Why Minor Powers Risk Wars with Major Powers: A Comparative Study of the Post-Cold War Era 9781529205213

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WHY MINOR POWERS RISK WARS WITH MAJOR POWERS A Comparative Study of the Post-Cold War Era Marinko Bobić

First published in Great Britain in 2019 by Bristol University Press North America office: University of Bristol Bristol University Press 1-9 Old Park Hill c/o The University of Chicago Press Bristol 1427 East 60th Street BS2 8BB Chicago, IL 60637, USA UK t: +1 773 702 7700 t: +44 (0)117 954 5940 f: +1 773-702-9756 www.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk [email protected] www.press.uchicago.edu © Bristol University Press 2019 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN 978-1-5292-0520-6 hardcover ISBN 978-1-5292-0522-0 ePub ISBN 978-1-5292-0521-3 ePdf The right of Marinko Bobić to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved: no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of Bristol University Press. The statements and opinions contained within this publication are solely those of the author and not of the University of Bristol or Bristol University Press. The University of Bristol and Bristol University Press disclaim responsibility for any injury to persons or property resulting from any material published in this publication. Bristol University Press works to counter discrimination on grounds of gender, race, disability, age and sexuality. Cover design by Blu Inc Front cover image: Getty Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY Bristol University Press uses environmentally responsible print partners

Contents List of Tables and Figures iv List of Abbreviations v vii About the Author Acknowledgements viii 1 Introduction 2 In Search of a Theory of Minor Powers in Interstate Asymmetric Conflict 3 Pathways to Conflict Using Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) 4 Iraq: Military Confrontation with the United States and its Thirty-Three Allies 5 Moldova: Military Confrontation with Russian Forces 6 Serbia: Military Confrontation with NATO Conclusion: Dealing with Complexity, Defeat and 7 Beliefs

1 17 41 69 103 137 169

Endnotes 189 References 193 Index 217

iii

List of Tables and Figures

Tables 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6

3.7

Truth table of hypothetical values for QCA National capability scores in asymmetric dyads Truth table showing logical combinations that have empirical support Consistency and coverage scores of the presence and absence of all five conditions when the outcome is present Intermediate solution for conflict choice Consistency and coverage scores of the presence and absence of all five conditions pertaining to the negated outcome (non-conflict) Intermediate solution for a choice of non-conflict

43 51 56 57 58 60

61

Figures 3.1 3.2

Necessary and sufficient conditions Pathways that show three types of combinations that influence a minor power to choose conflict

iv

44 58

List of Abbreviations AB CCMs CIA CINC CIS COW DC EU FARC FPCD FS GDP GK GNP IMF INUS IIR IR JUL KGB KLA MASSR MIDs NATO NCR ND NGO OPEC OSCE

anomalous beliefs (condition) configurational comparative methods Central Intelligence Agency Composite Index of National Capability Commonwealth of Independent States Correlates of War (project) domestic crisis (condition) European Union Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia Christian Democratic Popular Front (Moldova) foreign support (condition) gross domestic product Gagauz Khalky (also known as the Gagauz-Khalky People’s Movement) gross national product International Monetary Fund Insufficient but Necessary part of a configuration which is itself Unnecessary but Sufficient individually irrelevant (case) International Relations Yugoslav United Left Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (Committee for State Security) Kosovo Liberation Army Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic militarised interstate disputes North Atlantic Treaty Organisation neoclassical realist/realism New Democracy (Serbia) non-governmental organisation Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe

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WHY MINOR POWERS RISK WARS WITH MAJOR POWERS

OSTK PMR PR QCA RCC RS SDF SPO SPS SRS SUIN UAE UN VJ WOO

Ob’edinennyi Soyuz Trudovykh Kollektivov (Council of Workers) (Moldova) Russian acronym for Dniester Moldavian Republic public relations qualitative comparative analysis Revolutionary Command Council regime stability (condition) Syrian Democratic Forces Serbian Renewal Movement Socialist Party of Serbia Serbian Radical Party Sufficient but Unnecessary part of a configuration that is Insufficient but Necessary for the outcome United Arab Emirates United Nations Vojska Jugoslavije (Yugoslav Army) window of opportunity (condition)

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About the Author Marinko Bobić is a Lecturer on the Master’s programme in International Relations and Diplomacy at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, Leiden University. He holds a PhD degree in International Studies from the University of Trento, Italy, as well as an MSc in International Relations and Diplomacy from Leiden University, Netherlands. Marinko’s scholarly interests focus on state strategy, geopolitics, conflict and resources, organised crime and unrecognised states. He has published a book on Russia’s strategies in handling its territorial disputes, an article on transnational organised crime and terrorism, as well as several book chapters on: the persistence of the Italian mafia; revisiting world-systems analysis in understanding development; insurgencies, civil wars and international support; and great power configurations in the Balkans. In the past Marinko has worked both for governmental and nongovernmental organisations, providing practical policy analysis, scenario analysis, crowdsourced consultancy, supervision and management of wargames. He speaks fluent English and Serbian-Croatian-Bosnian.

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Acknowledgements Writing my first book based on my PhD topic has been challenging, and at times I have pushed myself to the very limits. Everyone who has embarked on a researcher’s journey knows that accomplishment is never done alone – we all need some help – and to truly reach where I am today, I have many friends, colleagues, and even strangers to thank. I wish to thank my sister Barbara, and my parents, for their patience, understanding, encouragement and support throughout this process. They truly helped me in maintaining one pillar in reality, forced me to have a degree of life balance, and ultimately saved me from losing touch with people I care about the most. In addition, I wish to thank Filippo Andreatta for helping me network and gain feedback on the initial ideas behind this book. Three other people have had an extensive role in helping me write this book, Emanuele Castelli and Tyson Chatagnier from Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK), and Barbara Vis from Vrije Universiteit (VU) Amsterdam. Along many stages of my research, I am also very thankful to Wolfgang Wagner, Paolo Foradori, Jona Linde, Mariken van der Velden, Gijs Schumacher, Dieuwertje Kuijpers, Fiona Stewart and Kristen Traynor, among others. At the School of International Studies, University of Trento, I am deeply indebted to all the guests, students, professors and staff. Special mention goes to Professor Jens Woelk, Professor Stefano Schiavo, Mark Beittel and Maria Rosaria Astarita, who have always been there to assist, but also motivate me when completion seemed so far away. My colleagues and friends at the School of International Studies were also there, sometimes involuntarily, reading parts of this book. They also deserve to be mentioned. Finally, many thanks to my colleagues at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, Leiden University, where I was provided with time to complete this book, including, but not limited to, Madeleine Hosli, Jaroslaw Kantorowitcz, Jan Melissen, Ramon van der Does, Ramesh P. Ganohariti and Vanessa Newby. I hope to be able to have an opportunity to repay all the wonderful people who have helped lift me to this point in life.

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1

Introduction Between 1864 and 1870, Francisco Solano López, President of Paraguay at the time, led his nation into a war against three powerful neighbours, Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, in what became known as the Paraguayan War, or the War of the Triple Alliance. The result of the war was catastrophic for Paraguay; 85 per cent of its population was killed, its victorious opponents imposed fines, and 142,450 km2 of territory was lost, an area nearly the size of Florida in the USA. Just as the Paraguayan nation itself perished in a bloodbath, so, too, did its leader who refused to surrender even when it was clear that he had lost (C.Q. Schneider, 2009: 3). For some, he soon became a hero, a symbol of defiant minor powers fighting for their rights. Others, however, saw him as a stubborn man consumed by his desire for greatness, pointing out that he had studied in France and was an avid admirer of Napoleon. While it is puzzling as to why López made such a tragic decision, it is even more puzzling that he was the one who initiated the conflict. Indeed, anything other than a loss would have been a surprising outcome. Almost a century and a half later, in 2008 precisely, Mikheil Saakashvili, President of Georgia at the time, also led his small nation into a war against a vastly more powerful neighbour, Russia. The conflict became known as the Russo–Georgian war. Just like in the Paraguayan War, the weaker side lost. Luckily, because modern militaries are quicker and more accurate, Georgia escaped without serious consequences to the livelihood of its people. Georgia did, however, allow its enemy to reach the capital city, Tbilisi, and lost two problematic, separatist regions: Abkhazia and South Ossetia (Nichol, 2009: 14–15; Cherkasova, 2010: 2). Again, Saakashvili’s legacy was divided between those who characterised him as a hero for standing up to a threatening major power, and those who considered him a reckless leader who had lost significant parts of the country. Not surprisingly, some studies have devoted their attention to analysing the case of Georgia and its war against Russia (Cherkasova, 2010).

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WHY MINOR POWERS RISK WARS WITH MAJOR POWERS

While both wars by Paraguay and Georgia were fought under radically different circumstances, they demonstrated one obvious takeaway: minor powers fighting a conventional interstate war against a major power, that is, participating in an asymmetric conflict, tend to lose.1 ArreguínToft (2001: 96–7), as well as statistical studies such as that of Allen and Fordham (2011), confirm that the stronger side almost always wins a conventional asymmetric conflict. Furthermore, fighting against major powers is very costly. According to Sullivan (2007: 507), in the postSecond World War period, weaker sides have suffered 81 per cent of battle deaths in conflicts against major powers. Not surprisingly, most scholars studying minor powers and security have observed that minor powers tend to favour strategies that move away from the use of force (Steinmetz and Wivel, 2010: 10), such as limiting power politics through governance and international rules (Neumann and Gstöhl, 2006: 19– 21), joining a powerful group to counter-balance the threat (Ponizilova, 2013: 89), establishing neutrality (Hey, 2003: 6), and building up large military capabilities (Reiter, 2006: 242), along with bandwagoning, engaging in preventive diplomacy, hiding, enacting irrational behaviour and employing mixed strategies (Schelling, 1960: 18–19; C.Q. Schneider, 2009: 12; Steinmetz and Wivel, 2010: 10; Cooper and Momani, 2011: 114; Ponizilova, 2013: 89). Inevitably, given the broad consensus that minor powers seek to avoid wars, we might conclude that regimes of minor powers fighting major powers must be suicidal, as their behaviour seems to contradict the realist assumption that states seek survival. Reflecting on many similar societal contradictions, Battersby (2014: 222) responded that ‘dialectical principles cannot accommodate the reality of contradiction, perplexity, or complexity. Yet, we must grapple with seeming contradictions.’ Indeed, it was the desire to grapple with complexity, and to understand these contradictions that can be deemed irrational, which inspired the writing of this book. In the conventional International Relations (IR) literature, there has been a large focus on great powers (which this book refers to as ‘major powers’ – the USA, Russia and China) and a concurrent neglect of the perspectives and strategies of minor powers, which are state and statelike entities with significantly fewer material capabilities relative to major powers, as will be elaborated in Chapter 3. Middle powers in asymmetric conflict against major powers, such as Argentina’s conflict with the UK, have received some attention (see, for example, Paul, 1994). Accordingly, this book focuses exclusively on minor powers, and shows that they are not simply victims of aggression, even though they often claim to be; rather, they make choices that can escalate or diminish disputes. Although they may make choices that are difficult to understand and justify, stepping

2

Introduction

into the shoes of leaders of minor powers and analysing the options they faced may be a good way to understand their seemingly reckless choices. The purpose of this book is thus to answer the question, ‘Under what conditions and why do the regimes of minor powers see the choice of war against a stronger opponent as an attractive option?’ A partial answer can be gained from the literature on bargaining and war, which points out that war is always irrational and not only asymmetric conflict. War results when a given state faces better prospects of getting concessions from the opponent during a war than a peaceful bargain would (Glaser, 2010). During the bargaining phase, each side wants to increase the uncertainty for the opponent, for the situation requires the opponent to seriously consider conceding over facing an uncertain outcome. A state may thus act irrationally to give a signal to the opponent that it is willing to suffer high costs (Schelling, 1960). That way, a state gains an advantage in bargaining (Fearon, 1995). Concealment of true self leads to informational asymmetries, what is often tied to notions such as uncertainty, misrepresentation and mutual optimism. While some premises of this literature are worth considering, the literature on asymmetric interstate conflict has raised potential concerns regarding some of the rationalist assumptions. Allen and Fordham (2011: 1026), for example, highlight that the rationalist literature overlooks the fact that in asymmetric conflict, ‘there was no uncertainty about the balance of capabilities.’ That opened room for domestic factors or emotional conditions to be assessed, such as personal prestige, cultural/emotional attachment to a territory, and so on. Moreover, experimental research has established that highly committed individuals put more weight on moral or deontological concerns as opposed to instrumental concerns (Ginges and Atran, 2011). Not surprisingly, different schools of thought have inspired the literature that covers asymmetric conflict. After all, the distribution of capability between belligerent states has been a core concept in war typology literature (Wright, 1965; Lider, 1977; Small and Singer, 1982: 46–52; Levy, 1983: 51–2; Siverson and Sullivan, 1983; Vasquez, 1983, 1993; Midlarsky, 1986, 1988), balance of power theory and power preponderance theory (Gochman, 1990; Huth et al, 1992; Geller, 1993; Kugler and Lemke, 1996; DiCicco and Levy, 1999). Hinting at the answer, Hayden (2003: 278) asserted that ‘every nation has the right to defend itself ’, and if attacked, ‘a nation will try to resist the attacker’. Nevertheless, when a minor power does not avoid a war against a major power, it ‘contradicts rational expectations of how a war is likely to turn out based on the unequal distribution of material capabilities between the belligerents’ (Chan, 2012: 173). The right to defend themselves, therefore,

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WHY MINOR POWERS RISK WARS WITH MAJOR POWERS

still leads us to believe that the leaders of minor powers are either reckless or out of touch with reality. To provide a more robust answer, Chan (2010) focused exclusively on the nature of contestants’ foreign alignments, concluding that having one-sided patronage may be one of the most significant factors inducing weaker states to militarily challenge their stronger opponents. Findley and Edwards (2007) emphasised that the institutional structure of the weaker actor, one that enhances coordination, may surprise the stronger opponent. Although not assessing asymmetric conflicts, Bueno de Mesquita et al (2005) also focus on a domestic factor, asserting that in risky foreign policy decisions, one has to look at the distribution of benefits and loses. Electoral systems, such as that of typical authoritarian countries, where the government has a small coalition of loyal people running the state, tend to take riskier decisions than systems where losses might also be distributed to those who brought one to power, as is common in democracies. To illustrate, Mueller (2005) argues that the democratic nature of the USA, with high public scrutiny, makes it more sensitive to wars. Fischerkeller (1998) pointed to the cultural judgement a weaker state may have regarding the stronger enemy. More specifically, when a minor power judges the enemy to be culturally inferior, conflict is more likely to occur. Studies utilising statistical tests have prevailed more recently to extend previous findings into new empirical fields. Allen and Fordham (2011), Berejikian (2016) and Allen et al (2018) all ask the question why weaker states confront vastly more powerful opponents, while Kim and James (2016) ask why weaker states challenge the hegemon (USA). Allen, Bell and Clay (2018) focus on regional rivals, that is, neighbouring states, and their decisions on how to shape their relations with more powerful states. They find that when a minor power is facing demands from a major power, has regional rivals that pose a threat to them, and those rivals have a positive relationship with the major powers, the minor power is less likely to resist those demands. Likewise, when the major power does not have a positive relationship with the neighbouring rival to the minor power, the minor power is able and might be more likely to resist the demands of the major power. Pakistan under Pervez Musharraf is an illustration of the former, while Iraq under Saddam Hussein belongs to the latter. Pakistan had India as a rival with positive relations with the USA, while Iraq had Iran as a rival with problematic relations with the USA. Their findings follow Allen and Fordham (2011), who test rationalist and non-rationalist explanations for a minor power to resist militarised challenges, discovering that if demand comes from a distant, nondemocratic power, the minor power is more likely to gamble, and resist

4

Introduction

the demands. Demands of contiguous democratic states are taken more seriously. The type of demand also matters, with changes to sovereignty and territorial integrity making resistance more likely. They also find that democratic leaders of minor power are more sensitive to the suffering of their population, making resistance less likely. Also providing a statistical test is Berejikian (2016), who seeks to integrate prospect theory into a neoclassical realist (NCR) framework by arguing that in the absence of counterframing (domestic) institutions of a minor power, erosion in the external security environment generates loss frames and increases the probability of risk-acceptant foreign policy decisions. Kim and James (2016) argue that comparatively weak but strongly motivated challengers may interpret the hegemon’s military intervention elsewhere as a window of opportunity. Collectively, these contributions highlight the importance of different, but potentially complementary, conditions, and allow for testing or synchronisation of more than one theoretical approach. As such, it is important to account for some of these findings in the theoretical framework of the next chapter. Using a different methodology, scope, case selection and sometimes concepts, I seek to test some of their inferences on more recent cases. The literature on intrastate conflict and power change is also frequently referenced when discussing ‘asymmetric conflict’. One can observe secessionist wars following state collapse, as has happened in Yugoslavia (Fearon, 1998). The rationale is that when the state is weak, both internal and external rivals will act, utilising a window of opportunity (Kydd, 2015: 75). Katagiri (2013) similarly highlighted several important factors affecting the strategy of an actor in an intrastate conflict, such as the nature of the terrain where the war plays out and the reception of external support. While these may be important conditions for interstate conflicts as well as intrastate conflicts, it is important to separate the two. Focusing on non-state actors might be less puzzling than looking at state actors. After all, it is likely easier for non-state actors to win asymmetric conflicts due to the inability of the opponent (usually a powerful state) to precisely locate their adversaries and seize their resources. Scholars have identified that in these situations, the weaker belligerent is often able to defeat the stronger opponent (see, for example, Mack, 1975; Merom, 2003; Arreguín-Toft, 2005; Record, 2007). Thus, in conflicts where the opponent is a non-state actor, they often operate in secrecy and among civilians. In such conflicts, identification becomes one of the main issues (see, for example, Kiss, 2014). It is an entirely different question when focusing on state and state-like actors, which defend a defined territory using conventional military capabilities. Even if a state actor fights less

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WHY MINOR POWERS RISK WARS WITH MAJOR POWERS

conventionally, as Vietnam did against the USA, territory, resources and military personnel can be identified and thus targeted and destroyed. As Chan (2012: 172) stated, interstate conflicts are characterised by ‘organised nature, state sponsorship, and a large number of military casualties.’ For this reason, the scope of the puzzle behind this research is states and state-like entities.2 Studies by Thaza Paul (1994) and Sang Hyun Park (2004) have come closest to explaining why weaker states fight the stronger states, using more than one theoretical framework and case studies. Paul (1994) found that the most important factors are a limited aims/fait accompli strategy and the support from a great power that induces the weaker state to engage in the conflict. In other words, weaker states tend to pursue quick offensive military thrusts followed by a defensive posture to create a fait accompli situation, a gain that would be preserved until a political settlement is reached. In addition to this, having a great power as an ally tends to serve as an incentive to attack. Park (2004) discovered that the weaker state in a loss frame could seek to gamble with a war against a strong state in the hope of achieving huge benefits. However, both studies can be improved in several aspects. First, both studies focused only on asymmetric conflicts initiated by the weaker side. However, the side that initiates the war may not be the side that is responsible for the crisis; the responsibility seldom lies just on one side. An assumption in this book is that minor powers that initiate and respond to initiation are equally vulnerable. In other words, there is no scientific justification to separate the two categories. Take, for example, the Russo–Georgian War. Although it seems that the Georgian side fired the first bullet, skirmishes and border violations took place for weeks prior to the outbreak of war (see Cherkasova, 2010). A similar situation took place in Moldova, with low-level violence such as skirmishes and riots occurring months before the Moldovan and Russian forces engaged each other in conflict (see Roper, 2004). Even in cases where minor and major powers did not have physical contact prior to the start of the conflict, as was the case between Serbia and NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) powers in 1999, negotiations alluded to the fact that failure on the diplomatic front would lead to military intervention (see Webber, 2009: 449). Indeed, this book, and the case studies in particular, shows that minor powers belonging to both categories expected that their actions might lead to war. Second, the authors did not focus on minor powers in conflict with major powers, but rather, on conflicts involving stronger and weaker states, some of which do not involve minor powers, such as pitting Argentinian capabilities vis-à-vis the British in the Falklands War, and

6

Introduction

Japanese Imperial capabilities vis-à-vis the USA in the Second World War, among others. While these conflicts may have been asymmetric, they were not about minor powers. Although Argentina was weaker than the UK, one would not expect it to be completely conquered by the British without inflicting extremely heavy losses. Likewise, Imperial Japan was one of the most powerful states in the world. Therefore, it is difficult to call one side in these studies a minor power and the conflict truly asymmetric. Unlike those cases, Georgia, Moldova, Serbia, Panama, Haiti and Taiwan, among others, could have been conquered in a matter of days by their stronger opponents. As such, this is the first comparative study to focus on truly minor powers and the conditions they faced when choosing to challenge3 a major power. The study therefore also looks at how this group of states fared compared to the previous dyads researched. Third, these studies largely examined wars during the Cold War period, when the international balance of power was framed as bipolar. The postCold War period may have changed the strategy of minor powers due to the increasingly unipolar character of international balance of power. With the collapse of the Soviet Union (USSR), ideological struggles and counterbalancing against a threat by joining the opposing camp may no longer have been effective strategies. For the USA, the nature of deterrence changed, allowing it to act more freely internationally (Goldgeier and McFaul, 2003: 4). In other words, the emergence of US hegemony may have been an important condition to warrant a separate inquiry into the post-Cold War conflicts, as Chan (2010: 165) and Kim and James (2016: 8) highlight. Finally, although Paul and Park employed more than one theoretical framework, both studies utilised conventional research methods that were not able to engage a problem that has impeded the development of an integrative understanding of international and foreign policy phenomena – that similar factors could trigger different foreign policy acts, and that different processes could lead to similar results (Most and Starr, 1984: 383). With qualitative comparative analysis (QCA), one of the methods employed in this book, one can work with an assumption that there is a more complex relationship, and that an integrative understanding is possible. Approaches handling complexity are increasingly possible in studies of social science, partially thanks to better data collection and computing techniques. Part of providing a more complex, nuanced explanation involves drawing on multiple ideas and theories, thereby synthesising previous knowledge within one framework. Inevitably, the use of innovative techniques and theoretical frameworks results in ontological and epistemological debates over what is essentially being studied and how we can come to capture that knowledge. In the approach taken here, no

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WHY MINOR POWERS RISK WARS WITH MAJOR POWERS

theoretical or empirical framework is superior, as there are strengths and weaknesses to every framework that attempts to simplify social relations. However, QCA is a useful preliminary step to introduce more elaborate concepts, such as multiple conjunctural causality, causal asymmetry and equifinality. Multiple conjunctural causality refers to the situation where one single condition affects the outcome to be explained only when combined with one more other condition(s). In other words, there are different pathways to the same outcome (B.R.  Schneider, 2009: 57). Causal asymmetry acknowledges that just because a certain conjunction helps to explain an outcome, this may be irrelevant in explaining the opposite outcome. Finally, equifinality means that different constellations of factors can produce the same result. Ontological and epistemological foundations of this research are based on these concepts. As will be explained in Chapter 3, QCA has certain weaknesses, such as potential spurious relations, which is why case studies are utilised to compensate for these methodological shortcomings, an addition suggested by Schneider and Rohlfing (2013). Although a nuanced, complex explanation cannot in any way be superior to the contributions provided by earlier studies, such an explanation can offer complementarity between studies, provision of new insights, and most of all, the generation of further research ideas in this field. Thus, while the research question is similar to the one asked by Paul (1994), Park (2004), Allen and Fordham (2011), Berejikian (2016), Kim and James (2016) and Allen et al (2018), namely, why the weaker fight the stronger, this book specifically asks, why, or under what conditions, have minor powers attempted to resist or challenge others they know to be significantly more powerful by force of arms in the post-Cold War period? To address weaknesses in their studies, this book includes minor powers in both offensive and defensive wars, as long as a minor power had both a military option and an option to acquiesce to a major power’s demands. The book is also a pioneer in comparatively studying all minor powers in a situation of asymmetric militarised disputes where vast power asymmetry differentials existed, the post-Cold War period, and greater complexity (an assumption that more than one answer exists). Reflecting the above, this book takes some of the most important conclusions from some of the aforementioned studies, frames them as conditions, and tests them on post-Cold War cases. The selection of conditions is elaborated in Chapter 2; however, in sum, this book borrows two variables highlighted as most important – anomalous beliefs and foreign support – and adds three others, partially influenced by the following studies. Chan (2010) indicated that the weaker side in an asymmetric conflict might be more inclined to instigate a war when presented with

8

Introduction

a window of opportunity. Katagiri (2013) introduced the importance of organisational stability, which I borrowed but modified to create a condition of regime stability. Third, the approach taken here includes domestic crisis, an issue raised by both Paul (1994) and Park (2004). In these studies, Paul and Park looked at several cases, including that of Argentina in the lead-up to the Falklands War. They established that the Argentinian regime was facing disastrous economic conditions, which threatened the legitimacy of the regime itself. In an attempt to divert attention away from the economic problems, and to potentially make gains in other political spheres (particularly in war), the Argentinian regime chose to try to regain control of the Falklands, that is, it chose conflict. As such, the choice of conditions is based on the most theoretically relevant, interesting conditions whose role requires further research (Bretthauer, 2014b: 53). Moreover, there are methodological limitations to choosing more than five conditions. My assumption is that each condition should matter, but it is not clear when and in what combination with other conditions. This book is not theoretically driven. It is concerned with highlighting the importance of asymmetric conflicts as an empirical phenomenon rather than with maintaining a particular theoretical dogma. There is a strong element of a cumulative research agenda present, yet cumulative research does not mean accounting for all the literature assessing a particular condition. Rather, theories are used as a justification for selecting the conditions, and for the discussion of empirical findings. After all, each approach holds a key insight. In light of this, prospect theory is particularly central to the overarching argument of the book, because it sets the proposition that regimes of minor powers are riskacceptant when they face a likely loss in the future. This likely loss is ‘domestic crisis’, a condition that emerges as necessary in all the cases studied here. Prospect theory, however, is seen as complementary here with many other theoretical frameworks, such as the diversionary theory of war, desperation theory, window of opportunity theory and the power vacuum theory. Readers will find that the book also relies on some constructivist (interpretivist) premises, such as that beliefs shape reality, and thus political decision. For that reason, ‘anomalous beliefs’ must be viewed subjectively. Still, it is prospect theory that best elucidates the conundrum in which a minor power finds itself. Despite the central role of prospect theory, the framework utilised can be described as problem-driven pragmatism, and as such, several theories were employed to understand the nature of a problem in practice, or, in other words, reconnecting the de‑contextualised (theory-centred) knowledge with life practice. This is not to say that generalisation does not matter, but it is dealt with mostly in the conclusion of the book, in Chapter 7.

