that, and so they have little incentive to negotiate a peace deal or fully disarm once they have. They are better off fighting until they achieve a decisive victory. Mainly for this reason, civil wars tend to go on much longer than international wars (six times longer on average), and they tend to end in a clear battlefield victory for one side or the other.

EA: To give a concrete example from my own country, this is why we just celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland, but the authorities still occasionally find old Irish Republican Army weapons caches from time to time. Rebels hedge during peace processes.

MK: And it seems that a version of this problem happened this week in Sudan. The deal required the head of the Sudanese paramilitary forces, Hemeti, to surrender some political power and fold his forces into the regular Sudanese military. But, once he does that, he would effectively lose all of his power. Rather than assume the new Sudanese government will respect the promises it has made to him once he has been stripped of military power, he has apparently decided that he is better off fighting and will seek to take what he wants through force. In short, civil war is often a rational response to the political situation.

The U.S. government should emphasize to the UAE and Egypt that they need to back down in Sudan.

EA: Unfortunately, diagnosing the problem doesn’t get us much closer to a solution here. External parties from the United States to the United Nations secretary-general are already calling on both parties to disarm and seek peace, but a hastily arranged cease-fire has already fallen apart. And although the Biden administration is considering sanctions on leaders of both factions in the fighting, that’s probably already too little, too late.

The most important thing U.S. diplomats could do here is to actively engage with their counterparts in Egypt and the UAE, both nominal U.S. allies who have in the past supported the Sudanese military and the RSF, respectively. At a minimum, Washington should try to avoid the proxy war dynamics that plagued so much of the Arab Spring conflicts: The U.S. government should emphasize to the UAE and Egypt that they need to back down here. Perhaps Emirati or Egyptian influence could even bring some stability to the situation.

MK: I am afraid we agree. Washington’s preferred solution to civil wars—especially since the end of the Cold War—is a negotiated settlement. But negotiated settlements to civil wars rarely hold. Sharath Srinivasan explains this dynamic well in his book on Sudan. As noted above, the civil war conclusion that is most likely to result in enduring peace is a one-sided victory. This is why some analysts morbidly recommend to “give war a chance.”

EA: Ugh, that’s dark. How about something more upbeat? I hear Kim Jong Un is having a pretty great month.

MK: More missile tests. At first glance, it might look like nothing new. But these are concerning developments. Last week, Kim Jong Un tested a solid-fuel long-range missile. North Korea’s current missiles are liquid-fueled. That means you need to fill up the tank before you can launch them—kind of like your car at the gas station. This takes hours and leaves them vulnerable to an enemy strike before a launch.

U.S. intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), on the other hand, contain solid fuel. They can be launched almost immediately, which is why U.S. ICBMs have been called “minutemen.”

Solid-fueled missiles in North Korea would make it harder for the United States to preempt a North Korean nuclear attack.

And the new military satellites are presumably intended to give Pyongyang a better picture of potential targets in South Korea, including U.S. military forces.

Not a good week for stability on the Korean Peninsula.

Read More

Scoop: U.S. Military Chief Working the Phones to Halt Sudan Conflict

The top U.S. general is the latest to try to end the six days of fighting that has killed 300 people.

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In Sudan, U.S. Policies Paved the Way for War

A misguided effort to integrate the RSF into the Sudanese Armed Forces led to a tragic but predictable conflict.

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Sudan Descends Into Conflict as Rival Generals Clash

The long-brewing power struggle between Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo has plunged the country into civil war.

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EA: It’s a much bigger problem than that. These missiles now pose a significant threat not just to U.S. forces overseas, but also to the U.S. homeland itself. North Korea’s ICBMs can reach at least to the West Coast, perhaps farther, and other advances in areas like road-mobile launchers will increase the survivability of its nuclear program.

