Commitment Problems and the Outbreak of War

IPS

A53108903

Young Min Kim

Commitment Problems and the Outbreak of War

        The outbreak of war occurs when there is inefficiency puzzle. War costs the enormous amount of resources, which eventually leads to decreasing the size of “pie.” States would generally negotiate and make a settlement before it happens. To analyze the possibility of a settlement between Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush before 2003, there are broadly three approaches: a complete-information approach, bargaining indivisibility approach, and a commitment problem approach. Next paragraphs would explain each approach and apply them to the case of 2003 second gulf war.

        First of all, the most general approach in a bargaining model is that there would be no outbreak of war if there was complete information about each other. In other words, war generally breaks out because of asymmetric information. Saddam Hussein who had full authority over Iraq had wrong strategic calculus judgement over the situation. He believed that Russia and France would never turn their back on him due to the gigantic size of economic contracts among them. In addition, he thought that the US force could not advance their force to the heart of Iraq since US could not stand the international pressure in his perspective. Even though he had had Iraqi military officers taking more a pessimistic view than his, they could not share their opinions because of his brutal treatment to people who have contrary suggestions to him. Because of these residual uncertainties about an adversary, insufficient information, he made an arbitrary judgement that he could get more incentives by fighting with the US. This approach, however, has two limitations. One is that even after states have no uncertainty about each other, there can be on-going war and it is no more about knowing each other better. The other is that it sometimes gives unnatural historical readings. Efficient outcomes do not always come out when there is complete information.

        Secondly, there is a bargaining indivisibility approach. This approach is about the puzzle that cannot be divided or hard to be divided in some pieces that each actor wants. If there were no incentives to one or the other state in the bargaining range, a war would eventually break out. Nominally, the US incurred the war due to the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction(WMD) in Iraq. Even though Saddam Hussein had no WMD in his possession, he never uncovered the truth. Since having so many diplomatic benefits in Arab world by pretending his ownership, he provided a reason to the US invading Iraq. He believed that he would get no incentives as much as pretending to have WMD from getting full inspection from international organizations and preventing Iraq from war.

        Finally, a commitment problem approach is a complementary method that can help pick up the insufficient part of informational and indivisibility approaches. A commitment problem approach is that if states cannot commit themselves to following agreements they made or have advantages by breaking agreements, there can be the outbreak of war. In other words, the rising and declining state initially made a peaceful agreement initially because they prefer it to costly war. However, this can be worthless when the rising state gains enough power to dominate the other. Hence, the declining state may start a war by reneging agreements. The second gulf war was a preventive war. The US attacked Iraq before they earned powerful threats to them in the future. Saddam Hussein tried to make power shifts to the US not by economic or political growth like other Asian countries but by threatening them with WMD. Pressuring the US with nuclear weapons could dramatically change its political relationship with them. This radical move caused the outbreak of the war.