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WHY MINOR POWERS RISK WARS WITH MAJOR POWERS

To find the entire population of cases that involves minor powers in both offensive and defensive wars, this study relies on the Correlates of War (COW) database with all the instances of conflict that have happened in the post-1989 period (entire population, or 20 cases). Subsequently, a multi-method research approach is utilised, comprised of a technique for studying a medium-N number of cases, namely, QCA, and more traditional comparative case studies. Multi-method research is beneficial because different methods can provide us with different information and different views of the phenomena under study (Goertz, 2008: 12). By mixing different, yet complementary, techniques, this book is able to test and possibly generate new results. The value of QCA is in providing interpretations involving necessity or sufficiency, key concepts crucial in understanding different roles variables may play. The second value is that QCA is useful in dealing with contradictory findings of past studies by establishing three pathways, or groups, which all cases belong to. Essentially, this means that there are three possible combinations of conditions for a minor power to choose conflict. A case is selected from each pathway for a more detailed analysis (an in-depth case study of Iraq, Moldova and Serbia). Likewise, not only is this a multi-method study, but it is also a multi-level study since some of the variables are international (foreign support), some are domestic (domestic crisis) and some are individual (anomalous beliefs). The inclusion of different levels of analysis is beneficial, and perhaps necessary, since levels of analysis are not completely independent, even though the logical connection may not always be explicit (Levy, 2011: 15). For example, the individual personality traits of a powerful leader can impact alliance formation at the international level. Naturally, Geller (1992: 280) argued that the interaction of system- and dyad-level power dynamics is associated with patterns of international conflict. This multilevel view gives not only an alternative but also a more comprehensive explanation of the sources of war. While the choice of conditions is based on their pre-existing propensity to affect minor powers’ decisionmaking, as the following discussions will show, the conditions are in no way conclusively detrimental to peace. In the majority of interstate militarised disputes, acquiescence has been the favoured choice of minor powers. The findings follow the adage that a minor power chooses war when it finds itself ‘between a rock and a hard place’. In other words, engaging in asymmetric conflict is an extremely risky strategy, but the alternative (acquiescence) carries significant costs as well. There is no desirable outcome. Three combinations of present conditions affect minor powers’ decision that war is a preferable option: (1) domestic crisis with regime

10

Introduction

stability and foreign support; (2) domestic crisis with regime stability and a window of opportunity; and (3) domestic crisis with anomalous beliefs. From the simplest observation domestic crisis tends to be a necessary condition, and as such, the most important one. As will be illustrated, main threats to minor powers’ regimes come from within, and a threatening major power is of seemingly lesser importance. In fact, in a conflict with a major power, minor powers’ regimes perceive victory in minimalist terms, such as surviving the war or keeping the territorial integrity together. Of course, part of the explanation is also that some minor powers are ruled by regimes that hold anomalous beliefs, a phenomenon especially among authoritarian states. Autocrats tend to create an environment around them that is conducive to uncritical thinking and false information. As such, there is a higher likelihood of disagreement on relative power or determination of major powers. The short answer to the main puzzle of this book is therefore that minor powers prefer to risk losing a war against a major power rather than to acquiesce, only when they face a more important domestic crisis that threatens to sweep away the regime and shatter the state itself; at the same time, they must have, or believe they have, a window of opportunity or foreign support. The main scope of this research has already been partially explained. The focus is on the post-Cold War period so as not to mix cases from the Cold War, a period characterised by bipolarity between two superpowers, with cases from the unipolar period from 1990 onward, which has been characterised by US supremacy. The scope of this research also excludes deeper psychological assessments. Although ‘anomalous beliefs’ are included as a variable that focuses mainly on the beliefs of the leadership, psychological studies can go further to specify particular mental and behavioural processes affecting individual leaders. To retain parsimony, the assumption here is that anomalous beliefs, regardless of their source, can be problematic for decision-makers facing the markedly different beliefs of other decision-makers. The scope also excludes the deeper analysis of the opposite outcome, wherein minor powers choose to accept a peaceful option. While it is useful to know what role different conditions play in producing this opposite outcome, and how they compare to the outcome of interest, only Chapter 3 deals with both outcomes. The subsequent case studies only focus on the outcome of interest – the rationale for which will be explained later. The study excludes terrorism, skirmishes, missile or drone attacks and similar low-level violence, for these types of acts hardly qualify as direct military engagement between two states. Finally, due to the methodological limitation of QCA being able to parsimoniously analyse only a few variables concurrently, some explanations focusing on this (or a similar) question have been excluded, such as regime type

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WHY MINOR POWERS RISK WARS WITH MAJOR POWERS

(democracy vs autocracy), limited aims strategy, offensive weapons and unstable balance of power. However, the logic behind some of them has been included in the selected variables for this study or as the basis of certain assumptions. For instance, one of the assumptions underlying this study is that every minor power in a war against a major power has a limited aims strategy, for a minor power has no capability to wage a war of attrition in the first place. Certainly, major powers also have limited aims (and often use very limited capabilities in such wars), producing little variation that would warrant separate inquiry. Situations when minor powers end up in a war against major powers are only a small fraction of the military conflicts that have occurred since the end of the Cold War. However, re-visiting the phenomenon is important for expanding our understanding of states’ war behaviour for a variety of reasons. First, with progress in technology, it is very likely that an imbalance in the military capability between states will continue to grow and become a characteristic feature of contemporary armed conflict (Geiß, 2006: 757). Asymmetric conflict is increasingly used to describe a doctrinal shift in the conduct of war, where a civilian dimension is increasingly being thrust into the foreground. Take, for example, terrorism, which has become the single most important overarching problem for the USA in recent years (see for example, Thornton, 2007). However, minor powers fighting conventional wars will also have to face increasingly more powerful and sophisticated major powers. It is not surprising that there has been an increase in studies focusing on asymmetric conflicts between the USA and rogue states (that is, those that are seemingly irrational and keen to implement high-risk policies; see Park, 2004: 3). History is full of occasions when clearly weaker opponents wage irrational wars against much stronger opponents (C.Q. Schneider, 2009: 3). It would be detrimental to science to overlook past contributions, as well as to not analyse instances of vast power asymmetry, especially since the end of the Cold War. Second, there is a need to consider how already established theoretical insights can be synthesised within a cohesive framework. Problem-driven pragmatism is useful in this regard because scholars often acknowledge that their own account might complement another’s, and because each explanation emphasises specific elements that have been ostensibly overlooked by other accounts. Naturally, the focus here is on how to frame the links and potential complementarities between the different explanations available for this particular phenomenon (Cornut, 2015: 52). In other words, while it is important to find new explanations, it is equally important to more holistically assess previous contributions, including other studies on the same or a similar research question, such as that of Paul (1994), Park (2004), Allen and Fordham (2011), Berejikian

12

Introduction

(2016), Kim and James (2016) and Allen et al (2018). Premises of other international conflict theories, such as the balance of power theory, bargaining and war, deterrence theory and prospect theory are likely to be impacted by results of this study. Academics will be able to draw on the conclusions and frame unique aspects of minor powers’ behaviour that contrasts with the behaviour of major powers, but also the majority of other minor powers whose security policies tend to cluster around averting conflicts. Third, social scientists are faced with an inconvenient observation that reality is becoming increasingly complex, a problem that was succinctly highlighted by Most and Starr (1984: 389), ‘to the extent that decision makers have some latitude in their choice of options and are sometimes able to substitute one alternative for another, a given factor could be expected to lead to, stimulate, or “cause” a variety of empirically distinct foreign policy acts, events, or behaviours’. For example, globalisation is a multi-scalar process comprised of multiple and commonly irregular complex systems exhibiting divergent or convergent patterns – often both at the same time (Battersby, 2014: 51). Complex phenomena are too often reduced into convenient dichotomies that belie the complexities of international and regional interactions (Dasgupta, 1985: 15). Moreover, it is rather easy to miss something important when making observations (Polsky and Sommer, 2013). Many different kinds of components can interact simultaneously and nonlinearly with each other and their environments on multiple levels. The result is a complex system in both the composition and the diversity of behaviours. QCA and case studies give us an opportunity to grapple with that complexity. Fourth, policy-makers will be able to utilise the results of this study to mitigate the effects of conditions that lead to conflict. An assumption underpinning this study is that decision-makers operate in a constrained environment. By changing conditions of that environment, the likelihood of occurrence of conflicts of an asymmetric nature might be lowered. The leadership of minor powers, and especially of major powers, can develop domestic and foreign policy measures that will head in this direction. Other states and actors, such as economic partners, business investors and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), that monitor crisis developments, might gain a more comprehensive understanding of how their activities may be affected by changing political conditions. Experts and students on global security can, in general, benefit from an understanding of conditions that are favourable to conflict and peace. With recent conflicts such as that in Syria, Ukraine and Libya, much attention has been given to potentially changing conditions at international and domestic levels.

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WHY MINOR POWERS RISK WARS WITH MAJOR POWERS

The consequence of not acknowledging the importance of this study is to cast history as pre-deterministic or cyclical, without considering evolution and adaptation, including technological change. Asymmetries are growing. Consider that major powers today are not only capable of military conquest, but are also able to annihilate a minor power with the press of a button. Moreover, some major powers play important roles as managers of international law and its related norms by holding veto power in the United Nations (UN) Security Council. Despite this, minor powers are often not deterred. While there may be universally established truths on the benefits of certain strategies in particular situations, new situations require different calculations. Minor powers recognise the evolving nature of international relations and try to use it to their advantage. Regarding readership, both academics and practitioners should be interested in reading this book. It ought to be appealing to academic experts in the areas of warfare, conflict resolution, asymmetric conflict, security, minor powers (and small states), comparative studies and qualitative research methods. At conferences where the book was initially presented, it has been praised as addressing an often-neglected research topic. In addition, students who are working on similar topics or who wish to be better informed on international affairs from the perspective of minor powers may also be attracted to read this book. Not only academics and students, but also practitioners of various backgrounds might also find the book helpful, especially if they need to advise, consult, write reports, journal submissions or newspaper articles, negotiate or simply understand a new phenomenon. My aim here is to disseminate new research on a topic that lacks nuance and more recent cases. Ideally, this book will provoke innovative research ideas for both academics and practitioners, serving as an important source for methodological and theoretical inspiration and data collection, or simply be an enjoyable read. Finally, there is a deliberate omission here from using more popular terms such as ‘irregular warfare’ and ‘small wars’. The reason is that these terms often, but not exclusively, refer to strategic asymmetry. For example, strategic asymmetry involves terrorism or insurgency and usually contrasts conventional warfare. In this book, however, the focus is still on conventional fighting methods because in non-conventional fighting minor powers have a greater chance of success.

Organisation of the book The book is organised as follows. Chapter  2 presents the theoretical framework of minor powers in asymmetric interstate conflicts, examining

14

Introduction

how foreign support, window of opportunity, domestic crisis, regime stability and anomalous beliefs shape their choices, particularly the decision to go to war. There are theoretical disagreements over the definite roles each condition plays, which is why further inquiry is justified. Chapter 3 provides a medium-N, QCA analysis of the empirical record, assessing the outcomes of all 20 militarised interstate disputes that have taken place in the postCold War era. QCA is the most proper method given that the focus of this study is on several conditions and their complex relationship. QCA results show that 9 of the 20 cases of asymmetric militarised disputes resulted in war, confirming the importance of this phenomenon. Moreover, the analysis reveals that not a single condition is both necessary and sufficient to explain the minor power’s choice to go to war. However, domestic crisis seems to be of particular importance, as it is a necessary condition for the outcome to occur. Other conditions only contribute to one or more pathways. Through process tracing and a counterfactual assessment, case studies confirm that the outcomes have been largely influenced by the conditions specified. As already mentioned, this study establishes that there are three pathways (sufficient terms) of how conditions can be combined to influence minor powers to choose war. Thus, three illustrative cases are presented, one case per pathway. Hence, Chapters 4, 5 and 6 each deal with one of three cases of asymmetric conflict: Iraq (1990), Moldova (1992) and Serbia/Yugoslavia (1999). The case of Iraq concentrates on Saddam Hussein’s decision to invade Kuwait and reject opportunities to find a mediated solution. The case of Moldova centres on an initially successful president, Mircea Snegur, who challenged the Russian army and its allies in Transnistria, counting that Russia would not be able to respond. The Serbian/Yugoslav case revolves around Slobodan Milošević and his attempts to hold onto power by rejecting US proposals on how to end the Kosovo crisis. These empirical chapters establish the causal pathways and confirm the utility of the problem-driven framework proposed here, but also elsewhere (see Watts, 2007: 10). The book concludes that in all three cases, the minor powers’ regimes concentrated on solving a domestic crisis, but also believed that there was an international factor that could help them win. The final chapter, Chapter 7, brings everything together and focuses on discussing the four most important implications of the study. It also presents how this study could help in assessing future conflicts, such as the current conflict in Syria.

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2

In Search of a Theory of Minor Powers in Interstate Asymmetric Conflict The scholarship on asymmetric military disputes has been a field of inquiry that is somewhat distinct from more general approaches to military conflict, although it has an overlapping history, going back to Thucydides, who stated that weaker states suffer at the hands of ‘[the] strong [who] do what they can [whilst] the weak suffer what they must.’ Thucydides’ observation underpins assumptions that many realists make, and we can say that data supports this observation for most cases. Consequentially, the tendency of research is to associate minor powers with inherent vulnerabilities: social, cultural and political (Sutton, 1999: 401). To avoid acerbating these vulnerabilities, minor powers seek to avoid military conflict with major powers. A realist assumption is that states’ primary goal is to survive (Waltz, 1979). Yet, as will be seen in this chapter, some scholarship on asymmetric conflict has provided theoretical insight into how seemingly deviant minor powers can be enmeshed in such military struggles. By combining the findings of several theoretical contributions, in line with ‘problem-driven pragmatism’ to reach a more comprehensive answer, this book proposes a theory of minor powers in interstate asymmetric conflict. By returning to the prior scholarship, we are able to identify some tentative answers, yet the need for further empirical testing is justified given no prior focus on conjunctural causation, that is, how the impact of a particular condition only unfolds in the presence or absence of other condition(s). Conjunctural causation differs from additive causation where the goal in the latter is to establish the net effects of independent variables (one variable does not offset the effects of another). Following the logic of conjunctural causation, causal conditions do not exert their effect in a

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WHY MINOR POWERS RISK WARS WITH MAJOR POWERS

linear, additive and unifinal manner (B.R. Schneider, 2009: 58). Rather, each condition may play a different role in a different combination. Conditions can also offset each other. This ties in with the concept of equifinality, that there may be different conjunctions producing the same outcome. This conceptualisation opens room for more complexity in understanding asymmetric conflict, which is potentially complementary to previous scholarly contributions. The study also frames causality in more complex terms, such as involving necessary and sufficient conditions, something that has not been done in previous studies. In short, the theoretical inquiry of this book is driven by the lack of an answer to the following questions: (1) do previously highlighted theories and specified conditions apply to more recent cases (post-Cold War)?; (2) what is the interactive effect of variables, or in other words, what happens when several conditions occur in conjunction?; (3) which conditions are necessary and which are sufficient?; and (4) will a different methodological set-up confirm previous theoretical foundations? Proceeding from a pragmatic understanding that vast asymmetry in power capabilities ought to deter minor powers, I look at how different configurations of conditions influence the choice of a minor power, that is, why the vast asymmetry fails to deter a minor power. The conditions are as follows: regime stability, window of opportunity, foreign support, domestic crisis and anomalous beliefs. To consider all five conditions, several theories and studies are used as a source, in line with problem-driven pragmatism that aims for a more complete explanation, although a complete explanation is limited by methodology and a necessity to establish parsimony (Cornut, 2015: 60). In other words, several theories are seen as necessary to provide an adequate answer to the research question. As will be shown in this chapter, theories do differ, and contradict each other when specifying the role of a particular condition. However, by taking into account the interactive elements of each condition, such contradictions may not necessarily seem illogical. By focusing on configurations of conditions, this book shows that the outcome can be a result of multiple pathways, that there is not just one way to theorise a phenomenon. In other words, there are multiple combinations of conditions for a minor power to find itself in a dilemma and choose the same course of action. In fact, the conjunction of the five specified conditions yields to three unique pathways for a minor power to choose war. First, there are states that have anomalous beliefs and that are faced with a domestic crisis, such as Iraq in 1990. Under this pathway, minor powers tend to choose war in a militarised dispute because they face a situation that they must resolve, and also because their anomalous beliefs lead to wrong ideas and calculations. The second pathway belongs

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Interstate Asymmetric Conflict

to those minor powers that have a stable regime but that also face a domestic crisis, thus the winning coalition’s loyalty upholds the government while the state itself faces an acute problem. However, there is a third variable, a window of opportunity, that needs to be present for this group of minor powers to choose war. This means that there is a temporary advantage that can be used in a conflict. Such advantage is likely to be lost in the future. Moldova is the only example here. Finally, the third pathway is similar to the second, with one exception. Instead of having a window of opportunity as a variable, this pathway contains foreign support, particularly from another major power, that can influence the outcome of the conflict. Serbia in 1999 is one example. These pathways are illustrated in Figure 3.2 in Chapter 3. It is the way these combinations of conditions shape the decision-making of regimes of minor powers that ultimately addresses not only ‘what conditions’ matter, but also ‘why’ and ‘how’. Answering these questions entails accounting for short-term factors such as the performance of a regime, or the personal benefits political elites derive from a specific set of institutions (Hooghe, 2001: 22). In fact, political elites are the main focus because it is the leaders who are the main agents behind a state strategy (Woods and Stout, 2010: 9). It is, however, difficult, if not impossible, to pinpoint the unique contribution of each causal process (Peffley and Rohrschneider, 2007: 67). Therefore, later in this book, I attempt to instrumentalise the beliefs and actions of three minor powers’ regimes to understand the role of each condition, by specifically covering in-depth case studies of Iraq, Moldova and Serbia.

Rationality of war Given the importance of varied behaviour under large power asymmetry, it is worth addressing in what way past literature only partially answers the question ‘under what conditions does a minor power militarily challenge a major power in asymmetric militarised disputes?’ Going back to Schelling (1960), the literature on bargaining and war has tried to explain the irrationality of war in general. Following Schelling’s argument, irrational behaviour may, in fact, be very rational, precisely because the appearance of irrationality gives an impression to the other party that one is willing to take high risks to achieve one’s goals. In game theory, the game of chicken reflects this logic because, according to Cashman (2014: 322), ‘winners of the game of chicken are successful because they succeed in conning their opponents into believing they are committed to a strategy of suicide and that they are absolutely inflexible in this strategy.’ Now, imagine that

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WHY MINOR POWERS RISK WARS WITH MAJOR POWERS

two players may be heading on a collision course, the way two drivers would be on the road, heading toward each other. To survive, one or both must swerve, otherwise both might die in a collision. If one driver rips off the steering wheel before collision, thus showing suicidal signs, the other should swerve. Schelling’s answer as to why minor powers challenge major powers would perhaps be that they are expecting a major power to swerve. How they would calculate that is not clear. As such, Geoffrey Blainey (1973) focuses precisely on miscalculation, the prominent example being the omnipresent optimism among European states just before the First World War. Mutual belief in superior capabilities (or the ability to deceive the opponent) is an impediment to an agreement. Following Blainey, a minor power would thus fight when it believes in its superior capabilities, or in other words, when it believes that it can gain more by fighting (or bluffing in being seen as suicidal). To use an analogy, the problem with Schelling’s argument is that in a highly asymmetric conflict, a minor power is likely driving a two-seater smart car weighing around 640 kg, while the major power is a heavy truck weighing over 14,969 kg. If a minor power shows that it is committed to a strategy of suicide, a major power should swerve to avoid some damage. In reality, however, a major power also has an incentive to show inflexibility and might be even more convincing because it would suffer lesser damage. There is no reason for a minor power to ‘keep driving’ unless a minor power is certain that the major power is bluffing. Yet, there is no way a minor power can be certain. Likewise, Blainey’s focus on miscalculation is less applicable to highly asymmetric conflicts because it is highly unlikely that a minor power can match a major power, regardless of its resources and morale. As such, a lot seems to be missing in their rationale, but I use the possibility of miscalculation due to anomalous beliefs as one of the conditions. Similarly, the rationalist models of Fearon (1995) and Powell (1999) cannot, with certainty, be applied to asymmetric conflicts. Fearon (1995: 381) depicts three reasons why a rational leader may choose conflict over settlement. First, private information about relative capabilities means that an actor will misrepresent their resources and willingness to fight in order to gain more during the bargaining phase. Relative capabilities also matter to Powell (1999), who argues that the misaligned distribution of power and benefits can trigger conflict. When there is a large disparity in the system between those who hold power and those who benefit from the system, war is likely to occur. Second, while mutually preferable bargains are attainable, actors have an incentive to renege on the agreed terms. In other words, actors may fear that the other side may cheat. Imagine if one side agrees to relinquish control of a certain territory while the other

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Interstate Asymmetric Conflict

side uses the situation for a surprise attack. Third, some issues cannot be bargained over. They can be indivisible, such as demands to surrender one’s sovereignty. Some of the assumptions behind these premises are worthwhile exploring later in the chapter when choosing conditions, such as that ‘misrepresentation’ can lead to anomalous beliefs about an opponent. Nonetheless, despite Fearon and Powell’s explanations, Allen and Fordham (2011: 1026) highlight that in asymmetric conflict there is less uncertainty about the balance of capabilities since the disparity is so large. At the very least, credibility and commitment may be affected, warranting further testing. Similar studies, such as that of Fey and Ramsay (2007), as well as Slantchev and Tarar (2011), devote their attention to the logical coherence of mutual optimism as a cause of war. For Fey and Ramsay, if both sides in a crisis appear to be optimistic about war, then the logical consequence is that one side is underestimating the opponent, which would induce one side to avoid conflict. This can apply to both symmetric and less symmetric conflicts. The problem is, optimism may not always be visible. Bas and Schub (2016) conducted empirical tests to prove that secret alliances, as a source of private information, can induce optimism among states, and thus their willingness to fight. They give the example of Iraq and Kuwait in the summer of 1990 before the Gulf War. Kuwait did not concede to Iraqi demands, knowing that it had powerful allies, such as the USA, UK and Egypt. Iraq, on the other hand, received mixed signals from the USA. The other problem with conflict avoidance under mutual optimism has been highlighted by Slantchev and Tarar (2011). They argue that even if an actor realises it is underestimating an opponent, it may not be able to avoid conflict given that the opponent may initiate conflict unilaterally. Moreover, what may make minor power dilemmas in conflict different from other states in conflict is the lack of optimism and greater certainty about the negative outcome. As such, one cannot directly assume that the same logic applies to asymmetric conflict. Nonetheless, it is worthwhile testing Bas and Schub’s (2006) focus on foreign support, as it can change the balance of power. Following the rational-choice tradition, Bueno de Mesquita et al (2005) focus on domestic politics by identifying the selectorate group within a state, that is, people who have a role in selecting the state’s leadership. Part of the selectorate naturally becomes the winning coalition, either after elections or due to a change of leadership in other ways. Leaders in states with small winning coalitions can take greater policy risks because it is the majority that will suffer, while the small winning coalition will still be able to reap the benefits. Moreover, small winning coalitions prefer conflicts over redistributive resources, such as land, while large winning

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WHY MINOR POWERS RISK WARS WITH MAJOR POWERS

coalitions have little use of such resources. A minor power may thus fight if the winning coalition believes it will not suffer losses from the conflict. Following similar reasoning, I consider ‘regime stability’ as a condition that can reflect on the unity of the winning coalition (see the section on ‘Conditions’ at the end of this chapter for more detail). With a similarly resonating argument, Mueller (2005: 45) emphasises that a democratic character of a society makes it more vulnerable to war, such as sensitivity to ‘the body count’ that the USA developed during the Vietnam War. Livingston and Eachus (1995: 427) offer a critique of ‘the body count’ explanation, claiming that ‘the media serve as instruments of those officials who are most adept at using news to further their policy goals’. Likewise, Schultz (2001) argues that democracies are more credible at signalling their intentions given that opposition parties serve as an important source of indication of credibility. Therefore, it is not clear whether ‘body count’ is a cause or an effect of changing policies, but Mueller’s emphasis becomes an important part of Iraq’s anomalous beliefs, as will be shown in Chapter 4. In short, the rationalist literature may provide some indications as to why vastly weaker opponents may challenge those that are powerful, but many of the assumptions, such as uncertainty over the balance of capabilities, do not necessarily hold, justifying further testing.