In short, North Korea is emerging as a fully developed nuclear power with global range, akin to the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council or India. It may not yet have a secure second-strike capability, but the solid-fueled missiles are a step in that direction. Washington has failed to deal with this problem over the last few decades, and now the genie is out of the bottle. I don’t think anyone will be able to put it back. What state would voluntarily give up this kind of strategic advantage?

MK: Well, let me pile on again. It is even worse still. North Korea’s advances are making South Korea nervous, and a majority of South Koreans tell pollsters they want independent nuclear weapons for Seoul, as FP has written about. So this is also a problem for U.S. extended deterrence and nonproliferation policies.

I hate to say, “I told you so,” but this is a throwback column. In the early 2010s, people would say, “Who cares if North Korea has five or six nuclear weapons.” And I would argue, “What makes you think they are going to stop with five or six?” In my conversations, I predicted it would move to a larger force with a range of delivery vehicles, and here we are. Some might also point out technical flaws in these recent tests. But that is also myopic. Practice makes perfect, and North Korea has made remarkable progress over the years. The trend lines are not good.

EA: But you also opposed arms control during that period, right? And the sanctions campaign has clearly been a complete failure in either deterring or denying the North Koreans the ability to build their nuclear program.

MK: Arms control or disarmament? I did and still do oppose arms control if that means acknowledging North Korea as a legitimate nuclear power and trying to negotiate a cap on the size of its program. First, there is no evidence that Pyongyang is interested in that kind of deal. Second, Washington should stick to its long-standing policy that North Korea must completely disarm. Striking an arms control agreement is contrary to that principle. It would essentially say that the world is willing to live with a nuclear North Korea. It would also undermine nuclear nonproliferation more broadly. Other countries, like Iran, might think that, if it waits long enough, it, too, will be accepted into the nuclear club.

So, I would argue that Washington should continue to pursue complete disarmament—even though it is a long shot. And in the meantime, it should continue to put in place a deterrence and containment regime, including more missile defenses, to deal with the threat that exists here and now.

Do you agree?

Just imagine arms control efforts to cap the North Korean arsenal at a few smaller devices in the 2010s, before they had reliable ICBMs. We’d be in a far safer place now.

EA: No! That attitude is exactly how we got here in the first place. Just imagine if we’d tried to pursue arms control to cap the North Korean arsenal at a few smaller devices in the 2010s, before they had reliable ICBMs. We’d be in a far safer place now: North Korea would only be able to hold nearby locations at risk, not the United States itself.

North Korean disarmament is a nonstarter, at least while the Kim family regime rules. And the result has been bad when it comes to proliferation: It shows that a determined state can succeed in building a nuclear program under sanctions; it creates a bad actor willing to sell its technology to other states for hard currency; and it has prompted debate in South Korea about whether it needs to develop its own nuclear program in response!

U.S. administrations made some very poor policy decisions on North Korea and now have to live with the consequences. The best way to ensure that we do all live through this is to pursue some kind of caps or strategic stability talks.

MK: There are plenty of bipartisan policy failures on North Korea to go around. But as long as we are going back and imagining better hypothetical outcomes, my proposal is not for an arms control agreement, but for then-U.S. President Bill Clinton to follow through on the preemptive military strike on the Yongbyon reactor  he considered carrying out in 1994 before North Korea had nukes. That might have ended the problem there with a non-nuclear North Korea.

But we are out of time and space. I think that means you should just agree that military strikes against nuclear facilities are always a good idea, and we can just call it a day.

EA: I’d like to see a case study where that has ever worked. The Israelis tried this as far back as the 1980s against the Osirak reactor in Iraq. They damaged the facility, but experts pointed out later that it just made the Iraqis more determined to pursue nuclear weapons. Israel has also struck nuclear facilities in Syria and Iran, but those facilities mostly just get rebuilt deeper underground.

In any case, I’m not really enjoying our historical throwback topics this week. Civil wars, nuclear proliferation, document leaks. It’s all so old-fashioned. Perhaps next time, we can find some genuine 21st-century security problems—a rogue AI running an autonomous weapons platform, perhaps—to discuss?