Theories of asymmetric conflict Most of the literature on asymmetric conflict has taken power discrepancy as an important factor in how conflict occurs, but it has not necessarily focused on states, let alone minor powers. If we are to reason that the answer as to why the weak challenge the strong may be connected to cases of minor powers winning, we can follow Mack’s (1975) observation that in the Vietnam War, the USA lost due to the assumption that it could easily win a war, thus creating unrealistic expectations at home. Unrealistic expectations of Americans at home made it easier for the Vietnamese to undermine the will of their enemy, not necessarily US military capability. Sullivan (2007: 497–8) also sought to explain weaker actors winning, but in contrast to Mack, she argues that the more powerful actors lose wars when the expected costs of victory exceed the price they are willing to pay to win. Arreguín-Toft (2012: 637) deals with outcomes as well, but his basic assumption is that the weaker side can win wars by choosing the opposite strategy of the stronger opponent. Just like Sullivan, he focuses on groups and individuals rather than states. The findings of these three scholars may also be useful in answering the question as to why minor powers (states) militarily challenge major powers, but winning, which was

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Interstate Asymmetric Conflict

the case for Vietnam (1955–75), is a rare outcome for a minor power in the vastly bigger asymmetric conflict. Nor can we be certain what price each side is willing to pay to win a conflict. Although in most cases a minor power is in a predicament, having to choose between fight or acquiescence, there are cases where a minor power initiates the challenge. Fischerkeller (1998) attempts to answer the question as to why weaker powers militarily challenge the powerful through a ‘cultural judgements’ framework, by stating that subjective, cultural prejudice can play a monumental role in the war assessment process. His approach is very much constructivist and should not be underestimated. However, he focuses only on a ‘cultural judgements’ framework, discounting how it interacts with other conditions. Nonetheless, this book frames culture as a contributing factor within a more encompassing condition – anomalous beliefs. With a broader conceptualisation of ‘challenge’, including attacking a major power’s allies and friends as well as reneging on the rules of its regimes and institutions, Kim and James (2016) seek to explain why weak states challenge the hegemon, arguing that strongly motivated challengers may interpret the hegemon’s military intervention elsewhere as a window of opportunity, especially if there is a greater physical distance between the challenger and the hegemon. Allen and Fordham (2011) find a similar significance in how minor powers are more likely to challenge distant major powers. Focusing on the window of opportunity as their main explanatory variable, Kim and James (2016: 22) do acknowledge the potential existence of ‘other possible causal mechanisms’. One of these other causal mechanisms could be highly motivated crazy states, as Wolf (1991) argues. Nonetheless, even he deems vulnerability, or window of opportunity, to be an important factor in asymmetric conflict. As such, this book borrows ‘window of opportunity’ as one of the conditions to be studied. Real-life examples of challengers include Algeria challenging France, as well as Georgia challenging Russia in 2008. In both examples the stronger side won militarily, as expected. However, as Mack (1975) states, Algeria challenging France is a case of structural asymmetry, since there is a great difference in status between the two actors. On the other hand, the Georgian war of 2008 was a conflict between two legally recognised, sovereign states. This makes the Russo-Georgian War not only very recent, but also a very relevant case to be included in this study. In the category of the weaker side initiating the conflict one can also place Paul (1994), who presents several variables that influence decisionmakers’ rationale to wage war against a more powerful state. He aimed to improve the balance of power theory, consistent with rational choice theory. He discovered that, first, strategic calculations based on a limited

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WHY MINOR POWERS RISK WARS WITH MAJOR POWERS

aims/fait accompli strategy seem to be of major significance in explaining why a weaker side chooses a war against a stronger opponent. This refers to fighting a war to accomplish limited objectives, such as the shaping of negotiations. Essentially, weaker actors never fight against much stronger opponents if they expect a war of attrition, that is, to be wearing down the enemy to the point of collapse. Second, short-run offensive dominance has a modest influence in his study. This usually refers to the use of offensive weapons that may become unavailable or less useful in the future. Third, support from another major power was crucial in all the cases he studied. A weaker side needs a powerful ally to support it or de-escalate the conflict. Fourth, domestic power structure was found to have a modest to strong significance. Specifically, when a regime lacks legitimacy, popularity or favours military approaches, so it is more likely to engage in a military conflict. Thus, for Paul, the most important factors are a limited aims/fait accompli strategy and strong external support. As a pioneer for addressing the question as to why the weaker side chooses war, Paul was considered a foundational text for later studies. Following the literature of rational choice and bargaining, Allen and Fordham (2011) test two types of explanations for asymmetric conflicts: a rationalist account and non-rationalist explanations. The former explanation is based on the literature that began with James Fearon (1995) while the latter focuses on domestic political institutions or processes, or durable patterns in the preferences of state decision-makers. The rationalist account, as argued earlier, contains premises whose applicability to asymmetric conflicts is equivocal, thus warranting further studies. The non-rationalist account is an attractive alternative because it does not assume that the state is a unitary rational actor. Rather, domestic institutions, or internal ‘veto players’, can influence the leadership to make decisions based on multiple players’ preferences. For instance, democratic leaderships are more sensitive to the suffering of the population. Using a large-N empirical analysis, they find mixed support for both rationalist and non-rationalist explanations. Specifically, on the rationalist side, they found that credible threats made by major powers tend to face less resistance by minor powers – usually threats coming from a democratic, contiguous major power. On the non-rationalist side, they found that extreme demands by a major power, involving sovereignty and territory, tended to face stronger resistance by a minor power. Allen, Bell and Clay (2018) follow up with a large-N, spatial modelling technique, to highlight the importance of the regional security dynamic. They argue that the presence of a neighbouring rival conditions the choice of a minor power to resist or not. When facing a threatening neighbouring rival, a minor power is more likely to oppose demands

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Interstate Asymmetric Conflict

from a distant major power due to the need to appear strong to the rival. However, acquiescence occurs in the same situation as long as the rival has a good relationship with the major power. Potential cooperation between the rival and the threatening major power is a scenario that a minor power would want to avoid. Both studies contribute to the theory on asymmetric conflict by highlighting the greater explanatory power of some variables over others, and also by introducing complementary explanations. For the purposes of this research, they confirm that both rationalist and non-rationalist assumptions of asymmetric conflict offer limited explanations, but also that additional conditions are worthwhile exploring. A similar methodological set-up can also be found with Geller (1992, 2000), whose interest is in systematic explanations. He discovers that capability shifts, or transitions, result in conflict. Namely, historically weaker states are motived to start an armed conflict against a stronger state at the time of an unstable balance of power. From the opposite angle, a stable balance of power offers less opportunity for the weak to alter the status quo. Geller’s conceptualisation is broader than Paul’s focus on ‘shortrun offensive dominance’, but it carries the same logic. Chan (2010) focuses on foreign alignments, similar to Paul’s ‘strong external support’, claiming that the weaker side would not accept war without outside help. Also, he states that the weaker side is more inclined to instigate a war when it has a window of opportunity, a concept that relates to capability shifts and the short-run offensive dominance. In a later study, Chan (2012) focuses on both domestic and international explanations, finding that a regime’s perception of loss is an important variable, akin to Paul’s domestic power structure variable, but Chan excludes the nature of the regime. Finally, Cherkasova (2010) focuses on the case of the Russo–Georgian War of 2008, finding that foreign support is not a convincing condition behind the Georgian regime’s decision; rather, the choice of war was made because Saakashvili believed that war was inevitable. Cherkasova’s argument takes us closer to cognitive science, where Park (2004) offers a critique of rational choice theories, by establishing a hybrid theoretical framework synthesising prospect theory and game theory. His main claim is that leaders are risk-acceptant in a certain context, namely, when they face a loss. Therefore, it not only emphasises the irrational component of decision-making, but also illustrates how two conditions coalesce in order to have an effect. A focus on irrationality opens a debate as to the influence of new variables and their possible combinations with the conditions initially analysed by Paul. Theoretically, an integrative framework involving prospect theory came back later, with a recent study by Berejikian (2016), who integrates it with an NCR

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framework. Following Park, he offers a compelling argument that as a state’s security position erodes, leaders become more risk-acceptant. However, unlike Park, he uses an NCR framework to condition the causal process whereby low levels of political counter-framing – lack of domestic political opposition – increase the likelihood that the risk will be taken. Chapters of this book are founded on the basic premises of Park’s and Berejikian’s studies, but unlike their studies, I focus on the interactive effects of additional conditions, as well as establishing which conditions are necessary and which are sufficient. The scope and methodology are also different in this book, as I focus on more recent cases and a combination of QCA with case studies.

Security strategies of minor powers National security is the single most important public policy of any state (Soare, 2008: 53). The literature on the national security strategy of minor powers is usually framed as a strategy of ‘weak states’ and ‘small powers’. This group of states has a difficult security goal, as they are in ‘constant search for security’ (Braun, 1983: 27). If not the most common, then one of the most common security strategies of minor powers is to conduct ‘binding’, which means preventing threats by creating and strengthening the governance of international affairs through international rules. It is similar to what Braun refers to as ‘concordisation’. According to Steinmetz and Wivel (2010: 10), binding involves formalising international affairs and thus developing away from the power politics of an anarchical system towards a rule-based international society. The hope is that this system will constrain the actions of major powers, as breaking the rules will be seen as deviant and will require specific justification, which other states will likely frown on (Neumann and Gstöhl, 2006, pp. 19-21). Binding thus seems to be the preferred strategy of most minor powers in Europe where there has historically been a strong desire to overcome conflicts on the continent. There has been a great success, for example, with developing the norms of sovereignty and national self-determination (Arreguín-Toft, 2005: 1). Even a rules-based system is somewhat anarchic, since violations of rules, especially by the powerful, require punishments that cannot be enforced. As a consequence, power retains importance. Vital (1971: 14) acknowledged that minor powers have very limited power capabilities. Thus, any force they can use effectively is also very limited. Logically, such states seek out multilateral organisations and alliances to ensure their security and to achieve foreign policy goals. This is often referred to as ‘balancing’, that is, using one powerful group against another. For

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example, Brunei relies on the UK to ensure its security and stability visà-vis other powerful states (DeSilva-Ranasinghe, 2013: 48). Similarly, Sri Lanka switched from a British defence umbrella to an Indian one during the Cold War (De Silva, 1999: 370). Similar to this strategy is for a minor power to choose neutrality and hope that this will be recognised by others (Hey, 2003: 6). Switzerland, for example, known for its neutrality, has a key principle of its security policy which is to foster multilateral cooperation. Otherwise, Switzerland would remain politically absent and thus risk becoming isolated and defenceless (Rickli, 2010: 192). While alliances, in particular, diminish the autonomy of minor powers, the benefits seem to outweigh the costs, since in a case of international aggression, these states can expect foreign support. Still, minor powers need to be careful that their systematic, bilateral linkages do not place them into the fray of regional competitions. Hence, De  Silva (1999: 380) recommends that linkages be only partial, to keep a minor power on the fringes of regional conflicts. Ponizilova (2013) highlights a similar problem of minor powers depending on their powerful allies, whereby the protection can be used as leverage against minor powers. Thus, to avoid this scenario, a more attractive option for a minor power is to form a regional grouping. Joining multilateral organisations and alliances is also related to minor powers’ use of deterrence to ensure security. The minor powers that have enough conventional military capabilities can use these by threatening a devastating attack (C.Q. Schneider, 2009: 12). Saddam Hussein, for example, threatened to use his chemical and biological weapons against the USA and its allies. As part of the deterrence literature, Reiter (2006: 242) assesses the realist premise that a minor power may want to have military capabilities large enough to make a conquest by a major power costly. Indeed, that is what Chikovani’s (2010: 31) study of Georgia covers, highlighting that a minor power should never be just a defenceless prey. Putting up resistance, combined with various unconventional warfighting methods, can be successful, as was the case in Algeria (1954–62), Vietnam (1955–75) and Afghanistan (1979–89). Alternatively, when deterrence seems to be failing, a minor power may simply seek to join the threatening state/alliance in order not to be completely vanquished by it, and also to share in the spoils of victory. This is referred to as ‘bandwagoning’. To illustrate, Czechoslovakia, under the Soviet tutelage, was part of the Warsaw Pact, but only because leaving it would have likely resulted in a conflict with the Pact itself. Ponizilova (2013: 89) highlights a similar strategy of ‘preventive diplomacy’, whereby a minor power attempts to engage with the threat diplomatically before the use of military force is put to the test.

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There is also an option for minor powers to pursue a hiding strategy, that is, to stay out of trouble by staying out of sight. This is a bit tricker to do than maintaining neutrality. Essentially, according to Steinmetz and Wivel (2010), this means following pragmatic policies and responding to the agenda set by near-by major powers and external developments. However, this strategy has a high likelihood of failure, as it did during the two world wars. It is also an increasingly difficult strategy to implement amidst the growing economic and security interdependence (Steinmetz and Wivel, 2010: 10). Rather than try to hide, Qatar, for example, has successfully implemented the opposite strategy, keeping both enemies and friends very close. Qatar’s goal is to act as a peace broker and regional moderator. Cooper and Momani (2011: 114) refer to Qatar as a hybrid diplomatic actor, since its behaviour cannot be explained by traditional IR literature. Namely, according to Ponizilova (2013: 83), a minor power can expand its non-material capabilities (manoeuvrability, diplomacy and positive imaging). She refers to such an approach as ‘soft power’. This approach requires, however, a long-term vision and domestic stability. Worth re-emphasising is also Thomas C. Schelling’s (1960: 18–19) observation that a decision-maker in a conflict situation may engage in seemingly irrational or unpredictable behaviour as a way to deter a stronger opponent. After all, irrational actors might be harder to defeat or negotiate with during a conflict. This behaviour is in line with East’s (1973: 558–9) argument that minor powers have fewer diplomatic and informationgathering resources, and as such, are more likely to engage in high-risk action. Such a situation is, however, probably truer for relatively isolated minor powers, as was Iraq under Saddam Hussein and North Korea today – Kim Jong-il, for example, used this strategy rather effectively. The suggestion made by this literature is therefore that minor powers are not at a permanent disadvantage; rather, using flexibility and creativity, minor powers can reduce their weaknesses (Katzenstein, 1985: 39–40). Still, minor powers generally have limited means to be proactive agents of international change that can enhance their security. In most cases, minor powers are expected to be more passive and reactive (Hey, 2003: 6). Exceptions to these expectations are very wealthy minor powers such as Qatar, which have the resources to be innovative and thus possess a strong foundation for risk-taking. While most minor powers may only be able to focus on one particular issue or a geographic area, Qatar has been able to have an impact beyond its region. Nonetheless, what is clear from this review is that it is difficult to generalise what the best security strategy of minor powers entails. According to Soare (2008: 53), every national security strategy is highly circumstantial and interest-oriented. There are many variables to take

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into consideration, such as the neighbourhood, historical relations, capabilities, legitimacy, and interests, to name a few. These factors have not been frequently taken into account, yet their importance is emerging in studies on security strategy. Therefore, each minor power must be analysed comparatively and individually to assess its regional and global options that will ensure its survival. What this review of minor powers’ security strategy reveals is that it is indeed unfounded to believe that a minor power will not resist a challenge by a major power. Minor powers have many options at their disposal, but much depends on the circumstances facing a minor power. The purpose of this research is to reveal how some of these circumstances, that is, conditions, interact with a decision of a minor power to engage in military conflict. I expect that the circumstances are very prominent since the national security strategy of minor powers tends to be to avoid wars (Chikovani, 2010: 1). Indeed, the discussion so far seems to reinforce the importance of including foreign support (due to balancing), domestic crisis, regime stability (the absence of the former and the presence of the latter seem to be important in the case of Qatar) and anomalous beliefs (seemingly irrational behaviour, as indicated by Schelling, 1960). However, I have also included window of opportunity as a condition (see later in this chapter for more on these conditions).

How minor powers fight wars As already mentioned, minor powers have a very limited utility of actually engaging in military conflict against a major power. However, minor powers do sometimes win wars against major powers, meaning that they do have a war fighting strategy. The threat of utilising a successful war fighting strategy is essentially the key to good deterrence, touched on earlier in this chapter. However, minor powers seldom fight optimally, which is why it is important to highlight the fighting strategies and their possible importance during the planning phase before a conflict. This book excludes from consideration minor powers with nuclear weapons, in other words, Israel, since nuclear weapons essentially have an immense capability to inflict immense destruction to any state where the threat emanates from. The most common, yet least successful, strategy has been for minor powers to fight conventional wars (Katagiri, 2013: 357). Iraq, for example, fought the USA and its allies in the First Gulf War conventionally. When Saddam Hussein was advised to develop a guerrilla warfare strategy, he rejected it, since to him, it was seen as a strategy of the weak; he

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did not want to tarnish his powerful image. However, the choice to fight conventionally ultimately contributed to Saddam’s defeat. Still, if a minor power insists on using a conventional strategy, Ørvik (1973: 228) highlights three options for a minor power: (1) increasing one’s ‘own power’; (2)  acquiring ‘borrowed power’; and (3)  resisting only symbolically. All three are equally problematic, for none of the strategies is very useful in cases of vast power asymmetry. Moreover, these options ought to be realised before the conflict rather than once the conflict starts. For instance, once NATO began bombing Serbia in 1999, Milošević followed the second option by attempting to join the Union of Russia and Belarus. However, the application was rejected by Russia since it would have put Russia into direct conflict with NATO. Going back to the case of Iraq, an important aspect of fighting a conventional war should be highlighted. Specifically, C.Q. Schneider (2009: 4) contends that an important strategy used in a conflict for a minor power may be the willingness to absorb casualties, hoping that one’s own willingness is greater than that of a rival. Indeed, this willingness is perhaps what Saddam meant with his message that he would lead Iraq into the 20th century, even if half of its population had to be sacrificed in the process (Aburish, 2012: 192). The message should have been clear to everyone – Iraq could have afforded immense casualties on its side, while the USA or any other enemy should question its own ability to absorb casualties to destroy such a determined opponent as Iraq. In part, sensitivity to casualties might be seen as an issue between authoritarian and democratic regimes in conflict. While having a certain type of government does not directly shape strategy, many studies have highlighted that authoritarian regimes can indeed be more willing to sacrifice their own people for the sake of winning (LeMay and Smith, 1968: vii–viii; Ikle, 1991: xiv; Wells, 2016). Sirin and Koch (2015), however, add nuance to that argument by contending that authoritarian regimes with smaller winning coalitions are better able to absorb casualties by externalising the costs to non-supporters. Personalistic regimes such as Saddam’s Iraq fit this category. Democratic governments’ willingness to absorb casualties also requires a nuanced answer. Namely, Horowitz, Simpson and Stam (2011) confirm that liberal democracies are more sensitive and cautious about the wars they fight, but there is an exception in wars against authoritarian states over sovereignty and autonomy where liberal democracies demonstrate strong resolve. In any case, we can expect democracies to adopt strategies that reduce the costs of war (Valentino et al, 2010). Nonetheless, while these types of messages are often passed before the conflict, they can also take place during the conflict in the form of an attempt to break the opponent’s will to continue.

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Tying into Ørvik’s three points above, the literature on how minor powers fight wars also focuses on the role of social institutions, which can add additional capability to an organised group, touching on Ørvik’s first point specifically. Findley and Edwards rationalise that the reason why the USA was surprised in Iraq and Russia in Chechnya is that social institutions have greatly enhanced the fighting capabilities of the weaker side by having developed centralisation (geographic concentration of the material or infrastructure), cohabitational institutions and incentive frameworks (2007: 602–3). Many other institutional arguments can be added here. For example, Katagiri (2013: 360–1), although arguing that conventional military strategy is a weakness when facing another conventional, but superior, opponent, explains the reasoning as to why minor powers may choose a conventional strategy in fighting a war. Namely, a professional army is better able and more willing to confront domestic security threats. An institutionalised military introduces discipline, and thus overall institutional survival becomes more likely. A perfect example is Iraq, where Saddam used his military to establish internal control and repression, rather than face external enemies. In another example also focusing on institutions, Nietzel (2007: 46–50) offers a study of the Falklands War, where he concludes that the strategic culture of the Argentine military contained three elements: a focus on internal enemies, obsession with protecting the border, and risk-aversion to losses of military assets (officers in particular). All three elements were decisive for Argentina not to fully exploit its advantage, and thus lose the war. More successful are strategies where battlefield outcomes are less relevant. Such strategies overlap with unconventional war fighting. Namely, when the goals are political, a minor power has more flexibility over the outcome and how to achieve it. For instance, when facing a coalition of states, a minor power can attempt to divide the coalition, in the hopes that the political will of the coalition will cripple the morale of participating states (C.Q. Schneider, 2009: 30). Terrorism is a typical strategy here as well, since, according to Dais (2007: 110), it is a common strategy of the weak, while war is a common strategy of the strong. Direct military confrontation between the weak and the strong would result in the weaker side losing. Thus, terrorism has a particular uniqueness in that it aims to achieve psychological results, namely, to induce fear, and through fear, shape the behaviour of the enemy. As follows, it ought to be no surprise that the killing of non-combatants is simply a means of maximising fear. While terrorism is predominantly chosen as a weapon of the weak, Neumann and Smith (2008) remind us that terrorism is also a weapon of powerful state actors. State actors can use terrorism

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to maximise on opponents’ weaknesses (Neumann and Smith, 2008: 14). Regardless of the actors using it, the problem is that terrorism may not necessarily be ‘an act of war’ (Frederking, 2007: 155), for there is often an absence of communication, clear motives and goals of actors engaging in terrorism. Sometimes, terrorism is conducted by individuals who have little in common with other terrorists, exposing a weakness of conventional assumptions about terrorists (Horgan, 2014: 69). Finally, there are studies that focus on a strategic set-up that cannot be neatly placed here. One such study focuses on the diffusion of arms and technology, whereby technology starts to resemble power. The pursuit of quality and quantity of arms can thus make minor powers stronger (Cohen, 1984: 162). Paul (1994: 30) would agree that the quality of arms, especially of an offensive type, can make a difference. Another kind of study in this category is that of Mack (1975), which focuses on ‘interest asymmetry’ as the explanatory variable. His explanation is that stronger actors have less interest in the outcome of a conflict since their own survival is not at stake, whereas weaker actors have a greater interest in the outcome of a conflict due to the need to survive; thus weaker actors will want to put up a better fight (Mack, 1975: 181; Arreguín-Toft, 2005: 13). In other words, major powers might be more vulnerable to losing interest (through opposition to the war at home), while minor powers are less vulnerable to internal division when facing a large threat. From a more normative perspective, Geiß (2006: 758) argues that military superiority in today’s strategic environment may actually lead to the strategies highlighted here, which would be a disturbing trend since such strategies accentuate the risk of nuclear, biological, chemical and, generally speaking, perfidious attack. The far weaker party seeks to gain a comparative advantage over the militarily superior enemy by resorting to such practices as a matter of strategy. Luckily, so far, such outcomes in interstate relations have been extremely rare, while non-state actors are seen as more predisposed to such moves. Overall, this last section offers little guidance in answering the question ‘under what conditions does a minor power choose to fight in an asymmetric military dispute?’ War fighting strategies are of limited use in an asymmetric interstate conflict, having vast power differentials. Likewise, the focus in the aforementioned studies on what constitutes asymmetric conflict in fighting a war is too wide, from including non-state actors, to seemingly strong states that suffer disproportional losses against an equal opponent (thus actually being closer to symmetric conflict). In the following sections, the book only incorporates insights from the section on fighting a war that address not only the main research question but also its contrast question, namely, ‘why didn’t these conditions affect a minor

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power to choose acquiescence with a major power?’ I believe these answers can only be provided by those theories that explain why war would be a more attractive, or a necessary, choice, under specific conditions. The contrast helps to clarify the contribution of each study when I develop work on conditions in the following section. It is only logical that explanations inside the contrast space are the focus of the analysis, whereas nothing is said about explanations outside this contrast space. In other words, I do not aim to address an infinite number of possibilities that do not deal precisely with the dilemma ‘war or acquiescence’. However, even within the contrast space, a problem-driven scholar seeks the most complete explanation without a priori presuppositions of a specific theory and its attendant epistemological assumptions (Cornut, 2015: 60). Different aspects of the phenomenon under this study, that is, minor powers’ choices in an asymmetric conflict, can be assessed from several different approaches. The purpose of the following is to highlight the theoretical and empirical reasoning for selecting the conditions.

Conditions Theoretical engagement thus far has led to a formulation of three important assumptions that distinguish this study from others. First, the literature above does tangentially address the research question that the book aims to answer, but collectively the answers are not definite, nor in agreement, thus warranting further testing. Second, this study is the first to focus on the asymmetric conflict between minor and major powers with an important ontological assumption that reality is complex. While a complex answer might seem to undermine parsimony, parsimony is a relative concept. To paraphrase Einstein’s famous quote, explanations should be as simple as possible, but not simpler. Innovation in methodology has opened up opportunities to test increasingly complex assumptions. QCA, together with case studies, is the basis of innovation, but also encompassing a traditional approach. Third, this is the first study on asymmetric conflict that tests important findings from the Cold War period on the post-Cold War period.

Domestic crisis A body of literature exists claiming that very risky choices are made by state actors that are desperate, seeking to change the declining status quo, that is, an increasingly unfavourable state of political affairs. Domestically,

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a government may face problems at home, and the use of force may be the only way to gain some popularity, as claimed by the diversionary use of force theory (Gelpi, 1997; Nincic, 1997). For instance, the president of a state may face declining approval rating due to domestic turmoil, and thus use force to protect themselves (Drury, 2005: 77). Powell (2006: 189) states this succinctly: ‘if fighting and winning increases the probability of remaining in power, then the faction in power may choose to fight rather than agree to a settlement.’ Time pressure is important here, and if the future looks increasingly unfavourable to the minor power, then war may be an alternative. Although it has a different micro-foundation, prospect theory introduces a similar condition termed ‘loss domain’. Park sees the ‘loss domain’ as a psychological conception that needs a reference point, such as the change in status quo that can be viewed as a loss by decisionmakers (2004: 42). For Berejikian (2016), this ‘loss’ refers specifically to a deteriorating security position of a state. In the diversionary theory of war, risky foreign policies are implemented in order to reverse domestic trends, especially problematic ones (see, for example, Levy, 1989; Smith, 1996; Fordham, 1998; DeRouen, 2000; Clark, 2003; Gent, 2009). However, Kang (1995) prefers to frame such phenomena as ‘desperation theory’. Paul (1994: 52), for example, describes the Japanese desperation to avoid inevitable attrition warfare, leading Japan to attack a much stronger Imperial Russia in 1904. During the Cold War, use of nuclear weapons made it especially crucial to consider if governments would have taken a gamble, especially when they were in desperate straits, because if they had been willing, the risk of a nuclear war would have substantially increased (Sagan and Waltz, 2003). Desperate conditions include internal power struggles, but also mounting economic problems, as recognised by Brown (2001: 222). The application of risky choices to desperate actors can be attributed to major powers as equally as to minor powers (Fravel, 2008). In this case, one would stipulate that for a minor power to choose a conflict with a major power, it would have to face a desperate situation, a crisis. This variable has been used in studies on territorial disputes (see, for example, Fravel, 2008; Bobić, 2013), where a negative shift in a ‘claim strength’ has contributed to the use of force both by China and Russia. Related more to studies on asymmetric conflict, Park (2004) claims that weaker states facing loss choose war against a superior adversary. Chan (2012) reveals a similar finding when studying asymmetric rivalries. Therefore, there is strong reason to believe that a domestic crisis leads governments to take riskier decisions. This book excludes external crises, that is, crises in bilateral relations between minor and major powers, since that might make the argument of this study tautological. Militarised interstate disputes (MIDs) alone are always serious crises.

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Finally, the domestic crisis is particularly related to the loss of resources (including financial), territory, sovereignty and legitimacy. According to Park (2004), weaker states are particularly sensitive to the last three factors, making these states more likely to engage in conflict. In the cases of Argentina, Egypt and Iraq that he analyses, control over territory was pivotal in escalating the crisis. This book thus pays particular attention to the loss of resources and these three factors. Overall, as will be shown, the domestic crisis proves to be a necessary condition, and thus the central focus of this book’s theoretical framework.

Foreign support/alliance Foreign support/alliance is an international factor because scholars who focus on alliances tend to give an explanatory priority to features of the international system (see, for example, Waltz, 1979; Jervis, 1997). Alliances have also been often corroborated as a major factor contributing to asymmetric conflict, especially when foreign support exists for the weaker side. During the Cold War, the existence of two rival major powers enabled minor powers in conflict with one of the major powers a degree of influence on the structure of the conflict, as well as a measure of leverage due to the possibility of intervention from the rival major power (Vital, 1971: 124). There are those who believe that a minor power can never challenge a major power without support from another major power. As Chan (2012: 181) claims, ‘the weaker side would not have instigated (or accepted) an asymmetric confrontation if its leaders did not expect to receive outside help.’ Similarly, Deriglazova (2009: 86) states that the weaker adversary is more likely to win in an asymmetric conflict if one of the major powers intervenes on its side. Bas and Schub (2016) give an example of Kuwait before Iraq invaded. Its intransigence regarding Iraqi demands was bolstered by secret knowledge that it had the support of the USA, among others. However, others do not necessarily agree that this condition is essential. In fact, some studies have focused almost exclusively on the role of third parties. Chan (2010), for example, highlights that foreign support needs to be one-sided patronage for a minor power to prefer conflict. Other kinds of support, such as pivotal patronage – when both sides are aligned with the same powerful ally – make wars less likely. In addition, foreign support may have the opposite effect from actually encouraging a minor power to start a conflict. A foreign supporter may try to constrain the act of a minor power since any minor power that engages in hostilities against another major power is creating a big risk for its allies. To understand

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the role of foreign support, I consider it as a condition of significance only when support occurs prior to the start of a conflict, and not during. Operationally, this means looking at different forms of active support, such as the shipment of weapons, but also tacit support, such as constraining an opponent to act. The results show that foreign support is a condition similar to a window of opportunity. One of these conditions is necessary, together with a domestic crisis, for a minor power to choose conflict.

Window of opportunity There is an observation that the weaker side in an asymmetric conflict is more inclined to instigate a war when presented with a window of opportunity (Chan, 2010: 182; Kim and James, 2016: 8). When a major power has its attention somewhere else, then a minor power may use this chance to fight a powerful state. A major power may also have a constraint that a minor power may exploit. For example, Vital (1971: 124) states that a minor power in a military contest with a major power only stands to lose if the major power faces ‘acute internal contradictions’. Generally, such constraints are very few for major powers. Still, if a major power is committed to another conflict, or is facing domestic turmoil (economic or political), this can be an opportunity for the minor power to increase its likelihood of winning, and so it may choose conflict. There are several theoretical assumptions that would support this logic. Offensive realism claims that states’ desire for gains creates an incentive to attack an opponent at an opportune moment (Mearsheimer, 2001). Another major focus has been on the window of opportunity theory, which explains that modes of war, in general, could be preventive or pre-emptive (see, for example, Levy, 1987; Smith, 2007). This theory has been applied to various fields, including studies on territorial disputes, where it was observed that states might attack an opponent during a window of opportunity (see, for example, Fravel, 2008; Bobić, 2013). Although most discussions on the window of opportunity do not address the role of minor powers, theory’s logic can be applied to the behaviour of minor powers (see, for example, Park, 2004). Some refer to a similar phenomenon related to the change in the relative balance of power, or the power transition theory (Powell, 2006; Alsharabati and Kugler, 2008). When a change in capabilities between rival states occurs, the state that feels more dissatisfied with the status quo will choose war in order to change the status quo before its advantage further deteriorates, including the advantage of attacking first (Park, 2004: 6–7). Therefore, one would expect that conflict is chosen during a temporary advantage for

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a minor power, namely, a period within which a minor power can provide maximum benefit to itself before circumstances change, diminishing the value of potential benefits (Kickul and Lyons, 2012: 48). As mentioned above, this study shows that either window of opportunity, or foreign support, also serve as necessary conditions for a minor power to choose conflict.

Anomalous beliefs Anomalous beliefs are a condition aimed primarily at an individual level of analysis, involving one or a few key decision-makers. Anomalous beliefs are the condition behind miscalculation, such as the omnipresent optimism before the First World War (Blainey, 1973). This condition measures the potential presence or absence of ‘private information’ that has been widely covered by rationalist models (Fearon, 1995; Powell, 1999; Bas and Schub, 2006; Fey and Ramsey, 2007; Slantchev and Tarar, 2011). After all, it is the lack of or wrong information that may lead political leaders to miscalculate. Obtaining evidence of private information would be a difficult task. However, anomalous beliefs can be noticed in several ways, making it an easier condition to work with. They can differ from the international, that is, expected, political beliefs of most world leaders. Most world leaders are, for example, opposed to the use of weapons of mass destruction. The actual use of weapons of mass destruction would thus be a clear anomaly. To anomalous thinking one can also add individuals with very ideological, as well as very emotional, ways of thinking. Furthermore, a leader might not exercise proper learning and thinking due to their deteriorating health. In other words, there are logical reasons why factors such as health, emotions or egoistic personalities may interfere with decision-making. Charles Hill (2011) explains that most political science misses the human drama and disfiguring passions that swirl around great decisions. On a related point, Seliktar and Dutter (2009: 286) argue that grandiosity, an idealised self-image, and belief in infallible judgement, contribute to exacerbation of the individual’s initial misperceptions of reality and ultimately, to a dynamic evolution of the person’s mental state into the realm of delusions and fantasies, which, concomitantly, lead to an almost complete detachment from reality. Emotional and ideological beliefs can lead to miscalculation and misperception, and thus it can be an important condition affecting the ability of a leader to provide adequate cognitive responses. Consider Brezhnev, for example, who is reputed to have been prone to intense emotional reactions, including the invasion of Afghanistan (Lebow and

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Stein, 1994: 243). Findley and Edwards (2007: 591) label a similar concept ‘ethno-chauvinism’, a factor that may contribute to the ignorance of true capabilities. Equally, they show in a case study how religion helped to unite Chechen clans to fight the Russians against heavy odds (2007: 599). Not surprisingly, we can see that according to C.Q. Schneider (2009: 3), asymmetric wars can be started by a minor power due to wishful thinking, misperception, groupthink, illogic born of stress, or a stubborn refusal to confront the facts. This departs from rational choice theories in the sense that the beliefs of leadership ought not to fulfil the utility maximisation model (Park, 2004: 13). Such a flexible approach of rationality includes constructivists’ understanding that decisions can be made through engagement in a discourse, which subsequently promotes collective understanding (Adler, 2012: 124). The constructivist (interpretivist) theory focuses on norms, beliefs, knowledge and understandings that shape how reality is perceived, and actions taken in response to it. Thus, when a leadership falls out of touch with others, that is, if it fails to persuade or be persuaded by other leaderships, it can be said to have ‘anomalous beliefs’. Usually, in such situations, there is no real discourse. Empirically, a study focusing on cultural beliefs by Fischerkeller (1998: 3) finds that a weaker state’s leadership can contain cultural prejudices that may play an equally ‘monumental role in the assessment process’ before the war. That is, those who perceive their enemies as ‘culturally inferior’ will tend not to be able to assess enemies’ realistic capabilities. Fischerkeller uses the example of the First Balkan War and the 1971 Indo–Pakistan War, where Bulgaria and Pakistan were outnumbered by a factor of at least 3:1 in both men and material. Therefore, if leadership is led by beliefs that are not supported outside of one’s own inner circle, it can be said to be ‘anomalous’. Following Fischerkeller’s findings, one can expect that regimes with anomalous beliefs are more likely to fight stronger opponents. I purveyed this proposition to minor powers, expecting that they would choose war if under a leadership with anomalous beliefs. The results show that anomalous beliefs are necessary only in some pathways (a group of cases).

Regime stability The domestic crisis may affect the state, but not necessarily the ruling elite. Regime stability, or security, focuses on the ruling coalition, a domestic variable whose influence on foreign policy has not always received adequate attention (Elman, 1995: 172). There are various ways to conceptualise regime stability. Katagiri (2013: 369), for example,

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who studied ‘suicidal armies’, utilises a similar concept of ‘organisational stability’ to explain that stable organisations are better at maintaining discipline, predictable patterns of movement, transportation and violence. Logically, he indicates that organisational stability might make weaker players more willing to fight conventionally. Similarly, Findley and Edwards (2014) focus on collective action problem in asymmetric conflicts, arguing that weaker groups can enhance their capabilities through a coordinating institution. However, others hypothesise differently, such as that a change of regime creates political uncertainty and possibly ‘wrong’ outcomes (Goldsmith, 2008: 138). Paul (1994: 33) uses this variable more explicitly in his study on war initiation by weaker powers, concluding that when an ‘insecure, militaristic group assumes control of the decision-making process of a state’, chances of war initiation are greater. On the contrary, others like Fravel (2008) find that political instability within a state makes it more likely to choose peace, that is, to cooperate, over fighting a war. A similar logic is presented by Berejikian (2016), who argues that political competition within the regime would make decision-makers less likely to fall prey to unchallenged framing, and thus less likely to take risky foreign policy decisions. A related argument is that governments constrained by local opponents are less likely to have the support for a successful strategy (Taliaferro, 2006). In order words, regime insecurity gives an incentive to compromise, possibly making asymmetric disputes more peaceful. How we see political competition and security may depend on the type of regime. Bueno de Mesquita et al (2005), followed by Allen and Fordham (2011), covered that aspect, by highlighting that regimes with small winning coalitions (usually non-democratic states) are more likely to take foreign policy risks, because the losses would be less likely to affect the loyal group, while gains would be channelled to the loyalists. In a democratic system, the winning coalition is a large part of the electorate, so losses would likely affect a large part of the population and would thus be very risky. In both cases, support of the winning coalition is essential, and following this rationale I generated a ‘regime stability’ condition, to differentiate between minor powers with a fragile winning coalition and those with a strong winning coalition. Reflecting this discussion on regime types, I asked two questions to assess the presence or absence of regime stability. First, for a democracy, did the regime maintain the support of enough people to get re-elected, and certainly not get impeached or removed through a vote of no confidence? Second, for an authoritarian regime, were key aides and security services united in supporting the regime as to avoid a coup d’état, revolution or other removal from power? Although all of these studies have different scopes and definitions, they also have significant overlaps to indicate that we cannot establish strong

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WHY MINOR POWERS RISK WARS WITH MAJOR POWERS

veracity on the nature of the influence of this condition. I started with an assumption that a stable regime of a minor power is less likely to take risks because prospect theory juxtaposes decision-makers’ behaviours under gain and loss frames to discover that taking risks is less likely in a gain frame (Park, 2004; Berejikian, 2016). Nonetheless, competing hypotheses and findings by some scholars resonate well with the results, which show that regime stability is not a key condition. Regime stability plays a role in both the choice of war by a minor power and a choice of acquiescence, but its significance is thus smaller than that of the other conditions here.

40

3

Pathways to Conflict Using Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) The previous chapter has highlighted the utility of borrowing concepts from different research, often advocated by problem-driven pragmatists. By using several theoretical insights as a framework, QCA becomes a suitable method that can grapple with complex relations involving conjunctural causation, but more importantly, a medium number of cases (Castellani and Hafferty, 2009: 131). QCA initially gained prominence in social science through Ragin (1987, 2008a). However, in IR generally, and conflict studies specifically, QCA has only made a few inroads (see, for example, Pinfari, 2011; van der Maat, 2011; Bretthauer, 2014b; Mello, 2014). This chapter is the first to utilise the advantages of QCA methodology to shed new light onto the issue of minor powers in asymmetric conflict with major powers. While the full presentation of QCA would be beyond the length of this chapter, the next few paragraphs provide a succinct version of the method before delving into the operationalisation and eventually the results (pathways) that will form the basis for subsequent case studies. QCA is often mentioned as a method that bridges the gap between quantitative and qualitative approaches, and initially, it was geared towards the analysis of multiple cases in a small and intermediate-N research design (Engeli et al, 2014: 85). Two important aims of QCA became the contextualisation of explanations by gathering in-depth withincase knowledge and the capture of the complexity of cases. These are essentially qualitative features. On the other hand, QCA’s quantitative appeal emerges from its treatment of cases as a series of conditions and outcomes (variables), allowing calibration using numeric indicators (Li, 2018). While quantitative studies are generally not well connected to

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WHY MINOR POWERS RISK WARS WITH MAJOR POWERS

the particularities of their cases, qualitative studies offer a very limited possibility for making generalisations (Scholvin, 2016: 54). QCA is used as a tool to reach a middle ground. Similarly, both inductive and deductive approaches to making inferences are feasible with QCA. Specifically, according to Hicks (1994), the selection of conditions and their operationalisation is based on theoretical knowledge; this is essentially a deductive step. However, conclusions based on QCA can be elaborate and interpreted, allowing researchers to formulate new theories; this is essentially an inductive step (as cited in Li, 2018). Logically, QCA’s instrumentality is that it provides a systematic tool for comparative research. Naturally, QCA is referred to as being part of the family of configurational comparative methods (CCMs) (Rihoux and Ragin, 2008), which means that each case is considered as a complex configuration of causal conditions – the explanatory factors – and an outcome – the phenomenon to be explained. Engeli, Rihoux and Allison (2014: 85) claim that all CCM-related techniques conceive cases as configurations of attributes and are geared towards systemic crosscase analysis. Relations between explanatory factors and the outcome are seen as relations between sets (thus, set theory) rather than correlation (Schneider and Wagemann, 2012: 8). Using Li’s example (2018), the statement that ‘developed countries are democratic’ is a set-theoretical statement, telling us the set-theoretical relation between democratic countries and developed countries. The statement that development is positively related to democracy is a correlational statement that presents the correlation between the two variables: democracy and development. To better illustrate how configurations of conditions are assessed, let us say that we are interested in three conditions, A, B and C, and their interaction, for the outcome Y. A number of possible combinations, or configurations, are available: the presence of A, but not of B or C; the presence of A and B, but not of C; absence of all three, and so on. Table 3.1 shows a model truth table with hypothetical conditions A, B and C, as well as all their possible combinations. Once all possible combinations of conditions are presented in the truth table, empirical cases are allocated to these combinations (represented in the column ‘Cases’). Assigning cases to all possible conditions is not always straightforward, due to fuzzy conceptual boundaries of concepts. Just think of the difficulties in assigning countries to a set of ‘democracies’ because many countries do not neatly fall into either the category ‘democracy’ or ‘non-democracy’. Not surprisingly, it is within this process that the qualitative nature of QCA comes into play, as some in-depth knowledge of cases is needed to calibrate, in other words, to assign set membership scores to cases.1

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Pathways to Conflict Using QCA

Table 3.1: Truth table of hypothetical values for QCA

Configuration 1 Configuration 2 Configuration 3 Configuration 4 Configuration 5 Configuration 6 Configuration 7 Configuration 8

A 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 1

Conditions B 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 1

C 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 1

Outcome (Y) 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0

Cases 3 4 2 3 5 1 3 3

Once the membership scores are assigned, the truth table is analysed through the process of logical minimisation – in order to identify sufficient and necessary conditions – the end product of a Boolean algebraic process that enables the simplification of results (Bretthauer, 2014a: 6). The results take the form of pathways indicating the role of each condition. For a condition to be necessary, every presence of the outcome must also show the presence of a condition. In Table 3.1, the presence of condition B is necessary for the outcome  Y (both contain a ‘1’). The absence of condition C is also necessary for the outcome Y. Related to asymmetric conflict, for example, if foreign support is a necessary condition for a minor power to resist a major power, all minor powers experiencing asymmetric conflict have foreign support, but not all minor powers with foreign support experience asymmetric conflict. For a condition to be sufficient, every presence of the condition must show the presence of the outcome. If foreign support is a sufficient condition for a minor power to resist a major power, all minor powers with foreign support experience asymmetric conflict, but not all countries experiencing asymmetric conflict have foreign support (Berg-Schlosser et  al, 2009: 10). In Table  3.1, no condition alone is sufficient for the presence of outcome Y. The presence of condition B and absence of condition C must occur in conjunction to be sufficient for the outcome Y. Using a set-theoretic language, with a necessary condition, cases showing the presence of the outcome are a subset of cases that show the presence of the condition. Equally important, with sufficient conditions, cases showing the presence of the condition are a subset of cases showing the outcome, as shown in Figure 3.1. These two subset relations are possible to analyse by using specialised software, such as fsQCA or the R package (Davey and Ragin, 2009). Following the conventional approach, I analysed necessary conditions by focusing on single, individual conditions, and at the same time, I

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WHY MINOR POWERS RISK WARS WITH MAJOR POWERS

Figure 3.1: Necessary and sufficient conditions

Condition

Outcome

Outcome

Condition

Necessary condition

Sufficient condition

analysed sufficient conditions by focusing on a combination of conditions (pathways). Related to the pathways, QCA’s most important epistemological features are multiple conjunctural causation, equifinality and asymmetric causal relations. It is worth briefly explaining each. Multiple conjunctural causation allows for different pathways to lead to the same outcome, and for one condition to have a different effect depending on the context. Specifically, B.R. Schneider (2009: 57) defines conjunctural causation as ‘a situation in which one single condition unfolds its impact on the outcome to be explained only when combined with one or more other conditions(s).’ Although not necessarily exclusive in this assumption, QCA is particularly beneficial in analysing context conditions as it focuses on the pathways and combinations of conditions that lead to an outcome (Bretthauer, 2014a: 6). Simply stated, in Table 3.1, the logic of conjunctural causation emphasises that condition B has one effect if combined with the presence of condition C (effect being the absence of the outcome Y) than if it had been combined with the absence of condition C (effect being the presence of the outcome Y). As part of an implicit assumption, the literature on asymmetric conflict often uses the logic of conjunctural causation. For example, Cherkasova (2010: 75) argues that support from an external power leads a minor power to choose conflict if a ‘feeling of creeping annexation’ also exists. In other words, two conditions need to coalesce. Similarly, Berejikian (2016) argues that only minor powers facing an eroding strategic position together with a lack of political competition with the regime decide to adopt risky foreign policy strategies. An eroding strategic position alone cannot explain the outcome. Therefore, indirectly, they argue that a minor power chooses conflict only when one of these conditions occurs in conjunction with another condition. This way, using QCA is instrumental when assumptions rely on conjunctural causation but have not been tested

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Pathways to Conflict Using QCA

out systematically. Unnecessarily, a lack of empirical work on conjunctural causation often leads to contradictory results. The second epistemological feature is equifinality, also termed ‘plurality of causes’ (Li, 2018). This assumes that an outcome can be a result of alternative conditions, or a combination thereof. Essentially, different paths can lead to the same outcome (Berg-Schlosser et  al, 2009: 8). Conventional methods, such as multivariate regression analysis, find it difficult, but not impossible, to deal with equifinality given that it usually carries the assumption that a single path exists for all cases under examination. In the previous chapter, we developed reasoning on why equifinality is an unavoidable assumption in asymmetric conflict literature – previous studies have highlighted a range of conditions that lead to asymmetric conflict. The third epistemological feature is asymmetric causal relations. This simply means that if the presence of a condition is causally related to the presence of an outcome, we do not necessarily know anything about the absence of an outcome (although in some instances symmetry can be assumed; see Schneider and Wagemann, 2012). In other words, separate analyses are required to study the occurrence and non-occurrence of the outcome (Hurka, 2017: 68). Schneider and Wagemann (2012: 6) use the example of successful democratisation. If we understand conditions that lead to it, we would most likely need to consider quite different conditions to understand ‘failed democratisation’. Asymmetric causal relations essentially stem from a set-theoretic understanding of concepts that requires two definitions. As such, ‘democracy’ is qualitatively different from ‘autocracy’. Reflecting the instrumentality of QCA to delve deeper into complex causal processes, it is worth summarising that QCA as a technique can be used for two different purposes (Engeli et al, 2014). As a first purpose, it can be used to summarise data, and describe cases in a synthetic way. For instance, a table filled with empirical observations can be used to check for coherence within data. What is often the case is that contradictions are present, necessitating further investigation into individual cases. As a second purpose, it can be used to test competing existing theories and hypotheses. What is often the case is that different and contradictory explanations can emerge as being complementary. In short, QCA is a great tool of theory refinement. The aim of this chapter follows the second purpose, in line of testing five conditions mentioned in the previous chapter. QCA has two main techniques in approaching cases as configurations, a fuzzy-set approach and a crisp-set approach. A crisp-set approach relies on a dichotomous principle, where membership of a condition in a set

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WHY MINOR POWERS RISK WARS WITH MAJOR POWERS

is either present (1) or absent (0); for example, a given country can be a member of the set of ‘nuclear states’. Even if a country possesses one nuclear weapon, it is a full member of the set. Thus, the boundaries are logically established between members and non-members. This approach is better utilised with the nominal scale measurement. A fuzzyset approach is different from the crisp-set approach by allowing different degrees of inclusion in a set. As such, membership of a condition is a matter of degree. This becomes obvious if we consider that some developed countries are neither democracies nor autocracies, containing features of both. Therefore, a fuzzy-set approach can include greater specifications such as a sophisticated level of technological development or high military spending. Although a crisp-set approach encounters stronger philosophical critiques, due to its lack of nuance, it is a more suitable method for this research since the conditions are nominal. They are not necessarily dichotomous, but the measurement of regime stability, foreign support, anomalous beliefs, domestic crisis and window of opportunity in terms of degrees would be nearly impossible. Therefore, this chapter employs a crisp-set approach by indicating whether each of these conditions was present (1) or absent (0). It is worth mentioning that the methodology employed here is in no way superior or inferior to other methods. Each method has its weaknesses and strengths. For example, large-N statistical techniques have led to a remarkable improvement in terms of rigour and breadth of comparative analyses. Regression analysis has an undeniable strength and usefulness in teasing out the ‘net effects’ of single independent variables vis-à-vis other independent variables (Ragin, 2008a). This strength becomes a weakness if there are good substantive and theoretical reasons to believe that the assumption of causal simplicity (additivity, linearity, symmetry) are inadequate and should be replaced by the assumption of causal complexity (conjunctural causation, equifinality, asymmetry), and when the aim consists of unravelling different mixes of conditions, or ‘recipes’ for the outcome (Ragin, 2008a; B.R. Schneider, 2009: 59). However, this may be an oversimplification of statistical methods, as statistics are increasingly able to handle more complex assumptions (see, for example, Kenkel and Signorino, 2013). Some refer to the issue of causal simplicity as a lack of theoretical subtlety (see, for example, Braumoeller, 1999: 3; Shalev, 2007). Nonetheless, QCA has been developed with complex assumptions in the first place, and is better suited for medium-N cases. The assumption of complexity enables the researcher to pay more attention to different classes of cases within their population. One of its weaknesses is that at a very complex level it runs the risk of individualising each and every single case without much progress towards generalisation and with significant

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difficulties in theorising (even ex-post) the discovered empirical complexity (B.R.  Schneider, 2009: 59). Another weakness, as will be discussed towards the end of this chapter, is that QCA often produces spurious relations.

Operationalisation of asymmetric conflict This section presents a concise outline of the way in which the theories of the previous chapter were converted into operational conditions, or variables.2 The previous chapter highlighted five conditions, reflecting significant prior theoretical contributions: foreign support, window of opportunity, domestic crisis, regime stability and anomalous beliefs. To calibrate these conditions for the crisp-set QCA, each condition has been reduced to either a ‘present’ or ‘absent’ form, depending on whether any of the relevant questions were answered in the affirmative (provided in the online Appendix 2, see https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/why-minor-powersrisk-wars-with-major-powers). A score of 1 indicates ‘presence’ while a score of 0 indicates ‘absence’. Thus, the variables are dichotomous. However, due to the lack of measurable ‘breaking points’, that is, whether a case falls into ‘presence’ or ‘absence’, a qualitative judgement is required.3 Descriptive information from at least three reputable sources was sought to establish this qualitative judgement. In other words, data comes from secondary sources, often statements made by other scholars or experts. Citations reflecting these statements are also provided in the online Appendix 2 (see above). Of course, given the dichotomy, some cases that fall into the ‘grey area’ (near the breaking point) are a matter of dispute. To my best judgement of the qualitative data, the cases were placed in their respective category. For example, when assessing Gaddafi’s anomalous beliefs, whether he had them or not, one would encounter a frequent description of him as someone who was compulsively disruptive, someone who had an incurable love for chaos. He seemed to have an internal struggle going on. Thus, he was eccentric, bizarre. Although perhaps successful in some ways, he managed to alienate himself. Taking all this into account, Kawczynski (2011) describes him as power-seeking and deeply vain. Still, many other political figures are power-seeking. Gaddafi also managed to find some international partners. Thus, his case falls close to the ‘breaking point’ whether he could be described as having anomalous beliefs or not. Given the frequent description of him as immature, impatient and inconsistent, with paranoid beliefs, it seems prudent to indicate ‘presence’ of anomalous beliefs, in this case, coded as a ‘1’. Online Appendix 2 contains more

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WHY MINOR POWERS RISK WARS WITH MAJOR POWERS

detailed descriptions of the crisp-set scoring system and their sources of data. In order to control for reverse causalities, for example, an armed conflict leading to a domestic crisis or an unstable regime, data for all the cases was sought prior to the conflict, ideally a few months to a couple of years, depending on availability of the data. Using the example of Gaddafi again, I relied on descriptions of Gaddafi’s beliefs and attitudes before the 2011 downfall.

The universe of cases For a dispute to be truly asymmetric, that is, to only contain major and minor powers, the discrepancy in material capabilities (power) must be high. Consequences for selecting high discrepancy in material capabilities are as follows. First, there have been 20 MIDs involving an asymmetric conflict since the end of the Cold War. Second, the discrepancy in material capabilities is at least 10:1 in order to operationalise a ‘vast power differential’ between states. These two points require elaboration. On the first point, what is a militarised interstate dispute? The common definition is that it is a dispute that includes the threat, display or use of force by at least one of the participants. The acts must be explicit, overt, non-accidental and government-sanctioned (Singer and Diehl, 1990: 228). Such a definition provides an ‘operational criterion to identify those disputes in which the threat of war becomes explicit and overt’ (Singer and Diehl, 1990: 228). Therefore, such behaviour ought to be a strong signal of a possible armed conflict. The assumption is that states do not initiate a threat, display or use of force without being prepared that the opponent may retaliate. The aforementioned definition attempts to clarify that a MID differs from just any ‘interstate dispute’ since the latter can include minor disputes that are completely non-military in nature. The Correlates of War (COW) project has compiled a dataset of MIDs. The MID data list contains the start and end date for each dispute, the participants and the highest level of hostility each state reached in the course of the dispute (Ghosn et al, 2004). Given that there is no dataset focusing exclusively on militarised interstate crises, I relied on MIDs as a context that includes all crises short of war. There are separate data on interstate war, which signifies that crises are incorporated into the category of MIDs. However, some MIDs are not included in this analysis, because the seriousness of war breaking out is disputable. This includes primarily

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fishing boat incidents, but also incidents over illegal immigrants, border security and third parties.4 The exclusion was applied because although such cases usually violate the sovereignty of another nation, there is a lack of clear intent to pose a threat to that nation. For example, the USA and Canada had a militarised border dispute over fishing rights, dubbed the ‘Salmon Wars’, which made the relationship between the two countries slightly bumpy, but it was hardly likely to escalate into military confrontation. This chapter also excludes cases of minor powers with exceptional capabilities, that is, nuclear weapons, such as Israel. Possession of nuclear weapons by a minor power may provide a strong deterrence to major powers. On the second point, to account for much greater power differentials, it is necessary to be able to compare the military capabilities of states during the dispute, but before an outbreak of military conflict. I follow Robert J. Art’s recommendation that the capabilities of a state’s military forces must be made relative to those of another state, not with reference to some absolute scale (1980: 5). Doing otherwise could be misleading since the military power of the USA is far more developed than even that of other major powers – Russia and China. Nonetheless, military capability is a frequent measure of national power. As Peter Paret summarised, ‘military power expresses and implements the power of the state in a variety of ways within and beyond the state borders, and is also one of the instruments with which political power is originally created and made permanent’ (1989: 240). However, how to measure military capability is a matter of debate. Tellis et al (2000) argue that one or two individual measures, such as the number of personnel under arms, are unlikely to capture key factors for assessing military power (2000: 135). Instead, they recommend assessing information pertaining to the following variables: size of the defence budget, military manpower, military infrastructure (bases and installations), research and development, military industrial base, and military inventory and support. Data for some of these variables is qualitative and thus not easily comparable between states. Thus, I once again utilised the COW database. This contains the annual values for the total population, urban population, iron and steel production, energy consumption, military personnel and military expenditures. These six indicators together form the Composite Index of National Capability (CINC) score (Singer et al, 1972). Referring back to the operationalisation of ‘vast power differentials’, the selection of dyads from the database ought to ensure a large discrepancy in military capabilities. A conventionally accepted assumption in the military is that in order to ensure combat success, the attacking side must have supremacy of at least 3:1 in the assault zone. However, Soviet military

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WHY MINOR POWERS RISK WARS WITH MAJOR POWERS

thinking changed this ratio to 5:1, and even 10:1 in favour of the attacker (Evron, 1994: 216). Of course, the underlying assumption is that there is no large qualitative gap between the two powers and the numbers should suffice in highlighting asymmetry. Nonetheless, to ensure that there would be no miscalculation by the minor power about the nature of the asymmetry, I only selected the cases where there was a 10:1 ratio in CINC scores favouring the major power. The same differential was highlighted by Allen and Fordham (2011). Major powers (again, some refer to them as great powers – the USA, Russia and China) are the main reference point of this study for the particular reason that minor powers, by their own efforts, cannot defend against any of the major powers (Handel, 1981: 76). In addition, major powers of interest in this study have a veto over Security Council resolutions. Finally, some studies already claim that the weaker adversary is more likely to win an asymmetric conflict if it receives direct military support from one of the major powers (Deriglazova, 2009: 86). Table 3.2 shows the case selection with the corresponding CINC scores, reflecting the asymmetry. A brief description of each case is available in the online Appendix 1 (see https:// bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/why-minor-powers-risk-wars-with-majorpowers). Two of the cases are state-like entities, Taiwan and Republika Srpska, and are thus included in the study.5

Outcomes Use of force The main outcome of interest is to measure whether a minor power militarily challenged the major power. The following question is posed, ‘did the minor power attempt to engage the military forces, or part of those belonging to the major power?’ The question is stated so as to ensure that skirmishes not authorised by the leadership are not included in the analysis. The list of interstate disputes is taken from the COW project, titled ‘Militarised interstate disputes (MID) (v.4.01)’ (Singer and Diehl, 1990). Only disputes coded with a hostility level of dispute 3, 4 and 5 were coded as ‘1’ (presence of outcome), each number pertaining to the display of force, use of force and war, in their respective order. Each case was then inspected qualitatively to determine the choice made by a minor power. This is important to ensure that the government of a minor power attempted to resist the military force of a major power. For example, while the data set contains an interstate dispute between Afghanistan and Russia (1993–96), there was no effective government in

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Pathways to Conflict Using QCA

Table 3.2: National capability scores in asymmetric dyads Case name (ID)

Date

Antagonists

CINC score

Invasion of Panama (P01)

1989

Panama USA

0.0003048 0.1466928

The Gulf War (P02)

1990

Iraq USA

0.0125427 0.139376

War of Transnistria (P03)

1992

Moldova Russia

0.0006665 0.0652206

Operation Deliberate Force (P04) 1995

Republika Srpska 0.0005348 (approx) 0.1406412 USA

NATO bombing of Yugoslavia (P05)

1999

Serbia USA

0.0019634 0.1428883

War in Afghanistan (P06)

2001

Afghanistan USA

0.0012123 0.1420117

Iraq War (P07)

2003

Iraq USA

0.0066267 0.1420938

Russo–Georgian War (P08)

2008

Georgia Russia

0.0005039 (approx) 0.0392739 (approx)

Operation Unified Protector (P09) 2011

Libya USA

0.0017627 (approx) 0.1421487 (approx)

Georgian Civil War (N01)

1991

Georgia Russia

0.0009231 0.097295

Dispute over Taiwan (N02)

1994

Taiwan China

0.0101998 0.1301491

Syrian border fortification (N03)

1996

Syria USA

0.0040923 0.1383393

Russia and CIS in Afghanistan (N04)

1996

Afghanistan Russia

0.0011876 0.0569312

Operation Uphold Democracy (N05)

1994

Haiti USA

0.0004392 0.1448253

Spratly Islands I (N06)

1995

Philippines China

0.0056465 0.1355899

Spratly Islands II (N07)

1994

Vietnam China

0.0087169 0.1301491

Russo–Latvian border dispute (N08)

1998

Latvia Russia

0.0003422 0.0492318

Russo–Estonian border dispute (N09)

1994

Estonia Russia

0.0002192 0.0651541

Chinese Intrusions into Bhutan (N10)

2004

Bhutan China

0.0000414 0.1825703

Russo–Norwegian territorial dispute (N11)

2008

Norway Russia

0.0016396 (approx) 0.0392739 (approx)

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WHY MINOR POWERS RISK WARS WITH MAJOR POWERS

Afghanistan. Thus, the non-governmental forces that actually engaged in attacks against Russia might not have been authorised by the government. Given the authorisation and identification concerns, this case and other similar cases are excluded.

Acquiescence All the remaining cases were coded as acquiescence, that is, when a minor power displayed hostility level 2 or lower, as coded in the COW MID data set. The threat to use force and lower hostility levels cannot account for militarily challenging a state, despite a potentially concealed desire to do so. Each case was also qualitatively inspected, again, to ensure that the case falls within the scope of this study.

Conditions6 Foreign support Foreign support, or an alliance, is a very common variable used in assessing causes of war (see, for example, Senese and Vasquez, 2008). To ensure their security when facing threats, states must have internal preparations, such as military forces, and external preparations, such as forming an alliance (Thalakada, 2012: 3). As Gulick (1955: 61) stated, the alliance is one of the ways for states to preserve themselves. Of the five conditions in this study, foreign support is the easiest to measure as it is usually very explicit in treaties between countries, public statements or shipment of aid. It is meant to address the question, ‘prior to the conflict, did a minor power expect any form of foreign support from another major power?’ This includes active support, but also the willingness of an ally to constrain the opponent and the ability of an ally to create a costly deterioration of a relationship with the opponent. For example, the USA considered intervening against the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria. However, Russia was the key arms conduit for Assad at the beginning, later providing active support. Likewise, Russia has consistently backed Assad at the UN. Thus, foreign support was significant enough to shape Assad’s military strategy. There is one caveat in this variable. If an ally is one that could not hypothetically match a major power, then such an ally is of dubious usefulness, depending on a myriad of other factors.

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Window of opportunity One of the oldest historians, Thucydides, stated a long time ago that ‘in war opportunity waits for no man’. This condition refers to the window of opportunity theory or the power vacuum theory, among others. I measure window of opportunity by asking the question, ‘did a minor power have a window of opportunity that would have enabled it to have a temporary advantage?’ A window of opportunity is the period within which an actor can provide maximum benefit to itself before circumstances change, diminishing the value of potential benefits (Kickul and Lyons, 2012: 48). There are two ways I look for a window of opportunity, in line with the previous literature. First, a major power is spending its vital resources elsewhere, such as another costly conflict, economic crisis or social upheaval (not simply demonstrations). While crisis, or intense difficulty, is a qualitative measure, in some cases it can be captured by economic indicators. The logical importance of this variable is that the power ratio differential may matter less given the high possibility that a major power cannot make use of its full potential. Second, a minor power has a temporary advantage that it may lose in the future. For example, it might have a powerful weapon whose properties might not be as useful in the near future. Although this example refers to a non-state actor, the USA supplied Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to the Mujahideen to defend against Soviet helicopters. This weapon was only a temporary advantage since the Soviets could have developed a strategy to bypass it. This second way of looking for a window of opportunity is less likely to be found, yet is still theoretically plausible.

Domestic crisis The Argentine regime in 1982 was subject to a ‘deepening economic and political turmoil’ such that war against the UK over the Falklands became one of the few options the government had to ensure popular support (Paul, 1994: 16). Domestic turmoil was thus one of the main variables that Paul identified as contributing to war. James (1988: 93), however, believes that ‘even a disintegrating domestic situation would not be sufficient to make war a viable option.’ This is a curious contrast. I assess whether a similar situation existed in other cases by asking the question, ‘did a minor power have a very serious domestic crisis that had few, if any, solutions?’ In a way, this is an inverse of the window of opportunity variable, except that in a window of opportunity, domestic crisis applies to a major power. Thus, a serious economic crisis is an obvious example, but so is another internal conflict, or social upheaval (such as civil war).

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However, it excludes crises within the regime or a situation whereby a regime is losing the support of the ‘winning coalition’.7 The reason why ‘regime crisis’ is excluded is that inclusion would significantly overlap with regime stability condition, which is elaborated next.

Regime stability Regime stability has been established as an important variable in influencing states’ intrastate conflict behaviour (Hegre et  al, 2001; Maoz, 2004; Mitchell, 2012: 174). However, nature and stability of the regime have also been used to explain interstate behaviour (Paul, 1994; Bueno de Mesquita et al, 2005; Berejikian, 2016). The measurement of this variable reflects on the question, ‘did the minor power have a stable regime?’ That is, whether the regime faced the serious prospect of losing the support of the ‘winning coalition’, using the language of the selectorate theory. While the question is simple, the answer is not. Thus, I decided to measure this variable in different ways, depending on whether a regime is a democracy or not. For democracies, I looked for whether a regime maintained the support of enough people to get re-elected, and certainly not get impeached or removed through a vote of no confidence. For authoritarian regimes, the role of popular support does not matter as much as satisfying key segments of the society to avoid a coup d’état, revolution or other removal from power. In most cases, it is the security services that usually play a key role in maintaining law and order, keeping the opposition under constant check. If there is a significant loss of support from the security services, the regime is losing stability. The way regime stability is operationalised is essentially borrowed from Quackenbush (2015: 159). In other words, regime stability focuses on the ‘winning coalition’ and not on the society at large (which is a ‘domestic crisis’ condition). So it is entirely possible that a country as a whole faces an acute crisis, but that the regime retains unity. Of course, one may impact the other, and such an impact is of interest to this research.

Anomalous beliefs This variable is the most challenging to measure; however, it attempts to measure what Moseley refers to as the strongest emotional or appetitive desires that lead to war (2002: 108). He describes that a leader may be obsessed with a specific goal. Driven by individualistic desires or that of a small community/group, these are perceived as an anomaly to beliefs that most international leaders would have. Thus, I framed the question

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as, ‘did the regime of a minor power have anomalous beliefs prior to the dispute?’ The answer, however, depends on what one sees as ‘anomalous’ or a ‘belief ’. Being a politician often entails hiding one’s beliefs. But if one does not act according to one’s beliefs, then it matters less to science than those beliefs according to which one acts. To answer this question, I relied on the common beliefs present in the international political community as the norm. Those that deviate from the norm might be less likely to have friends, thus they might be more concerned about their self-preservation. Their anomalous beliefs might also shape their worldview in a more conflicting manner, fostered by ‘groupthink’. According to Garfinkel and Skaperdas (2007: 677), choosing war can be attributed to misperceptions, misunderstandings or simply to irrationality and base instincts. Berejikian (2016) describes how lack of competition within a regime, and thus lack of alternative views, tends to create an institutional context conducive to more emotional decisions. As such, in the online Appendix 2 (see https:// bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/why-minor-powers-risk-wars-with-majorpowers), I focus on the following indicators to assess anomalous beliefs: excessively ideological or zealous actions, criminal activities, and mental illness or substance abuse.

Assigning membership scores The most important part of assigning membership scores is to create a truth table that displays all the conditions and the outcome with their respective membership scores. In other words, all the cases are converted into configurations, as was done in Table 3.3. A configuration is a given combination of conditions associated with a given outcome (Rihoux and De Meur, 2009). For an easier overview, case IDs that start with a ‘P’ refer to the outcome of ‘conflict’ while those starting with ‘N’ refer to the outcome of ‘acquiescence’ or ‘non-conflict’. Membership scores for each case are also supplied in the online Appendix 2.

Pathways for a minor power to choose conflict Recalling the earlier discussion, one of QCA’s advantages is assessing necessity and sufficiency. Two QCA measures are used as tools for measuring necessity and sufficiency – consistency and coverage. They are given for each solution formula. Consistency measures the degree to which a relation of necessity or sufficiency between a condition (or combination of conditions) and an outcome is met within a given data

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Window of opportunity

Domestic crisis

Regime stability

Anomalous beliefs

Outcome

Cases (IDs) P01, P06, P09 P02 P03 P04, P07 P05, P08 N01 N02, N06, N10, N11 N03, N07 N04 N05 N08, N09

Foreign support

Table 3.3: The truth table showing logical combinations that have empirical support

0 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 1

0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 1

1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 0 0

0 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1

1 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 0

1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0

set (Ragin, 2006). It indicates how closely a perfect subset relationship is approximated. When consistency is 100 per cent, it signals a perfect necessity, in which the condition seems to ‘enable’ the outcome. But to open the possibility to account for issues such as measurement errors, chance, randomness and other ‘troubling aspects of social data’ into account, a necessity threshold is usually set at 90 per cent (Pattyn, 2012: 11; Schneider and Wagemann, 2012: 143). Coverage answers the question, ‘what proportion of the membership scores of the cases with the outcome has been explained’? It measures empirical relevance. A necessary condition is trivial if it appears in both the presence and the absence of the outcome, or when its coverage value is lower than 50 per cent (Pattyn, 2012: 12).8 Conjunctural causation also assumes conditions to be interrelated.

Minor powers’ choice of conflict The analysis of necessary conditions for the choice of conflict computes one necessary condition: the presence of domestic crisis has a consistency score of 1.0, or 100 per cent, as seen in Table 3.4. This means that all cases where the conflict is chosen contain the condition domestic crisis. Without a domestic crisis, no conflict can occur. A coverage score of 0.82, or 82 per cent, can also be considered high. Such a high coverage indicates that cases with a domestic crisis represent a large portion of cases where conflict is chosen. It also means that there are a few cases that have a domestic crisis

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Table 3.4: Consistency and coverage scores of presence and absence of all five conditions when the outcome is present Analysis of necessary conditions Outcome variable: choice of conflict Conditions tested Consistency (presence of) foreign support 0.44 (absence of) foreign support 0.56 (presence of) window of opportunity 0.11 (absence of) window of opportunity 0.89 (presence of) domestic crisis 1.00 (absence of) domestic crisis 0.00 (presence of) regime stability 0.67 (absence of) regime stability 0.33 (presence of) anomalous beliefs 0.67 (absence of) anomalous beliefs 0.33

Coverage 0.40 0.50 0.20 0.53 0.82 0.00 0.40 0.60 0.75 0.25

but no conflict as the outcome. In different words, the domestic crisis is an important variable that explains many choices of conflict by a minor power. Minor powers choosing conflict are a subset of minor powers facing a domestic crisis. To analyse sufficient conditions, an intermediate solution9 is taken from the analysis. An intermediate solution contains only the logical remainders that ‘make sense’ given the researcher’s substantive and theoretical knowledge that is incorporated into the solution. An important benefit of intermediate solutions, according to Ragin (2008b: 111), is that they will not allow removal of necessary conditions, or more precisely, ‘intermediate solutions are superior to both the complex and parsimonious solutions and should be a routine part of any application of any version of QCA.’ An intermediate solution yields three pathways for a minor power to choose conflict (see Figure 3.2 and Table 3.5).10 All three contain the presence of a domestic crisis. The second and third pathways also contain a stable regime. Apart from these commonalities, the three pathways contain a rather different conjunctural combination. The first pathway indicates that the presence of anomalous beliefs along with a domestic crisis will lead the regime to choose conflict. This supports the prediction on anomalous beliefs, which states that a minor power with a leadership that has anomalous beliefs is likely to choose conflict, but this analysis shows this is only when also facing a domestic crisis. In other words, anomalous beliefs are an insufficient but necessary part of a configuration that is itself unnecessary but sufficient for the result (INUS condition). Panama (1989), Iraq (1990), Afghanistan (2001) and Libya (2011) are covered by this first pathway.

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Figure 3.2: Pathways that show three types of combinations of conditions that influence a minor power to choose conflict

Foreign support

Regime stability PATHWAY 2 (Moldova)

Domestic crisis PATHWAY 1 (Iraq)

Anomalous beliefs

Window of opportunity

Milnor power chooses conflict

Militarised interstate dispute

PATHWAY 3 (Serbia)

Table 3.5: Intermediate solution for conflict choice Solution pathways Cases covered by pathways Solution formula

AB × DC

RS × DC × WOO Moldova (1992)

RS × DC × FS

Panama (1989) Rep. Srpska (1995) Iraq (1990) Serbia (1999) Afghanistan (2001) Iraq (2003) Libya (2011)   Georgia (2008) AB × DC × WOO + RS × DC × (WOO + FS) → choice of conflict

Solution consistency Solution coverage

1.00 1.00

Notes: AB = anomalous beliefs; DC = domestic crisis; RS = regime stability; WOO = window of opportunity; FS = foreign support.

The second and third pathways, being more similar to each other, indicate that stable regimes experiencing a domestic crisis will choose conflict either when they have a window of opportunity or foreign support. The second pathway is a unique case of Moldova since it had an opportunity to face off against the Russian 14th Army during Russia’s internal turmoil. Major powers do not commonly have such a situation, indicated by the low coverage. The third pathway covers Republika Srpska (1995), Serbia (1999), Iraq (2003) and Georgia (2008). In terms of the remaining expectations, the foreign support prediction has also been met, thus confirming that it is an influential condition. However, it only becomes a sufficient pathway when occurring together with a stable regime and a domestic crisis; it is an INUS condition, meaning that it is a necessary part of only one pathway. Regime stability

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prediction also seems to be an INUS condition, that is, creating sufficiency when occurring together with the domestic crisis and either a window of opportunity or foreign support. The window of opportunity prediction is also confirmed, but just like with foreign support, it is a condition that occurs along with regime stability and a domestic crisis. They also appear to be INUS conditions. With the exception of Panama (1989), all of the minor powers covered by this solution were already involved in another armed conflict. This means that, for the minor power, the choice of war against a major power had to take into account consequences on the already established domestic front as well. Facing a loss of territory (in most cases), leaders in these cases might have felt trapped. Accepting ultimatums from major powers could have meant losing on the domestic front. Yet even under such circumstances, stable regimes did not accept direct hostilities unless they believed they could win at least politically, either through foreign support or a window of opportunity. According to the results, only regimes with anomalous beliefs tend to overlook the importance of foreign support and window of opportunity. This shows how the various conditions occur together (in conjunction) and create a situation where a domestic crisis has a different effect depending on if it occurs with a stable regime, or with anomalous beliefs. Stable regimes seem to be much more aware of the international situation and their viable options. The different effect of anomalous beliefs perhaps indicates regimes’ inability to comprehend or harness international opportunities. Overall, these combinations raise questions regarding the independent role of any single condition as being deterministic for a minor power to choose conflict.

Minor powers’ choice of acquiescence Although the primary purpose of this study has been to understand conditions that contribute to the choice of conflict, for comparative reasons it would be insightful to see how these same conditions fare for the choice of non-conflict. As mentioned earlier, in set theory, the relations are asymmetric, and therefore it is not simply the case that choice of non-conflict is an inverse formula of the choice of conflict. A special analysis of its own is usually required. The analysis of necessary conditions for a minor power’s choice of non-conflict found that no condition comes close to be a necessary condition (consistency of 0.9 or greater). This means that cases sharing a given condition do not strongly agree in displaying the outcome in question, as Table 3.6 shows (Ragin, 2006: 292). Although the absence of domestic crisis and presence of regime stability seem to come somewhat

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Table 3.6: Consistency and coverage scores of presence and absence of all five conditions pertaining to the negated outcome (non-conflict) Analysis of necessary conditions Outcome variable: non-conflict (acquiescence) Conditions tested Consistency Coverage (presence of) foreign support 0.55 0.60 (absence of) foreign support 0.45 0.50 (presence of) window of opportunity 0.36 0.80 (absence of) window of opportunity 0.64 0.47 (presence of) domestic crisis 0.18 0.18 (absence of) domestic crisis 0.82 1.00 (presence of) regime stability 0.82 0.60 (absence of) regime stability 0.18 0.40 (presence of) anomalous beliefs 0.18 0.25 (absence of) anomalous beliefs 0.81 0.75

close to being necessary conditions, this result shows that maintenance of non-conflict encapsulates a greater diversity of conditions, of which key conditions were sometimes overlooked by the literature on asymmetric conflict. Analysing the sufficient conditions for non-conflict outcome also presents three pathways: absence of anomalous beliefs combined with regime stability and absence of domestic crisis; absence of regime stability combined with a window of opportunity and absence of foreign support; and regime stability combined with absence of domestic crisis, absence of a window of opportunity and absence of foreign support (see Table 3.7).11 These various pathways that lead to the choice of non-conflict are somewhat more complex than pathways that lead to the choice of conflict. The reason is that the second pathway makes no theoretical sense. That is, the presence of a window of opportunity should not play a role for a government to assess whether it wants to acquiesce. It makes no logical sense, however, only because such a condition becomes important in a conflict, not in acquiescence, highlighting QCA’s assumption of asymmetry, namely, that explanation of the occurrence of an outcome does not help us much explaining its non-occurrence (Schneider and Wagemann, 2012: 81). The first and third pathways present a more logical and inverse relationship related to the outcome of the choice of war. Namely, a stable regime that faces no domestic crisis, has no window of opportunity and no foreign support is likely to choose peace. A stable regime that has no anomalous beliefs and no domestic crisis is also likely to choose peace. As such, regime stability together with the absence of a

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Table 3.7: Intermediate solution for a choice of non-conflict Solution pathways

ab × RS × dc Dispute over Taiwan (N02) Spratly Islands I (N06)

Cases covered by pathways

Solution formula Solution consistency Solution coverage

RS × dc × woo × fs Georgian Civil War Syrian border (N01) fortification (N03) Russia and CIS Spratly Islands II in Afghanistan (N04) (N07) Operation Uphold Democracy (N05) rs × WOO × fs

Chinese intrusions into Bhutan (N10) Russo–Norwegian territorial dispute (N11) Russo–Latvian border dispute (N08) Russo–Estonian border   dispute (N09) ab × RS × dc + rs × WOO × fs + RS × dc × woo × fs → not choosing conflict 1.00 1.00

domestic crisis is a reasonably strong configuration influencing a minor power to choose to avoid conflict.

Discussion The results help us understand competing claims regarding the importance and the role of conditions that influence whether a minor power chooses to engage in conflict with a major power or not. Minor powers do not always make choices that some scholars believe to be optimal, for instance, to internalise the norms and rules of the institutional order in order to constrain powerful states, or to ally with a dominant power to shield themselves from its capabilities or to seek to influence its policies (Ikenberry et al, 2009: 18–21). The fact that a pattern of conditions can exist that is so closely related to asymmetric conflict suggests that there is a need to further unravel the sources of minor powers’ decisions. Notably, the application of QCA leads us to find that the domestic crisis is the condition that must be present when a minor power chooses to engage in a conflict facing a major power. It is the only necessary condition for such a decision to occur. This finding is in line with several theories, including desperation (Kang, 1995), diversionary (DeRouen, 2000) and prospect theory (Park, 2004; Berejikian, 2016). Although there

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are variations among these theories as to how a domestic crisis affects the leadership, they all point out that given a lack of options in a desperate situation, a minor power will choose war. What we see is also a peculiar but important role of regime stability. It is a condition that is present in pathways both for the choice of conflict and acquiescence. Thus, it is an important variable for both outcomes. However, lack of regime stability does not seem to play any role in a minor power’s choice of war. It is somewhat counterintuitive that regimes lacking stability are not under any pathway going to choose war. In fact, it is stable regimes that choose war when facing a domestic crisis and either a window of opportunity and foreign support. Scholars such as Paul (1994: 33) would find this result rather surprising, since he argued that insecure and militaristic regimes are keener to wage war. Yet Paul is not wrong either, given the importance of regime stability for the choice of peace as well. Others, such as Fravel (2008) and Berejikian (2016), would find it logical that lack of security incentivises one to compromise. Such an interesting outcome only shows the importance of conjunctural causation, whereby regime stability can have a different effect, depending on other conditions it is combined with. The window of opportunity and foreign support seem to be mutually interchangeable conditions, which is logical, given that they both give some advantage to a minor power. This may explain why certain scholars are sceptical regarding the necessity of foreign support (Fischerkeller, 1998; Cherkasova, 2010). Foreign support only matters when there is a domestic crisis and it is replaceable by another condition: opportunity. Opportunistic behaviour confirms that offensive realists are sometimes right; that is, war may be chosen when other conditions match the opportunity. Yet neither foreign support nor opportunity seems to play an important role when a regime has anomalous beliefs. In such cases, a minor power is keener to choose war, confirming Fischerkeller’s statement that, ‘we need cases where power-determinist theories do not apply’ (1998: 10). That is, minor powers will sometimes choose war due to beliefs that can shape sensitivity to war, violence, sacrifice, glory and legitimacy. Having anomalous beliefs, a minor power is more likely to misperceive or misunderstand the situation it faces. Even if a minor power has a good strategic calculation, its anomalous beliefs may mean that its regime is stuck in ‘groupthink’, has very few friends abroad, and very little diplomatic influence, seeing war as the only choice to affect international players. Contradictory results of previous studies ought to now seem more congruent. Previous studies on asymmetric conflict tended to restrict themselves to very few theoretical frameworks that rarely captured

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the essential assumptions of QCA. Many scholars, such as Cherkasova (2010: 5), raised scepticism regarding studies that rely on a single, or two, variables. Grasping complexity has helped us answer the question, ‘did we miss something important?’ (Polsky and Sommer, 2013). Part of that omission in past studies were the very different causal assumptions that QCA relies on, as discussed earlier. While employing a methodology of crisp-set QCA that carries a specific understanding of causation to this research topic has proved to be fruitful due to the insight into the specific combination of conditions and a minor power’s choice of conflict, there are limits to the usefulness of QCA as a methodology. First, the number of conditions that can be included in an analysis is limited from four to seven for an intermediate-N, due to the fact that the number of possible combination of conditions increases exponentially with each new condition (Berg-Schlosser and De Meur, 2008: 28; Bretthauer, 2014a: 18). As a result, a risk exists of overlooking or not being able to include relevant conditions. In such a case, there could be other conditions that can yield interesting insights, for example, the role of particular weapons or how these conditions fare in a bipolar system of the Cold War are interesting aspects that can be included in future research. In contrast to regression analysis, QCA does not yield any results to the importance or size of the impact of certain conditions (Bretthauer, 2014a: 18). Thus, while the domestic crisis stands out from other conditions in the analysis as it is a necessary condition as well as part of a sufficient term, it is impossible to estimate its impact vis-à-vis other conditions. In sum, capturing the complexity of social reality has only made a few inroads into IR. Using configurational comparative methods such as crispset QCA allows researchers to ask and answer more challenging questions, mainly where theoretical arguments employ a logic of causal complexity. One such topic is that of minor powers in asymmetric conflict, where past empirical studies find many points of disagreement. This study took theoretically relevant conditions into account to overcome previous contradictions by employing a crisp-set QCA, whose methodological basis allows for a combination of theoretical contributions and thus provides a more holistic answer. After identifying 20 cases of asymmetric conflict (nine of which experienced conflict between 1989 and 2014), this chapter assessed the role of five conditions: foreign support, window of opportunity, domestic crisis, regime stability and anomalous beliefs. It found most support for the expectations indicating a necessary role of domestic crisis. While this is somewhat intuitive, more surprising results indicate that domestic crisis is only sufficient when occurring together with a stable regime and either foreign support or window of opportunity.

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Likewise, regimes with anomalous beliefs tend to ignore the importance of conditions such as foreign support or window of opportunity. By separately analysing the presence and absence of a decision for conflict, and allowing for different pathways to the same outcome, QCA presents a slightly different focus, complementing theories and other methodological approaches.

Causality and case study approach Specific understanding of the causation of QCA can be intellectually rewarding, but also limiting for both small-N and large-N scholars. Namely, one might argue that conditions studied here, and the outcome of a conflict, happened by coincidence. Some scholars would refer to this as a ‘false positive’ or a ‘type I error’ (Braumoeller, 2015). That is, one could argue that there is a correlational relationship. Large-N scholars would find the number of cases in QCA problematic, and they would want to know the statistical significance of the hypothesised relationships. Small-N scholars, on the other hand, would be unsatisfied due to a lack of provision of actual mechanisms at work. For them, QCA simply presents simultaneous occurrences, and just like large-N studies, it leaves out the narratives behind the formula. Understanding the narrative does matter. Ragin argues that a successful study based on QCA depends in part on the ability of the researcher to reason convincingly, so as to persuasively link theory to empirics (as cited in Scholvin, 2016: 58). While this chapter has established a potential link between five theoretically based conditions and a political outcome (conflict), further assessment necessitates the constitution of a stronger causal relationship. After all, Braumoeller’s (2015) Null Hypothesis Permutation Test does indicate that all three pathways might have happened by coincidence, especially the second pathway. To closely examine the hypothesised role of causal mechanisms in the context, and a capacity to address causal complexity, case studies are particularly suitable, process tracing especially. ‘Within a single case, we can look at a large number of intervening variables and inductively observe any unexpected aspects of the operation of a particular causal mechanism or help identify what conditions present in a case activate the causal mechanism’ (George and Bennett, 2005: 21). After all, a rigorous combination of QCA and post-QCA case studies yields added inferential value compared to the application of one of the methods alone (Schneider and Rohlfing, 2013: 588). While QCA regulates any analysis of set-relational possibilities that are beyond the abilities of small-N research to determine, it established a

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strong background that justifies the use of case studies as a constructive addition to QCA. Case studies are conducive to the determination of causal mechanisms underlying a set-relational grouping, thereby further improving the QCA model and the theory. The main purpose of the following chapters is to reveal these causal mechanisms. That is, to answer the question, ‘how did the background conditions affect the decision-making of minor powers’? To answer that, a case selection is required. Case selection may be based on the necessary condition. This chapter has shown that the presence of domestic crisis is a necessary condition since it was present in all three pathways for a minor power to choose war against a major power (consistency of 1.0). However, the necessary condition domestic crisis only occurs in combination with four other conditions, which means that only a certain causal chain involving a necessary condition can produce the stated outcome. Focusing on sufficient conditions, as an alternative to necessary conditions, can also help to identify the causal chain. However, one has to select different criteria for the method. The procedure is by no means simple as there are several choices, guided by principles of case selection. First, it is worth mentioning that although one could conduct a single case study, I chose to conduct a comparative case study (comparative in the sense that all of them have the same necessary condition). The latter is preferable for two reasons. First, insights gathered in one typical case, one that confirms the relationship between conditions and an outcome, can be strengthened by selecting another typical case or by comparing a typical case with an individually irrelevant case (IIR), one that does not belong to any pathway or the solution. Second, without knowledge of the causal processes operative in a typical case, one can hardly discern the reasons(s) for the deviance of a case (Schneider and Rohlfing, 2013: 569). Second, despite the mention of an IIR, this book only focuses on the comparison of several typical cases, the reasons for which will soon be clear. The book also attempts to focus on both necessary and sufficient conditions and pathways, that is, on the QCA of necessity and the QCA of sufficiency, by following the latter’s procedural process. Again, the reasons for this selection will become clearer below. For now, it is worth mentioning that the process requires one typical case per each sufficient term (pathway). Therefore, one case is chosen from each pathway, although one of the pathways contains only one case (Moldova). Given no presence of deviant cases in this data, only typical and IIR cases are of interest. It is worth keeping in mind that classification as ‘typical’ should not confuse the reader to imply causal homogeneity, but rather the contrary. Causal heterogeneity denotes the fact that social phenomena usually

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come about in various and mutually non-exclusive ways (Schneider and Rohlfing, 2013: 566). This is why there are three pathways. The concept of diversity is similar, meaning that different conditions can serve as substitutable indicators of the same concept. From the solution formula, we can observe that ‘window of opportunity’ and ‘foreign support’ might be substitutable indicators. The implication behind this is that there are three important ramifications for the QCA-based case selection. First, one should select at least one case for each term (pathway) contained in the solution. This is the principle of diverse case selection (Schneider and Rohlfing, 2013: 566). It mandates us to choose three cases (although two would come from interchangeable conditions). Based on the ease of access to data, I selected the case of Iraq (1990), Moldova (1992) and Serbia (1999). Second, since the necessary condition is present in all three pathways, necessity can be analysed alongside sufficiency. Third, the concept of contingent generalisation (George and Bennett, 2005: 111–13) does not allow for the generalisation of process tracing to be applied to cases that are not members of the same term. That is, there are qualitatively different ways in which a condition is tied to the outcome. This reinforces the need to look at all three pathways. Fourth, causal heterogeneity also indicates that a typical case may be a member of more than one term, called a joint member. In contrast, there are unique members, cases that are a member of only one term of the solution. Unique members are superior choices for case analysis compared to cases with joint membership (Schneider and Rohlfing, 2013: 566). This is also called the principle of unique membership. Such concern pertains more to the analysis of multiple necessary terms. In the following analysis, given the focus on sufficient conditions (and one necessary condition), there is no such concern. The benefit of the comparison of multiple typical cases is that it bolsters the confidence that the necessary condition is indeed tied to the outcome. Essentially, it is only the role of the necessary condition that is truly comparable, given that other conditions play slightly different roles. Simultaneously I engaged in a counterfactual study to see whether a minor power would not have engaged in a war if it were not characterised by the domestic crisis (see Goertz and Levy, 2007). In a way, this serves as the functional equivalent of changing the ‘independent variable’ in an experiment, although in case studies controls are impossible to enforce, making counterfactuals the second-best option. Addressing both necessity and sufficiency also helps us observe whether the causal mechanism is operative in different cases (Goertz, 2008). Since no conditions are perfectly alike, qualitatively and quantitatively, showing that some common mechanism, usually a necessary condition, is at play

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in different typical cases increases our confidence that the mechanism has been correctly identified. A possible critique is that a viable dissimilar-outcome comparison could offer an even better comparative case study. The reason is that in comparing a typical and IIR case, one replaces a counterfactual analysis of typical cases with an IIR case. The IIR case is characterised by the same configuration as a ‘counterfactual’, that is, it has the same configuration as a typical case except for the absence of a necessary/sufficient condition. Process tracing would help in finding out why a condition is necessary/ sufficient. It would allow an investigation into explaining how the absence of a condition/solution is connected to the absence of the outcome in a case that is otherwise similar to the case for which we observe the outcome (Schneider and Rohlfing, 2013: 571). However, even though there are qualities of taking that approach, comparison of typical cases in the analysis of sufficiency offers slightly better advantages. Namely, with one necessary condition, comparison of typical cases simultaneously unravels the causal mechanism of the necessary term, and also the causal mechanisms of each sufficient term. This approach loses out on a real case that can replace counterfactual analysis, but if that path had been followed, it would have lost insight into the causal mechanisms of each sufficient term, of which there are three. Likewise, one might be sceptical that there is no mention of deviant cases, which are not present in the solution. When there are deviant cases, process tracing should also be applied to the analysis of deviant cases, which are those that ‘display the outcome in the absence of the purported necessary conditions’ (Schneider and Rohlfing, 2013: 567). However, deviance is usually handled before the final analysis of the results. For instance, deviance can be a result of poor calibration of conditions or misspecification of the population of cases (Mahoney and Goertz, 2004). Therefore, deviant cases were already dealt with before data were processed through the QCA analysis. It follows, then, that the goal here is to explain how each necessary and sufficient term is related to the phenomenon of interest (George and Bennett, 2005). Following the positive outcome principle, I focus on cases that are members of the outcome, rather than following a dissimilar outcome comparison. The following cases are utilised to explain the chain of reasoning on how the conditions affected the policy choices of minor powers.

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4

Iraq: Military Confrontation with the United States and its Thirty-Three Allies The case of Iraq represents a typical case from the first pathway identified in Chapter 3, and shares similar conditions with Panama (1989), Afghanistan (2001) and Libya (2011). It covers the military confrontation between Iraq under Saddam Hussein and the USA (backed by the international community). The conflict is usually referred to as the Gulf War, or the First Gulf War. While this conflict has already been extensively covered by social scientists, and there are, perhaps, no major discoveries left, what is known needs to be analysed through the framework of conditions presented earlier in this book, namely, the domestic crisis, a necessary condition, and a condition that comprises sufficiency, anomalous beliefs. Conditions that are a necessary part of only one explanation among others are referred to as INUS conditions. As will be seen, these conditions made a strong impact on Saddam’s decision to go to war. Their value lies in their combinatorial effect rather than their individual role. This chapter uses process tracing to assess how these conditions combined influenced Saddam’s decisions and beliefs when facing an ultimatum from the USA and the international community. Following analysis of these conditions, this chapter presents a counter-factual discussion, assessing whether Saddam’s decisions would have been different under altered conditions. The conclusion to the chapter highlights that to understand Saddam’s choice, one must go back to his rise to power, his beliefs, and the consequences of the Iraq–Iran War, as well as the invasion of Kuwait. Much of that choice is based on prospect theory, but important premises from other theories supplement the analysis, in particular, constructivist insights on beliefs and the window of opportunity theory. It is also worth stating that the purpose here is not to understand the rationale and strategy

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of the USA, although a brief discussion of the conventional understanding of the events leading up to the conflict is required to better grasp the subsequent discussion.

Conventional interpretation of the crisis Conventional interpretations rarely capture a minor power’s dilemma. What is generally known is that the lead-up to the Gulf War started in the 1980s when Saddam Hussein, President of Iraq at the time, ruling via militarised single-party dictatorship, fought a brutal war against Iran, both due to a desire to emerge as leader of the Arab world and due to tacit US support. When he lost the war, Saddam felt humiliated. Whatever support the US government was giving Saddam, the relationship nearly collapsed when, on 2 April 1990, the National Day of Iraq, Saddam announced to the world that Iraqi scientists had developed advanced chemical weapons, threatening to destroy Israel with them. The US State Department called the announcement inflammatory, outrageous and irresponsible. Five US senators then travelled to Mosul in northern Iraq to get assurances from Saddam that he would not attack Israel. Moreover, Saddam criticised the Arab states, especially Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), of violating OPEC (Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries) agreements to their advantage by keeping oil prices low and thus Iraq poor (Donaldson, 1996: 148; Regan, 1996: 172). As such, Iraq was already under strained political relations. Saddam’s accusations against Kuwait were particularly crucial in shaping the process towards war. In June, Saddam demanded US$10 billion worth of aid from Kuwait to make up for all the ‘wrongdoing’ over the oil prices. On Revolution Day, 17 July 1990, Saddam again accused Kuwait and the UAE of overproducing and driving oil prices down. Saddam called it ‘an imperialist-Zionist plot against the Arab nation’ (Donaldson, 1996: 148). Both countries, in response, remained unmoved and dismissed the Iraqi leader’s behaviour as mere grandstanding. While Kuwait and the UAE did agree to decrease their production, it was far from Saddam’s hoped-for US$25 per barrel. Following this, Saddam threatened military intervention against Kuwait and the UAE if they refused to cut production according to his request (Allison, 2012: 40). In addition, he also accused Kuwait of secretly placing military posts on Iraqi territory and stealing oil from the jointly operated Rumaila oil field. If it sounded like a pretext for invasion, it was. Kuwaiti ministers were expecting an attack, while most of the world’s leaders did not anticipate an invasion. They believed that Saddam was simply bargaining.

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Saddam moved quickly, stationing an additional 30,000 soldiers along the border with Kuwait, totalling 100,000 infantries and 300 tanks. Once his troops were ready, during talks in Saudi Arabia, Saddam openly talked about a war against Kuwait given Kuwait’s role in keeping oil prices down. To Saddam, overproduction by Kuwait and the UAE was an act of war. He said that Iraq could not take any more pressure. However, Allison’s recollection of events leading up to the invasion of Kuwait indicates that on 31 July Kuwaiti Crown Prince Sa’d Abdallah al-Sabah did offer to pay Iraq US$9 billion, US$1 billion less than what Iraq had demanded. The Iraqi delegation seemingly found this insulting and walked out. During the early hours of the next day, Iraqi T-72 tanks blitzed into Kuwait and seized the nation in less than six hours, against little resistance (Donaldson, 1996: 151; Allison, 2012: 40–6). A few days after the invasion, Iraq annexed Kuwait, eventually turning it into Iraq’s 19th province. Up to this point, Saddam’s calculations seemed to give Iraq an advantage, that is, the asymmetry favoured Iraq. The annexation, however, was a trigger for asymmetric relations to develop against Saddam’s regime. At first, the move by Iraq initially provoked little attention apart from condemnation by the UN. On 2 August 1990, the UN passed Resolution 660 that condemned Iraq’s actions and called for a ceasefire and troop withdrawal. There was little response from Saddam’s regime, so Resolution 661 was passed a few days later, imposing economic sanctions, and covering all materials except medical supplies and foodstuffs. The UN asked that no state recognise any Kuwaiti regime established by Iraq. Further UN resolutions were passed targeting Iraq. In response, Saddam incarcerated the citizens of countries participating in the embargo. These same foreigners were used as human shields and as propaganda tools in Saddam’s televised messages to the West. Attempts to engage Saddam diplomatically included other proposals. For example, King Hussein of Jordan announced plans for Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait and for the USA to withdraw from Saudi Arabia. Iraq allegedly accepted, but neither Saudi Arabia nor Kuwait did. Libya also attempted to find a solution by drafting a seven-point peace initiative, only to be again rejected by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait (Willcox, 2005: 55). While attempts to reach a peaceful settlement were proving futile, including UN demands for its solutions to be fully implemented, the rhetorical conflict between Iraq and its opponents magnified. At the same time, the USA, which had had an ambivalent approach toward Iraq up to this point, began to follow the lines of UN actions. At first, President George W. Bush put pressure on the UN Security Council and the Arab League to deal with the crisis. This resulted in the aforementioned Resolution 660, as well as Resolution 661, condemning

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the crisis, calling for Iraq to immediately and unconditionally withdraw from Kuwait, and placing an embargo on Iraq. Such collective measures were preferable to the USA acting alone. In fact, the Bush administration actively worked on the UN to authorise the Coalition to use force if Saddam ignored the ultimatum. Bush also signed executive orders to freeze all Iraqi and Kuwaiti assets, although still believing that the situation did not require the use of force. That very same day, however, Margaret Thatcher convinced Bush that Saddam had to be stopped; otherwise he would be encouraged to attack other states in the region. Soon after, Bush became committed to the war, calling the Iraqi invasion an ‘outrageous and brutal act of aggression’ and that the USA would ‘review all options in response’ (Donaldson, 1996: 160; Stoessinger, 2011: 305; Allison, 2012: 48). The ultimatum to Saddam was clear both from the UN and the USA – immediate withdrawal of Iraqi troops from Kuwait and restoration of the legitimate government (Regan, 1996: 173). Allison (2012: 48) recalls that on 5 August Bush had already replied to a question on how he would prevent Saddam from installing a puppet government in Kuwait with, ‘Just wait. Watch and learn’. A day later, a US delegation in Saudi Arabia met with King Fahd and obtained his permission to send as many as 200,000 US troops there. In early October Bush made the final decision to invade Iraq, but it took the USA until January to have an offensive force in place, given that it had no sizable forward-deployed forces in the region. Moving everything, including supplies, and obtaining permissions from neighbouring countries took months. Meanwhile, sanctions were taking their toll on Iraq. The US objective was to remove Saddam from Kuwait and destroy his war-making powers (Donaldson, 1996: 162). The UN passed Resolution 678 on 29 November giving Bush full support. The Security Council gave Saddam until 15 January for Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait. An attempt was made by Washington to settle the dispute at the end of November, but it failed as soon as the two sides began to quarrel over the date for the meeting. On 9 January, James Baker, US Secretary of State, and Tariq Aziz, Iraq’s Foreign Minister, met in Geneva, but neither had enough power to settle the issue, and nor were they willing to compromise. Baker told Aziz that he had not come to negotiate, but only to communicate, which also referred to a letter Bush had written to Saddam. He also stated that this was the last chance for peace. Aziz, in retaliation, accused Bush of writing a letter to Saddam with ‘threatening’ and ‘impolite’ language. He also stated that if the Allies attacked Iraq, then Israel would be attacked as well, due to alleged US and Israeli designs to control the entire Middle East. This was an Iraqi attempt to gain leverage by drawing Israel into the war, thereby undercutting Arab participation

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(Donaldson, 1996: 163; Regan, 1996: 173; Allison, 2012: 69). Despite Aziz’s invitation to resume talks in Baghdad, Bush called it off because it was too late for further negotiations. While Iraq did not comply with the UN resolutions, there were indications that all the negotiations before the Allied intervention might have been a ‘bluff’. Bush seemed intent on going forward with his war plans, even though he stated that the choice of peace or war was really Saddam’s to make (Donaldson, 1996: 164). Symbolically, Bush did this by giving an olive branch to the Iraqis, stating that they should go the extra mile for peace if that peace included the removal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait, restoration of the Kuwaiti government and the freeing of all hostages held by Iraq. The ball was firmly put in Saddam’s court, and arguably this was a way out for Saddam that would guarantee his survival, at least in the short term (Allison, 2012: 84). Facing a choice to acquiesce or fight, Saddam did not take the opportunity to end the crisis. Rather, he chose to retaliate by twisting Bush’s words to make Bush seem weak and uncertain. He also played on US public opinion, as well as European initiatives, as attempts to divide the Coalition. Thus, instead of acquiescence toward a peaceful outcome, Saddam stated that the only chance for peace was if Bush offered a ‘real dialogue’. According to Schmid (2006: 8), from the beginning, there was no realistic chance of bringing peace since both sides were insisting on their own interpretation of events. Allied forces commenced offensive operations on 16  January, code-named ‘Operation Desert Shield’, ‘Operation Desert Storm’ and finally, ‘Operation Desert Sabre’. The latter two were combat phases that began on 17 January 1991, with around 680,000 allied troops against a reported 545,000 Iraqi troops in Kuwait. The whole campaign was a swift success because by 27 February, Iraq announced the withdrawal of all its troops from Kuwait (Willcox, 2005: 55). The conflict was definitely asymmetric. Even if the overall power of the USA was 11  times that of Iraq, as indicated earlier in this book, the USA was supported by 33 other countries, including France, the UK, Egypt, Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia and even Syria and Jordan, while none of the neighbouring states would come to Saddam’s aid (Allison, 2012: 67). Even Egypt, a former leader of the Arab world and a country with one of the largest military forces, opposed Saddam’s move and contributed 5,000 troops to the Coalition (Donaldson, 1996: 152; Regan, 1996: 173). Iraq had a 100,000-man army1 (Chambers II, 1999: 544), allegedly the fourth largest in the world and one of the best-equipped and most experienced, but Allison refers to this description as simply existing only ‘on paper’ (Allison, 2012: 78; Rovner, 2012: 491). More

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precisely, Allison describes that the Iraqi army had conscript-driven infantry divisions equipped with often-dilapidated equipment and led by second-rate officers. A more challenging foe was the Republican Guard, which consisted of 28 combat divisions. In terms of armoured divisions, Iraq had around 700 tanks2 (Chambers II, 1999: 544), with only a few T-72M1 top-of-the-line Soviet tanks. The Iraqi Air Force had over 750 aircraft, but many lacked spare parts, and pilots were poorly trained. To avoid annihilation by Coalition forces, as many as 130 Iraqi pilots flew to Iran to escape the onslaught. Finally, Iraq had around 87 naval vessels. For the allies, tens of billions of dollars were donated to help pay for the deployment of Coalition forces and the war. Not surprisingly, the Iraqi army was pulverised in the early bombing campaign, including the destruction of 35 Iraqi aircraft, without a single loss in the Coalition. Allied forces had more than 700,000 troops, with 540,000 US soldiers. There were also 2,000 tanks, supported by 1,800 fixed-wing aircraft (plus 1,700 helicopters) and 108 warships, not to mention 90,000 Saudis with 550 tanks, and again, 40,000 Egyptians with 400 tanks, 35,000 soldiers from the UK with 292 tanks, including the 7th Armoured Brigade (the famous ‘Desert Rats’), a mechanised infantry battalion, and air and missile defence assets (Allison, 2012, p. 64); 444 additional combat aircraft, as well as warships, were also available3 (Tucker, 2010: 1487). Including the potential of the states in coalition to further build up military assets, Iraq faced no chance of any meaningful victory. Indeed, in retrospect, apart from a few Republican Guard units, most of the Iraqi military put up little resistance (Chambers II, 1999: 545). Saddam was correct that he had been irredeemably targeted, according to Metzler (2010: 198). So the question of why Saddam rejected ultimatums is a true puzzle. Iraq was all alone. Even the Soviet Union supported the US war against Saddam (Cohen, 2009: 114). Allison refers to the war as Saddam’s grave strategic miscalculation (2012: viii). Yet this war, just like others presented in this book, did not occur in a vacuum, but under a convergence of ‘unique circumstances’ (Allison, 2012: vii). The next section assesses the first circumstance, or a condition: domestic crisis.

Economic crisis: the necessary condition As mentioned earlier in the book, in the theoretical discussion, domestic problems that are spiralling out of control may induce a state to take great risks, hoping to reverse the trend. The domestic crisis underlying Saddam’s decision to fight was primarily economic. The historical evidence overwhelmingly indicates this. Thus, it is worth explaining how

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Saddam’s political moves between 1980 and 1990 were directly linked to the economic crisis facing his regime, beginning with the Iran–Iraq War. There is no doubt that Saddam was the sole authority behind Iraq’s many decisions. For example, Aziz allegedly admitted that Saddam had acted to invade Kuwait despite most members of the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) opposing it (Aburish, 2012: 438).

Iraq’s unanticipated loss against Iran Losing a war and being unable to recover is costly, a sure sign of deterioration that can be interpreted as a domestic crisis. Iraq’s problems began with a war in the 1980s when Saddam was able to position himself as leader of the Arab world by suppressing the radical Shiites who had come to power in Iran. For this, he received tacit support from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait – both verbal and financial (loans). However, it was also an opportunity for Saddam to court US support and to emerge as the saviour of Arab nationalism, especially since the Soviets had mixed feelings about Iraq’s actions. There were other reasons as well – the opportunity to extend Iraqi territory at the expense of Iran, and thus gain access to the Persian Gulf, not to mention greater oil reserves that would be gained. Finally, Saddam wanted to prevent Shia uprisings in Iraq (Allison, 2012: 33). Indeed, the USA saw an opportunity to suppress the Shiites by ‘tilting’ toward Iraq, seeing it as the lesser of two evils at the time of the Iranian hostage crisis. It was already the case with the Carter Doctrine that support of Iraq against Iran was legitimised. Later, Ronald Reagan would enhance US support. For example, in 1983 Reagan sent Donald Rumsfeld, former President Gerald Ford’s White House Chief of Staff, as a special envoy to Iraq to open discussions on how the USA could be of help to Saddam. The result was help through satellite imagery, arms and money to buy US grain to feed Saddam’s army, and possibly chemical and biological warfare agents (Allison, 2012: 36). Perhaps this is what Donaldson (1996: 146) deems as the sharing of sensitive intelligence information with Saddam. Either way, encouraged by the tacit US support (‘tilting’), Saddam launched a war against Iran, believing that the Tehran government would quickly collapse. Proponents of offensive realism would likely use this case to demonstrate the theory’s applicability. However, the failure to maximise one’s power is humiliating. Thus, more serious problems started when the war did not go as anticipated. In particular, the Iranians put up strong resistance and went into the offensive, forcing the Iraqi army into defence most of the time. The situation began to seriously cripple Iraq so that Saddam

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even asked Israel for assistance against Iran. It was later found that the Reagan administration was secretly selling arms to Iran during the Iran– Iraq War. On discovering this, Saddam was infuriated and US–Iraqi relations deteriorated (Brands, 2011a: 110–14). This revelation marked a decisive downturn in Saddam’s relationship with the USA, whereby Saddam entrenched his views that the USA could not be trusted, and that they would continue to undermine his regime. In a way, this reflects commitment problems raised by Powell (2006), as Saddam might never have trusted that the USA would honour an agreement. Only when the war ended in the summer of 1988 was its damage obvious. Iran seemed to be in the worse shape (Karsh and Rautsi, 1991: 19; Allison, 2012: 37). The war ended up being very costly for Iraq as well, losing 200,000 soldiers and having taken on stiff debt repayments – owed to many of its Arab neighbours, Kuwait included. This was all happening while OPEC deflated oil prices. Indeed, Saddam blamed the oversupply of oil by OPEC to have caused prices to drop. Indirectly, he also blamed the USA of secretly helping to undermine Iraq. The actions of OPEC, and Kuwait in particular, were interpreted as a form of war against Iraq. On 15 July 1990, Aziz protested to the Arab League that the oversupply of oil had cost the Iraqi economy around US$1 billion annually in lost oil revenue (Willcox, 2005: 54). Now he expected the oil-rich Arab states to pay the cost of the war, a debt he believed was owed to the Iraqi people and to himself. When this did not materialise, a great deal of hostility emerged between Iraq and the other Arab states, Kuwait in particular, which insisted that Iraq repay the credits. A believer in the conspiracy, Saddam and his close associates saw that growing problems with OPEC were part of a deliberate US-led effort to undermine Iraq (Brands, 2011a: 114).

Economic problems The loss in a war, albeit humiliating, does not constitute an immediate domestic crisis. A more important dimension is economic – the repayment owed by Saddam. To fund the war against Iran Saddam had got himself into as much as US$110 billion in debt without being able to get loans from most foreign sources (governments and firms), possibly due to his track record of not paying back the loans. Iraq’s currency was weak, its foreign exchange reserve was at US$35 billion in 1980, and at the end of the war, its foreign debt was over US$80 billion, twice Iraq’s gross national product (GNP). This ratio of debt as a percentage of GNP/GDP (gross domestic product) was far worse than what some of the biggest developing

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countries at the time had, such as China, Brazil, India, Mexico, Turkey and Thailand (Karsh, 1996: 305). Yet Saddam had to deliver to Iraqi people ‘the promised fruits of the “historic victory”’ (Karsh and Rautsi, 1991: 20). In addition to foreign debt, Iraq also needed US$230 billion to repair its damaged infrastructure and to rebuild its exhausted armed forces. Notably, Iraq had a large public sector, as well as a high defence expenditure. For example, the percentage of GDP/GNP going to the defence sector was 21.1 per cent. This can be compared to other regional states often embroiled in war, Iran with 5.3 per cent, and Israel with 12 per cent. When considering other developing country debtors, the figure is even more astonishing: Brazil with 0.9 per cent, China 3.1 and India 3.2. Oil revenues were far too low for Iraq to keep its economy afloat, let alone to begin reconstruction – without considering the revenue needed for reconstruction, US$13 billion in addition to available oil revenues was needed immediately to cover civilian imports (US$12 billion), military imports (US$5  billion), debt repayments (US$5  billion) and transfers by foreign workers (US$1  billion). These figures do not even take into account the economic patronage system that ensured networks of complicity and dependence on the regime. According to Allison, ‘Saddam faced a daunting, if not impossible, post-war calamity, one of his own making’ (2012: 38). Was there no way out of this crisis? Surely Saddam could have borrowed more money on prohibitive terms, or he could have privatised his oil industry. He could also have implemented an austerity programme, although this would have undone everything that he had achieved so far, possibly turning into political suicide, at least according to Saddam’s beliefs (Aburish, 2012: 375). While such beliefs may appear to be irrational, rationality itself is bounded by beliefs, assumptions and values of decisionmakers and whole societies (Schonberg, 2009: 6). In a way, to understand Saddam’s idea of a crisis, we need to employ a constructivist premise that actors make decisions based on how they view and make sense of the world around them. Later in this chapter, and in the concluding chapter, Chapter 7, this will be further elaborated, but for now, it is worth emphasising that although Saddam had several options to deal with the crisis, his beliefs naturally limited his options. In particular, Saddam saw two policy options as a potential exit out of the crisis. First, he could have continued his non-conventional weapons programme, eventually strengthening Iraq’s image to the point of assuming a position of leadership among the Arab countries. This ‘menacing’ image of Iraq would force the Gulf States to finance Iraq for the latter to leave them alone. The second policy option was also to lead the Arab nations

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through a different method. Namely, the plan was to adopt the Palestinian problem and confront Israel – in other words, to get Arab states on his side by making a move against their common enemy, Israel (Aburish, 2012: 376). These options inevitably failed because the other Arab governments did not share their desires to get close to Iraq. Egypt rejected a military alliance, while Kuwait kept its distance. Others remained silent. While Saddam could tolerate this response, failure to induce increased help from the USA, as well as rising internal corruption by his family, proved extremely difficult to deal with. Saddam became suspicious of a growing conspiracy against him when the US Congress took an initiative to impose sanctions on Iraq, thus denying Saddam the necessary loans, credits and dual-use equipment. On 21 May 1990, legislation was passed in the USA to suspend loans to Iraq. All of Saddam’s plans up to that point shattered. Similar actions were followed by the UK and France. According to Aburish, Saddam could not survive without these loans, while Kuwait and the UAE continued their overproduction of oil (Aburish, 2012: 409). Saddam was deeply aware of the increasing domestic economic problem. For instance, when he attempted to carry out a demobilisation programme by releasing 200,000 soldiers, these men now out of jobs began to brawl on the streets with foreign workers, resulting in deaths. This could easily have been interpreted as a ticking time bomb (Aburish, 2012: 386). Following this process of a constructed crisis, we can observe that Saddam felt as though he was ‘being choked’. He could no longer fill the bellies of Iraqis and be generous to the families of dead and wounded soldiers. He is cited as stating, ‘I’ll never allow my people to starve’ (Aburish, 2012: 412). This is confirmed elsewhere, with Sassoon (2012: 41) describing how the Ba’ath Party at that point required that any change in a comrade’s financial status had to be reported immediately, for fear that dwindling finances could lead to a possible security risk. Nonetheless, following the new US policy, Saddam began to react to events rather than plan ahead, and his decisions from that point on became unintelligible. He thought that he needed either an increase in the price of oil or to borrow more money. Initially, he started a slight liberalisation programme by privatising industry and granting amnesty for most of his political opponents, but this had a marginal effect, so Saddam soon gave up on this (Karsh and Rautsi, 1991: 20–1; Aburish, 2012: 383–4). The desperation theory focuses on how violence becomes a preferred choice when the alternatives are worse. Desperate to find a solution, Saddam believed the most feasible option was to react to the actions of his small, but rich, neighbour. Kuwait increased its oil production as soon as the Iran–Iraq War was about to end. The UAE followed Kuwait. The

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price of a barrel of oil was around US$17, in comparison to US$32 in 1981. To deal with a decreasing oil price, Saddam initially demanded that other Arab nations (particularly Saudi Arabia and Kuwait) launch an Arab ‘Marshall Plan’ to help Iraq recover, as well as to slash Iraq’s US$80 billion foreign debt. Their refusal agitated him. Particularly regarding Kuwait, Saddam wanted it to grant a complete moratorium on Iraq’s wartime loans, to reduce its oil production quota so as to allow the depressed oil market to pick up, to give Iraq a one-off gift of US$30 billion, plus an additional subsidy of US$10 billion, to stop its alleged ‘theft’ of oil from the Iraqi Rumaila oil field and to return the US$2.4 billion ‘stolen’ from Iraq. Kuwait refused to comply with these demands (Karsh, 1996: 306). Some sources state that Kuwait offered a compromise. Other sources state that Kuwaitis ‘would not compromise on anything’ (Aburish, 2012: 413). Often the latter Kuwaiti behaviour is described to allegedly stem from somewhat secretive meetings between US and Kuwaiti officials, as well as open support of Kuwait by the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. When a meeting was held on 31 July in Jeddah, there is an allegation that Sheikh Sa’ad of Kuwait may have rebuffed Iraqi threats with ‘don’t threaten us, Kuwait has important friends’ (Aburish, 2012: 417). Others, such as Karsh and Rautsi (1991: 22), also indicate that the Kuwaiti Emir was not willing to reduce oil production, forgive wartime loans to Iraq or extend additional grants. When certain concessions were made, they came too late. To be fair, the Kuwaiti leadership seems to have feared that surrender to extortionist methods would only lead to future demands. As such, the leadership sought to reduce concessions to the bare minimum (Karsh and Rautsi, 1991: 25). From Saddam’s perspective, nothing was as lucrative as the resources that he badly needed to get out of the domestic crisis. The link between ‘domestic crisis’ and an opportunity to resolve it via violence is particularly important. In February 1990, at a summit of Arab leaders at the Arab Cooperation Council, Saddam demanded US$30 billion from the Arab nations to help in rebuilding Iraq. He threatened that ‘if they don’t give it to me, I will know how to take it’ (Donaldson, 1996: 147; Allison, 2012: 37; Stoessinger, 2011: 302). Hence, his economic grievances took front stage. Even on the last day before invasion, at talks held in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Saddam stated that Kuwait and the UAE were conducting an economic war against Iraq, and that ‘we have reached a stage where we can no longer take any more pressure’ (Karsh and Rautsi, 1991: 25; Donaldson, 1996: 151). While there is some disagreement over the interpretation of events leading up to the Gulf War, what almost all sources agree on is that the logic behind the invasion of Kuwait was for Saddam to save himself

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from economic disaster, a form of ‘salvation’, but also in one stroke to permanently secure his position (Schmid, 2006: 5). Kang (1995), in a similar way, discussed North Korea’s desire for security. Nonetheless, Saddam’s reasoning stemmed from his Stalinist belief that ‘people with full bellies don’t make revolutions’ (Aburish, 2012: 151). Saddam’s advisers pointed out that by combining the OPEC quotas of Iraq and Kuwait, and by forcing prices up to US$30 a barrel, Iraq could make as much as US$60 billion a year. This amount would double Saddam’s budget for development and still pay off his war debts in four years. Iraq would then control 20 per cent of the world’s oil supply (Devlin, 1992: 1053; Stoessinger, 2012: 301). As a bonus, Iraq would seize a deep-water port. Finally, as a large force in the Gulf controlling Kuwait, Saddam hoped to be able to influence Saudi Arabia to see oil prices differently. In sum, to Saddam, control of Kuwait meant control of the Gulf, control of OPEC, control of oil production, and finally, control of oil prices (Donaldson, 1996: 152; Schmid, 2006: 5; Allison, 2012: 38). This projection did not seem economically unreasonable. Indeed, the price per barrel of oil increased from US$18 in July 1990 to US$21 when Iraq invaded Kuwait, and even US$27 in mid-August when fears spread that Saddam would also take Saudi oil fields. Finally, in September, the price hit US$35 per barrel. Saddam’s risk-taking seemed to have borne some fruit, for the time being at least. There was a certain rationality to Saddam’s actions. However, in retrospect, economic sanctions from the invasion of Kuwait did much bigger damage to Iraq than the economic problems Saddam would have faced without invading Kuwait. First, the rising oil prices due to the crisis affected the developing world the most, the very countries Saddam sought to court for international support. Second, the sanctions imposed on Iraq mostly affected ordinary people who imported over 75 per cent of food (Allison, 2012: 74–7). However, Karsh (1996: 305–6) explains that the reason why not invading Kuwait did not appeal to Saddam was because he had already promised Iraqis tangible improvements in their lives. Without being able to deliver these, his grip on power was at great risk, so it was a matter of ‘life or death’. After all, Saddam successfully consolidated his power in 1974 through a rise in oil prices, transforming Iraq ‘beyond recognition’ (Aburish, 2012: 162). Clearly, Saddam gambled on potential gains and time. Notably, the longer he stood firm after annexing Kuwait, he believed it the more likely that the international coalition against him would begin to fall apart. This reasoning is what academics refer to as a ‘fait accompli’ strategy, whereby quick offensive military thrusts are followed by a defensive posture to preserve the limited gains until a political settlement is reached (Paul, 1994: 26).

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Evidence of Saddam’s ‘waiting game’ is that from mid-August, the Iraqi army began setting up defensive positions, digging in for a long wait, not a quick war; 435,000 troops were dug into a defence system that could not easily be dismantled. Moreover, Saddam was not buying time to find a negotiated solution. Rather, he was buying time to divide and weaken the Coalition led by the USA (Karsh, 1996: 310–11). This might have been the reason why he often raised the issue of Israel, such as threatening to strike and burn Israel if it attacked Iraq or any other Arab country. As highlighted by prospect theory and the diversionary theory of war, it is important to highlight how Saddam focused only on an ‘all or nothing’ approach, indicative of his desire to reverse a deteriorating position, that is, to gain all of Kuwait, or risk losing it. Throughout the crisis, whenever Saddam was offered some concessions, he rejected them – for example, some of the concessions offered to him were regime change in Kuwait, negotiations with Kuwait on economic and territorial issues and progress on Arab–Israeli problems. Likewise, in September 1990, French President François Mitterrand implicitly recognised the legitimacy of some of Iraq’s territorial claims to Kuwait, calling for a comprehensive peace conference on the Middle East. During the same month, Under-Secretary of State Robert Kimmitt seems to have hinted that the USA would not oppose the idea of forcing Kuwait to negotiate away its differences with Iraq, after Iraqi withdrawal. Thomas Pickering, US Ambassador to the UN, later confirmed his government’s readiness for a conference should Iraq withdraw from Kuwait (Karsh, 1996: 310). The problem was that all these solutions required the full or partial withdrawal of Iraqi troops from Kuwait. Saddam was not interested in minor gains. Minor gains preserved the state of ‘domestic crisis’, and Saddam was aiming to change this condition. To address the domestic crisis, Brands and Palkki (2012: 654) highlight that Saddam saw a conflict with the USA as inevitable. Since he believed that he needed the whole of Kuwait, by acting first he thought he could undermine US plans against him. This is perhaps why some claim that it was the USA that was unwilling to negotiate, as it considered ‘withdrawal’ non-negotiable (Aburish, 2012: 433). Either way, there is good reason to believe that the two sides could not reach a ‘zone of possible agreement’. Specifically, the fundamental desires of the USA and its allies to restore Kuwaiti independence were conflicting with Saddam’s fundamental desire to use Kuwait as his source of economic recovery. Perhaps the strongest evidence of Saddam’s preparation for a showdown with the USA was that he told Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, ‘we are ready to fight America’ (Brands, 2011a: 114). Beyond doubt, Saddam had a high propensity for risk, and this section has highlighted the strong economic

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rationale why that risk seemed necessary. However, domestic crisis, a necessary condition, not only had an economic dimension, but was also augmented by two others, a faltering image and the Kurdish problem.

Faltering image The condition of the domestic crisis was thus further exacerbated by the faltering image of Saddam in the media, both at home and abroad. Not only had Saddam lost a costly war with Iran, a retreat from Kuwait also risked undermining his support at home (C.Q. Schneider, 2009: 20). Likewise, his behaviour, as well as that of his family, became a liability. They started to engage in reckless corruption and murder, making Saddam an increasingly hated leader. For instance, Saddam’s son Udday broke into an official function in October 1988, attended by Hosni Mubarak’s wife, to kill his father’s food taster and pimp. He later almost killed his cousin, and insulted the military by demanding that all army officers address him as ‘sir’. When Saddam killed General Adnan Khairallah, Minister of Defence and Sajida’s (Saddam’s wife) brother, no Iraqi bought the official story that he had died in an accident. Thus, domestic opposition to Saddam very likely began to increase. In response, Saddam attempted to use foreign policy threats as a potential to solve domestic problems. Seliktar and Dutter (2009: 288) describe Saddam’s intransigence through his belief that surviving a US attack under any circumstance could be regarded as a ‘win’, especially in the eyes of his own people. In other words, the ‘image’ of winning at home mattered more to Saddam than any actual battlefield victory. Not surprisingly, Saddam took the issue of his strong image seriously. After all, by appearing ‘weak’, Saddam might have thought that domestic crisis would worsen, certainly a possibility given Iraq’s history.

Kurdistan If the above two dimensions of ‘domestic crisis’ condition were not enough to create a sense of ‘fear of loss’ (central to prospect theory), there was yet another dimension, that of Kurdish rebelliousness. The problem of Kurdish independence was a lurking problem with recurring cycles of rebellion, going back to the period when Iraq gained independence from the Ottoman Empire. During the Iran–Iraq War, the Kurds saw an opportunity to fight Saddam’s regime by allying themselves with Tehran. The Kurds rebelled, thereby seizing control of much of the countryside

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outside the northern cities of Iraq. They thus presented a challenge to Saddam’s grip on power (Allison, 2012: 38). Moreover, in March 1988 Iran invaded the Kurdish region of Iraq in the hope of further fomenting a civil war. Baghdad responded with brutal repression by killing tens of thousands of Kurds throughout the 1980s, in what is known as the alAnfal campaign. Iraq’s armed and security forces implemented a massive campaign to clear major areas, formerly declared ‘forbidden zones’ in 1987, resulting in mass arrests of all the inhabitants. Between 50,000 and 100,000 people perished due to Saddam’s brutal campaign in the north (Rogg and Rimscha, 2007: 828). As is well documented, on 16 March 1988, Saddam used a variety of poison gases in the Kurdish town of Halabja, where almost 5,000 people were killed. In sum, the Kurds presented a recurring military problem for Iraq (Herman and Peterson, 2011: 87). The problem was never settled permanently, and was particularly problematic when Saddam was weakened since the Kurds naturally aligned themselves against Saddam (Schwab, 2009: 36). Thus, predictably, a popular Kurdish uprising occurred again in response to the 1991 Gulf War. At this point ‘domestic crisis’ as a condition begins to unravel the importance of other conditions, especially conditions that would allow Saddam to stymie future losses. In other words, Saddam faced clear problems, but he needed solutions as well.

INUS condition: anomalous beliefs The theoretical specification is that the domestic crisis is only a necessary condition. To become a sufficient pathway, more is needed. This is where a solution to ‘domestic crisis’ covers an important belief – that there was an opportunity, but that opportunity entailed war. War is, after all, just another way of doing politics. Despite the many emotions and scars carried with them, wars tend to have rational explanations. They are often a way of getting to an objective that is unreachable via other means. It is an option serving as a last resort. For Saddam, this objective was economic revival. However, as Allison (2012: vii) indicates, people and nations also fight wars with reckless impatience, based on faulty assumptions, seeking superfluous or unreachable objectives. This section attempts to analyse whether Saddam had a propensity for such an attitude and belief, that wars and violence are the solutions to domestic problems. To argue that Saddam’s inclinations leaned towards violence, this section relies on his descriptions as a dictator whose ideas and behaviour were anomalous in comparison to the rest of the international community. The constructivist assumption here is that beliefs, principles and attitudes

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provide broad orientations for behaviour and policy (Tannenwald, 2005). According to Glad (2002: 1), Saddam was a narcissist with severe superego deficiencies. This condition may have influenced how he was able to perceive his power, diplomatic support and behaviour of other countries. As hypothesised earlier, regimes with anomalous beliefs are more likely to find themselves isolated, and more prone to making miscalculations due to the prevalence of groupthink, paranoia and fantasies. This section analyses Saddam’s beliefs because, according to Karsh (1996: 303), Saddam was Iraq’s absolute ruler. In an absolutist system, personal interests are nationalised, and national issues personalised. As will be shown, Saddam fostered several strong beliefs that separated him from fostering more typical norms of international society: an extreme view of the Hobbesian world, the utility of violence, narcissism and psychological concerns.

Extreme view of the Hobbesian world The assumption behind this book is that interstate relations are not in complete anarchy, contrary to what could be seen from a realist point of view. International laws and norms constrain and shape state behaviour, for example, by fostering trust. However, several strong beliefs fostered by Saddam separated him from developing more typical norms of international society. The first prominent belief that Saddam held was one of a Hobbesian worldview, known as a very predatory state of nature, internally and externally. Brands noted Saddam’s constant emphasis on threats from ever-present and dangerous enemies (2011b: 386). Not surprisingly, all signs of dissent resulted in systematic purges, including during his rise to presidency. According to Allison (2012: 33), he controlled officials in the government and officers in the military. He controlled all decision-making in what Karsh describes as ‘one of the most repressive police states’ (1996: 304), where all domestic and foreign policies were oriented to one goal: his political survival. Therefore, Karsh reasons that understanding Iraq’s policies is not about state interests, but rather about the perpetuation of Saddam’s personal rule. Given the nature of his political career, Saddam’s perception of the world is one of a violent, Hobbesian environment, with an instinct for self-preservation, which often involves killing. According to Saddam, ‘I know they are conspiring to kill me long before they actually start planning to do it. This enables me to get them before they have the faintest chance of striking at me’ (Karsh, 1996: 304). Of course, the Hobbesian world is one realists would see as characteristic of contemporary interstate relations. Certainly, human beings are rather self-interested and they pursue power, but there is no

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constant fear and conflict that is often raised in Hobbes’ political theory. Saddam developed this fear and pursuit of power to the extreme. Consider that in the international arena Saddam used foreign military adventures as a way of deflecting external threats to his rule, as well as boosting his domestic position by military victories that gave him regional prestige and riches that could be plundered. As such, the Iranian revolutionary regime of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (Supreme Leader of Iran) conflicted with his ideology. When he lost the war with Iran, Karsh believes that Saddam’s indefinite stay in power was no longer a foregone conclusion due to the possibility of a loss of efficacy of his repressive machine, as well as a lack of loyalty of the military to his rule. After all, there were several abortive attempts by military officers to assassinate him. Karsh and Rautsi (1991: 18) also attribute the invasion of Kuwait to Saddam’s increased sense of insecurity. In fact, one of Saddam’s most important conspiracy fears was that of the USA, whereby Saddam believed that Washington was double-dealing to topple his regime. For him, the USA was a strategic enemy that could not be trusted (Brands, 2011a: 96–7). As such, the invasion of Kuwait was an attempt to find a way out of that insecurity, through Kuwait’s economic resources.

Utility of violence The best way to highlight an anomaly in Saddam’s behaviour is to focus on his reliance on violence or ‘coercive power’. Unlike Joseph Stalin, Saddam committed acts of gross violence, directly and personally (Light et al, 2014: 389). According to Schneider (C.Q. 2009b: 16), Saddam had a lifelong tendency toward violence. Indeed, Saddam’s life was violent from the start. This is partially a result of his upbringing and his life in Iraq. His childhood was full of bitter experiences coming from a lower class of Sunni society. He was fatherless, living among neighbourhood street gangs, producing an ‘utter lack of psychological or sociological restraints’ (Aburish, 2012: 17; Sassoon, 2012: 6; Light et al, 2014: 393). His only role model at the time was his maternal uncle, Khairallah Tulfah, a former second lieutenant in the Iraqi Army, later becoming an honorary general and mayor of Baghdad. Saddam rebelled against his family to live with his uncle, where the two became very close ideologically, adopting close affiliations with neo-Nazism, jealousy of Sunni upper classes and bitterness towards Shias. For example, Saddam was a sympathiser of the Futuwa, a paramilitary youth organisation modelled on the Hitler Youth. Nonetheless, Saddam’s uncle also enabled him to enter school, although later than his peers. The whole history of Saddam’s childhood may have

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impacted his later life. According to Aburish (2012: 35), this period of suffering produced a sense of inadequacy in Saddam, even though many recognised his exceptional intelligence and memory. According to constructivism, context shapes beliefs. During his adolescence, Saddam was further exposed to violence. Even though he was at first doing menial jobs with little pay, such as being an assistant to a driver, he wanted to enter military college but was denied, increasing his complexes (Sassoon, 2012: 137). Still, this did not prevent him from becoming a student leader of anti-government demonstrations. He also set up roving gangs of thugs who used violence against political opponents and businesses that followed government policy. He promoted an image of himself as a ‘tough guy’, for example, by pistol-whipping someone on a bus. When Kassem came to power in Iraq, the Ba’ath Party used Saddam and his gang to counter the government’s paramilitary activities. In other words, he engaged in urban warfare. In 1959 he was trained by the Ba’ath Party to assassinate Kassem (Brands and Palkki, 2012: 629; Light et al, 2014: 393), which is when he was wounded in the leg. Afterwards he escaped to Syria, where he became a full member of the Ba’ath Party, and was subsequently sent to Cairo to continue his education. Back in Iraq, he was given a death sentence in absentia. In Egypt, Saddam forged close ties with the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), sanctioned by the Egyptian security apparatus (Aburish, 2012: 79). Such ties were apparently common since the USA was determined to overthrow Kassem, an operation led by William Lakeland, stationed in Baghdad. Saddam’s record of risk-taking and violent behaviour was noticed. General al-Bakr, who led the coup overthrowing Kassem in 1963, was a cousin of Khairallah and Saddam. Khairallah recommended Saddam be his second-in-command and heir apparent, which al-Bakr accepted (Aburish, 2012: 23; Light et al, 2014: 393). Saddam then allegedly became a torturer at a Ba’ath interrogation centre in Baghdad, a place known as the ‘Palace of the End’, to get revenge against the Communists. Political elites not in agreement with the Ba’ath regime were also terrorised. The organisation was Saddam’s version of the Gestapo. The main point here is that violence was a common tool employed by Saddam in his everyday life. One of the best pieces of evidence of Saddam’s propensity for violence was when he offered to kill other Ba’athist political figures, something that even his allies rejected. Bakr, however, was removed from power, and Saddam was temporarily imprisoned for two years (Sassoon, 2012: 30). Not surprisingly, in 1968 Ba’athists led another coup, backed by Washington. Saddam became Vice President of Iraq and Deputy Secretary General of the Ba’ath Party. Even though Bakr became head of the new Iraqi government, Saddam was the neck

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that controlled where the head turned (Karsh, 1996: 304). At this point, Saddam successfully used every chance to eliminate all his rivals by 1973, covertly and overtly, including his closest friends. He came to control the Jihaz Haneed, the Ba’ath Party’s terror and intimidation organisation that organised the mass hanging of Jews in 1969 accusing them of being spies. Worth noting is that Saddam was a disciple of Michel Aflaq, the founder of Ba’athist thought. (Brands, 2011b: 384; Aburish, 2012: 126). A clear anomaly in this early behaviour is that Saddam modelled himself after Stalin and tribal instincts, which Aburish (2012: 17) believes is a combination of a ‘Bedouin guile and Communist method’. Most of the international community, even Russia, saw Stalin’s rule as tragic for humanity. Despite this, Saddam learned to admire Stalin while studying in Cairo. When he returned to Iraq, Saddam used Stalinist maxims openly, especially, ‘if there is a person then there is a problem; if there is no person then there is no problem’ (Aburish, 2012: 94). Aburish even argues that whatever humanitarian characteristics Saddam had, he followed Stalin’s beliefs that terror was the way to a great society. As for Bedouin guile, this indicates Saddam’s tribal orientation characterised by honour, manliness and loyalty to family, clan and tribe (Yaphe, 2003: 8). Saddam did indeed surround himself with his fellow family members, including Khairallah. He believed that family, that is, tribe, came before the party, thus the phrase ‘family dominance’. Therefore, he and Bakr were close, which explains why Saddam never sought to undermine his father-leader during the early reign. He also closely followed other Bedouin methods. For example, when a Sheikh from the Tikrit region threatened to kill Saddam, Saddam used a Bedouin strategy to resolve the situation, which essentially involved talking to people in the language they understood (Aburish, 2012: 93). He similarly used the Tikriti trademark, ‘daring but cautious’, when he nationalised the British-run Iraqi Petroleum Company. Even when Saddam deposed Bakr, an elderly cousin, he continued to use violent methods, even personally carrying them out. This was a way of projecting a violent image to his subjects (Light et al, 2014: 392). For example, he held women and children as hostages, which he displayed for television. Not surprisingly, Donaldson described him as ‘no less a tyrant, no less a murderer… than Hitler had been for Europe in the late 1930s’ (1996: 143). Several hundred Iraqi Jews were killed in anti-Semitic riots throughout Iraq in 1989. Saddam held show trials of spies, where Jews were the primary targets. There thus existed a ‘strong’ link between Adolf Hitler and Saddam’s anti-Semitism, according to Donaldson (1996: 142) and Stoessinger (2011: 308). Violence against enemies also affected Kurds. For instance, in 1972, when Iraq signed a pact with the Soviets,

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and the USA in response aided the Shah of Iran and Iraqi Kurds, Saddam responded with the brutal mass bombing of civilian targets in Kurdistan. By striking a deal with Iran, Saddam managed to isolate the Kurds and to crush them. Can we thus assume that Saddam saw violence as an important tool that had solved ‘domestic crisis’ problems in the past? During the Iraq– Iran War, as Saddam’s plans began to falter, and facing rising opposition among the Kurds, he resorted to even more brutal methods at home and abroad. The link between ‘domestic crisis’ and the ‘utility of violence’ became clear. Saddam began a depopulation programme of Kurdish villages, which included using chemical weapons in Sheikh Wazzan and Suleimaniya. Subsequently, he forcibly moved 1.5 million Kurds to concentration camps in southern Iraq, razing 4,000 villages. The town of Halabja was also attacked with chemical weapons. This operation is known as al-Anfal campaign, and showed what Aburish refers to as Saddam’s criminality (2012: 368). It was these actions that instilled fear among Iranians that their cities might also be attacked with chemical weapons, inciting mullahs in Iran to convince Khomeini to end the war. Indeed, Iranian fears were correct, because during the war Saddam did contemplate using chemical weapons on Iranian cities, potentially killing hundreds of thousands of people. After he lost the war against Iran, Saddam again wanted to emerge as regionally dominant, so he flexed his muscles against the Kurds in the north, this time with poison gas. On 25  August 1988, his warplanes and helicopters dropped chemical weapons on several villages, killing thousands. This was a notorious move, casting Saddam as an international pariah, and thus constituting an important piece of evidence as to why Saddam’s beliefs were anomalous. Moreover, not only did Saddam conduct routine political killings, disappearances and torture; he was the only national leader to have ever used agents of mass destruction against his own people. And if this was not enough, Saddam shocked the world by hanging a British journalist for spying. Not surprisingly, he was also interested in building a super-gun and developing nuclear weapons. His brutality, even before the invasion of Kuwait, resulted in an attempt by the US Senate to impose strict sanctions on Iraq, although President Bush reacted with a fierce lobbying campaign that killed the bill due to business interests, such as technological transfer and the purchase of Iraqi oil (Donaldson, 1996: 154). Going back to events that are the focus of this book, given these patterns, it is not surprising that violence emerges as a tool during Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. Allison emphasises the pillaging and plundering that took place in Kuwait City, confirming ‘Saddam’s sadistic reputation’

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(Allison, 2012: 47; Stoessinger, 2011: 302). Similarly, during the Gulf War, Saddam applied very destructive means to get revenge. He ordered oil wellheads to be set alight, and for major pipeline valves to be fully open to pollute the Persian Gulf. He also used Western nationals as human shields, placing them near likely Coalition military targets, such was his destructive behaviour (Allison, 2012: viii). In one instance, Saddam stated that ‘whoever needs to be slaughtered will be slaughtered. We will chop heads off…’ (Sassoon, 2012: 196). Aburish (2012: 7–17) argues that Saddam’s propensity for violence is not strictly a personal characteristic, but also a trait of the Iraqi people reinforced by their history. Yaphe (2003: 8) makes a similar observation. Aburish identifies ancient Iraqi conquerors who resorted to violence, but who themselves were often removed by violent means. There are also more recent colonial powers, British in this case, which introduced new violent methods such as the use of ‘gas’ and the sowing of divisions (such as between Kurds and others). As colonialism retreated, Iraqi leaders themselves began to produce unstable governments, ushering in coup after coup. Saddam, once in power, encouraged people to be informers and to spy on their friends, many of whom were executed for personal reasons. He even insisted that his closest supporters participate in show trials and killings (Light et al, 2014: 395). Regardless of how ‘personal’ propensity for violence is, such high levels of brutality are far from a common international behaviour. Even political leaders who engage in violence remain somewhat distant from such acts. This was not the case for Saddam. The clearest evidence of this is the most violent and notorious act that Saddam carried out, clearly indicating his violent character – the murder of his Minister of Health, Riyadh Ibrahim, in the middle of a cabinet meeting. This murder indicated a ‘removal of all inhibitions on personal behaviour’ by Saddam and his family (Aburish, 2012: 311). He was equally brutal for minor offences, such as someone sipping tea before Saddam did, as Hanza Zubeidi did. Moreover, Saddam enjoyed conducting more mainstream executions, as he did with 30 captured Kurdish guerrillas (Kelly, 2008: 40). Nonetheless, there is an argument that Saddam used violence instrumentally, and not merely for self-indulgence (Light et al, 2014: 396). Although this is true to a large extent, these mentioned examples, as well as the observation that Saddam also beat his children and wife, indicate that ‘excessiveness’ was omnipresent. Either way, violence seemed to have been part of every solution to serious problems facing Saddam. It needs to be highlighted that another serious problem, such as ‘domestic crisis’, would then unsurprisingly involve solutions that are anomalous – because they are extremely violent.

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Narcissism Can pride and narcissism be a dimension of anomalous beliefs that contribute to making risky decisions such as the war against the powerful? Earlier in the book, when discussing all the conditions, an argument by Seliktar and Dutter (2009: 286) was stated, on how an idealised self-image can contribute to misperceptions of reality. Indeed, narcissism seems to have skewed Saddam’s beliefs to the point that he overestimated his power and military capabilities. Although Saddam may have used narcissism as a bargaining tool, fitting with the rationalist literature, his narcissism has also shined in private settings. Namely, in public settings, as he rose to power, he developed strong narcissism, putting himself as a leader of the Arab world, a role that Anwar Sadat, President of Egypt, vacated when he signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979. According to some studies (see, for example, Seliktar and Dutter, 2009), Saddam suffered from a pathological characteristic of ‘malignant narcissist’. This characteristic was strongly revealed during several episodes. A first example was his determination not to show any weaknesses, even to the detriment of his power. As such, he refused to tell the Americans and UN inspectors that had had no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Sassoon (2012: 165) refers to this as Saddam’s ‘obsessive need to demonstrate strength’. For a similar reason, he refused to acknowledge negative news. The second example is Saddam’s desire to be immortal, reflecting a very personal attribute. Speaking to his biographer Iskandar, Saddam stated that he was not concerned with what the people thought at the time, but with what they would say about him 500 years from then (Aburish, 2012: 266). For a similar reason, Saddam ordered television and radio monologues, but also prodigious literary output. It seemed that he also wanted to be a philosopher. In Saddam’s own words, ‘I am interactive with Iraq’s history to an extent that the details interlock with every one of my cells’ (Brands, 2011a: 102). Third, Saddam set up a militia of young people called the Sadamyoun, the Saddamists, a group of teenagers indoctrinated to worship Saddam as a messianic saviour, instilling fear into the hearts of ordinary citizens. Examples of his narcissism are endless, but worthy of mention is that Saddam also implied that his family were descended from the Prophet Kuraishi Mohamedan family (Glad, 2002: 7). The impact of narcissism on Saddam’s decision-making was significant. According to Aburish (2012: 393), Saddam’s perception of himself as a new Arab conqueror did affect the way he behaved. At a very basic level of analysis, belief in being an historic Arab leader meant making bold decisions, such as standing up to overwhelming force (Woods and Stout, 2010: 14). At a deeper level, Seliktar and Dutter (2009: 286) argue

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that grandiosity, an idealised self-image and belief in infallible judgement contribute to exacerbation of an individual’s initial misperceptions of reality and ultimately, to a dynamic evolution of the person’s mental state into the realm of delusions and fantasies. Specifically, it was Saddam’s inflated image of himself and his past achievements that made him misjudge how others perceived him. This fundamental flaw became clear in Saddam’s military strategy. He saw himself as a true military strategist, spending a significant amount of time describing what a good military leader was, how he should behave, and what decisions he should make. The problem was that many of his generals felt that Saddam had no understanding of military strategy, displayed through his forbiddance of strategic retreat, execution of officers for losing a battle, or decisions as to what the exact dimensions of military trenches should be (Glad, 2002: 7; Sassoon, 2012: 138). In short, these episodes convey a strong sense that Saddam’s passions stood in the way of him grasping reality.

Psychological concerns Complementary to the aforementioned discussion on Saddam’s narcissism is also his mental profile. There are some indications that Saddam suffered from psychological problems, perhaps not a surprising observation. Consider that after carrying out a purge in the summer of 1979, Saddam behaved oddly. He is described as having locked himself in for two days, eventually emerging with bloodshot and swollen eyes. During the same period, he visited a widow of someone he had executed, weeping loudly that he had loved the man (Aburish, 2012: 259–60). Since this man, Hamdani, had been extremely loyal to Saddam, the only rationale for his murder that Aburish found is that Hamdani was an intellectual and that Saddam had a complex of not tolerating people with superior attributes. His odd, erratic behaviour also emerged when he imported blue marble from Argentina at the cost of US$3,000–US$4,000m2 in the middle of his country’s financial crisis (Aburish, 2012: 393). Moreover, Saddam was prone to building grandiose construction projects, such as the giant Victory Arch (Seliktar and Dutter, 2009: 281). These actions also provide a glimpse of his paranoia, his belief that he was surrounded by enemies, and the need to execute others, as well as build palaces and hide among them. After all, there were many attempts on his life. He is described as trusting no one, not even his closest family members. Not surprisingly, in the summer of 1995, his sons-in-law fled to Amman (C.Q. Schneider, 2009: 37; Sassoon, 2012: 166). The strongest evidence of Saddam’s paranoia was that, during the post-2003

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interrogation, he admitted that he felt he was vulnerable to his own son’s desires for power (Sassoon, 2012: 192). There is also a possibility that Saddam had his two daughters executed, because they went missing after their husbands (Saddam’s sons-in-law) were executed (Glad, 2002: 13). Such an act would indicate a very psychopathic problem of being emotionally detached, from even his closest family members. Saddam also seemed to be extremely frustrated. He wanted to be seen as a benevolent leader who had direct contact with the people, but he also wanted to be above being touched, which is why he walked stiffly while his security personnel were using sticks and electric rods to administer shocks on people who wanted to approach him. This is part of his belief that he had been chosen by God. Similarly, when the US Department of State raised concerns regarding Saddam’s human rights record, Saddam simply retaliated by using every opportunity to engage in an anti-US, anti-Israeli propaganda fest, rather than focus on addressing planned issues. When Saddam visited Amman to celebrate the first anniversary of the Arab Cooperation Council, Mubarak disapproved of Saddam’s outbursts, almost leaving the celebration and describing Saddam as ‘too unreliable and unpredictable’ (Aburish, 2012: 404). Aburish claims that the Iraq–Iran War forced Saddam’s personality out into the open because it displayed the limits of his power (2012: 283). He was so consumed in his own belief in power that he seemed to ignore Khomeini and his determination. Saddam made a colossal blunder by thinking he could quickly defeat Iran. After suffering defeat as well as enormous human and material losses, Saddam seemed convinced that he had won the war. Similarly, when Gerald Bull, the Canadian armaments scientist and Saddam’s adviser on rocketry, was assassinated in Brussels, Saddam made a blatant, shocking statement that he would devour half of Israel by fire if it tried to attack Iraq. Perhaps it is because of behaviour such as this that Stoessinger (2011: 294) described Saddam simply as ‘evil’, due to his love of violence. Karsh and Rautsi (1991: 24), however, interpret this episode as Saddam’s paranoia over conspiracy that an impending attack by the West was forthcoming. However, this only put Saddam into an irreconcilable position between trying to gain financial support and reduce hostility from the West, and risk becoming an increasingly threatening pariah in the region (Bengio, 2000: 92). He may have wanted to convey an image of a threatening pariah because that would have deterred his internal enemies from acting against the regime (Rovner, 2012: 501). Either way, Saddam’s psychological profile raises concerns as to whether he was able to restrain his ego, vengeance and other emotions, as well as whether he was able to retain a sense of morality, not only in public, but also in personal matters.

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Wrong beliefs about the USA Consistent with his previous behaviour, when the moment for a decision to fight the USA came, evidence shows that Saddam failed to grasp the nature of the threat. He seems to have counted on the war as a possibility, but one that the USA would quickly withdraw from. Central to Saddam’s beliefs was that until 1990 the USA was still living in the shadow of Vietnam, that is, the ‘Vietnam Syndrome’, which refers to US public aversion to US military interventions abroad – Donaldson (1996: 141) refers to Reagan’s adventures in Central America, which were never supported by the American people or Congress, indicating the presence of the Vietnam Syndrome. Likewise, the death of 241 marines in Lebanon due to a terrorist blast resulted in a withdrawal of US peacekeeping forces. Saddam seems to have hoped for a recurrence of such outcomes. However, if that could have been the USA’s weakness, the reality is that such weakness was offset by advantages the USA held in respect to the Gulf War. First, there were no Cold War politics involved in the Persian Gulf crisis – neither China nor the Soviet Union was concerned about US actions there. Second, even if they were, the Soviet Union was on the brink of economic and political collapse. Finally, Bush followed the sentiments of earlier US presidents and feared ‘losing’ Kuwait the way others had lost Vietnam, China and almost Korea (Donaldson, 1996: 141). Allison indicates that Bush held an opinion that Saddam believed that the Vietnam Syndrome had made American people unable to stomach another war. In retrospect, we know that Saddam faced a serious threat, but his perception of that threat seems inconsistent (Allison, 2012: 86). Consider an example provided by Aburish (2012: 442) when Saddam asked Arafat whether the Western threats were real. On hearing that they were, Saddam turned to his advisers to ask them why he had not been informed about this. It is very likely the fear of Saddam’s punishments made his own advisers’ roles ineffective. Hosmer (2007) refers to this as a climate of lying. Feeding Saddam’s growing hunger for power was more important than the truth, for many of his subordinates (Seliktar and Dutter, 2009: 287). C.Q. Schneider (2009: 12) indicates that such instances were an important element of Saddam’s decision-making. Similarly, Karsh (1996) observes that Saddam, in his meeting with April Glaspie, USA Ambassador to Iraq, had expressed scepticism about the USA’s ability to sustain a costly war, referring again to the Vietnam Syndrome. After the war, months of interviews with the captured Saddam revealed how little he knew about the USA (C.Q. Schneider, 2009: 10). Thus, on the one hand, Saddam was simply wrong about the USA.

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On the other hand, Brands and Palkki did not find in Iraqi documents that Saddam perceived a ‘green light’ to invade Kuwait, but rather that he expected conflict. As cited in Brands (2011b: 401), Saddam stated that the war ‘officially started in the 1986 meeting, and was exposed under title “Irangate”’, an event when the Reagan administration was discovered to have been selling arms to Iran. Moreover, Saddam held a consistent and virulent hostility toward the USA, something he carried from his youth. He always saw the USA as an obstacle to his dream of a decisive showdown with Israel, an American ally that also conspired against him. Not surprisingly, Saddam blamed the USA whenever misfortune befell his regime and referred to the USA as ‘the arch-Satan’ (Brands and Palkki, 2012: 626–34). If Saddam emphasised hostility, consistent with his violent past, why was he then surprised to find out that Western threats were real? In support of the claim that Saddam considered the war a possibility, he seemed to have had a fighting strategy. For instance, shortly before the 15 January deadline expired, Saddam ordered that ‘Allahu Akhbar’ be painted on the Iraqi flag, and added the words ‘Be the Arab saviour, Oh Iraq’ to the national anthem, indicating a likely preparation to boost his troops’ morale prior to invasion by the Coalition. Moreover, his strategy entailed inflicting significant discomfort to the Coalition, expecting that their desire to continue the war would dissipate. In particular, he expected that he could draw the Coalition into a premature ground offensive in Kuwait that would result in enough American casualties for the American public to question Bush’s foreign policy (Karsh, 1996: 313). As mentioned above, and in the words of Stoessinger (2011: 309), Saddam believed that the Americans were too cowardly to fight. This was a grave mistake, because the Coalition, even with potential disagreements, was united against him. We know, in retrospect, that the Coalitions’ Air Force alone was able to carry out a lethal onslaught of the Iraqi army, not suffering many casualties of its own. In short, given the evidence that Saddam prepared for, and even stoked, a conflict with the USA, but also that he believed that the Americans were too cowardly, one can conclude that Saddam was not entirely wrong. He was right in the sense that the war would happen; where he was wrong, however, was in the belief that the outcome of the war would be favourable to him. Such a conclusion is similar to the debate over whether Saddam misunderstood American intentions or whether he got into a US trap (Schmid, 2006: 6; Sassoon, 2012: 8). The side arguing the former focuses on explaining that Saddam’s conversation with US Ambassador Glaspie resulted in Saddam believing that he had a green light to invade Kuwait, or at least that there was no ‘red light’ (C.Q. Schneider, 2009: 14). Those

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highlighting the existence of a US trap point out that President Bush never really wanted to negotiate with Saddam. It is likely that there were mixed signals from the Americans, and consequently, it is possible that Saddam misunderstood American intentions and its potentials – evidence for this is that Saddam claimed in public that he had been misled (Brands and Palkki, 2012: 657). However, it is a much stronger case that he stuck to his conspiratorial mindset, believing that a showdown with the USA was inevitable, but one that the USA would not want to bear the costs for. According to Woods and Stout (2010: 36), Saddam mentally distorted his external enemy to conform to his worldview. As such, he fell into a US trap, but one that he himself helped in setting up. The fear he instilled in others incited his sycophantic advisers to confirm what he wanted to hear by embellishing lies passed to them by subordinates (Hosmer, 2007). In sum, Saddam had probably expected the USA to retaliate to his actions in Kuwait, but he mistakenly believed that his success laid in unsettling public opinion in the West and creating a heroic reputation for himself in the Arab world (Karsh, 1996: 303). Regarding the latter, Saddam should have known that since around 1981 his Arab neighbours had already turned their backs on him. For instance, the Gulf Cooperation Council deliberately excluded Iraq and Iran, arguably because they were sources of danger to the new political grouping. Neither was the USA weak and cowardly to fight a war backed by most of the world states. According to Aburish (2012: 307), Saddam ‘now had to accede to what was happening’. If the behaviour of other Arab states was not indicative of the changing international opinion, then the loss of Soviet support definitely should have been. Instead, Saddam responded with increasingly unpalatable behaviour. He was betting that time was on his side. He believed that the longer it took the Coalition to fight him, the more legitimacy he gained. As evidence of this thinking, Saddam’s Air Force was mostly hidden to fight another day (Woods and Stout, 2010: 36). This action displayed that he believed that he would outlast any attack on him. Hence, although there truly was no window of opportunity for Saddam, his beliefs made him think differently. He believed that the USA could not commit to another costly conflict. This is an inverse logic to the bargaining literature that claims that commitment problems refer to the failure to commit to a peaceful settlement due to the belief that the other will not live up to the terms of the deal. Here, the reference is to the perception that the USA would not be able to commit to war. Anomalous beliefs in all aspects of Saddam’s life bear evidence that he was prone to making reckless decisions that disregard the norms at various levels, from international to local. As such, domestic crisis and anomalous beliefs seem to have been conducive to risk-taking. Not surprisingly, when

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faced with a menacing major power, Saddam’s calculations were deeply intertwined with his particular beliefs. This section has highlighted that although Saddam did not have a window of opportunity, he believed that he had.

Counter-factual: what if conditions were different? As mentioned earlier in the book, to assess the importance of necessity and sufficiency of conditions, the use of a counter-factual analysis can be helpful: to ask not only what happened, but also what would have happened if different conditions had existed, if different policies had been pursued or if events had played out differently. The counter-factual analysis is, of course, an inaccurate science; nevertheless, it can help in assessing how policies set processes in train, how alternative scenarios might have developed, and the significance and impact of decisions and events (Cottey, 2009: 606). The following section draws on thoughtexperiments or alternative evidence to assess alternative projections when the link between conditions and outcome seemed to be morphing. These are other instances of the window of opportunity, and of a domestic crisis and war, and Saddam’s behaviour when he held less anomalous beliefs. To begin with, let us consider the window of opportunity condition again. As mentioned earlier, to address the question regarding the window of opportunity, whether it is an element of sufficiency, one ought to ask whether Saddam would have chosen conflict if the USA actually faced weakness at home, truly preventing it from being committed to a distant war. Most likely, the answer is yes. By looking at Saddam’s behaviour in other instances, he used Iraq’s advantage to attack Iran, as well as Kuwait, at somewhat opportune moments. The previous section highlighted that Saddam believed that he had a window of opportunity – the Vietnam Syndrome (US aversion to casualties). If there was, indeed, a real opportunity, Saddam would have been even more confident of fighting a war against the USA. Conversely, there is a piece of evidence indicating that the absence of a window of opportunity will not lead to conflict, even when there a domestic crisis is present. Specifically, for many years Saddam had struggled with Shiia Muslims in Iraq who were more loyal to Khomeini. Their presence therefore presented a domestic crisis to Iraq, which is one of the important factors contributing to the logic behind the Iraq– Iran War. Somewhat surprisingly, when an external threat from the international community grew in August 1990, Saddam decided to grant Iran all it had demanded to end the state of war with Iraq (Aburish, 2012:

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429). In other words, Saddam might have perceived a loss of window of opportunity, which was temporary foreign support.4 This event highlights the importance of the window of opportunity as well as conjunctural causation. While there was a domestic crisis, this alone was not sufficient for Saddam to continue the war with Iran. Saddam quickly sought peace when he lacked one of the additional conditions covered in this book, window of opportunity, foreign support, or at least a belief that he had one of those. The next argument assesses the role of domestic crisis based on other similar events, and there are two events worth considering. The first piece of evidence comes from Saddam’s behaviour in 1968, shortly after he helped overthrow Aref. Namely, Iraq faced a financial crisis. At this time, Saddam, according to Aburish (2012: 124), preferred the Stalinist method of diverting people’s attention to external threats by accusing Shias of plotting against the regime, which eventually led to the Iraq–Iran War. However, he also accused the CIA and Zionist conspiracies of trying to overthrow the regime. Of course, Saddam made a similar decision in 2003 while facing crippling economic sanctions, as well as a domestic rebellion in the north and south of Iraq (Herring, 2013). This evidence confirms that invasion of Kuwait was not an exception, but rather ‘the rule’, that Saddam was indeed willing to engage in conflicts when facing domestic crises. The second piece of evidence comes from observing Iraq’s actions inside Kuwait, and that Saddam was indeed going after the economic assets. Namely, as soon as Iraqi troops entered Kuwaiti territory, they started to remove all valuable assets. Saddam attempted to access Kuwait’s US$100  billion worth of foreign holdings, although comprehensive international sanctions prevented this. However, he still removed all other available assets, such as gold and foreign currency deposits in Kuwaiti banks, industrial and commercial infrastructure, transport and communication systems, to name a few (Karsh, 1996: 306). While this might have occurred regardless of the Iraqi economic situations, the fact that these actions were partly his idea, and that the assets were taken to other Iraqi provinces, demonstrates that it was more than just an initiative of his troops, and that it was important to keep these valuable possessions in case of withdrawal from Kuwait. Also related to the domestic crisis, one intriguing event is that a month after Coalition forces attacked Iraq, President Bush offered Iraq a second chance to withdraw from Kuwait, by 23 February. Iraq did not comply in this instance either (Regan, 1996: 173). This piece of evidence confirms that Saddam saw the conflict as inevitable, and that his miscalculation was based only on how the conflict would play out, not whether the

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coalition would attack. Moreover, this also highlights that sacrifices in the war were possibly a minor problem to Saddam compared to what he would face from a humiliating retreat and the loss of Kuwait. Bueno de Mesquita et al’s (2005) selectorate theory captures this logic whereby a small winning coalition can reap the benefits of a conflict while most of the population would carry the burden. Finally, what if Saddam held more widely recognised beliefs? First, by following a more common behaviour of minor powers, Saddam might have undermined the USA’s rhetoric by offering to negotiate, even late in the crisis. For example, as just mentioned above, a month after Allied forces attacked Iraq, President Bush offered Iraq a second chance to withdraw from Kuwait. Saddam missed out on this opportunity. It is true that, according to Karsh (1996: 308), even an unambiguous US warning would not have deterred Saddam, because it was not proportional to the potential gains that Saddam could have received from invading Kuwait. However, the crisis was of Saddam’s own making, his anomalous beliefs, and most importantly, his belief that he could outlast any attack on his regime. With more widely recognised beliefs, he could have avoided overconfidence that is a prevalent cause of war (or ‘false optimism’) (Blainey, 1973). Consider the second point. When Saddam realised that his political beliefs were wrong after all, that is, once the Coalition began a land war, Saddam quickly sought to salvage his military power by unequivocally accepting all UN resolutions, including ordering his troops to withdraw from Kuwait. This all took place within less than 48 hours from when the land war had begun – and Saddam sought to save himself. According to Karsh (1996: 314), he could have lost everything, but not his personal rule, which is why he decided to salvage his elite Republic Guard for the postwar period. Third, when Saddam wanted to solve the Kurdish problem through violence in 1970, Moscow was dead set against such an idea. Saddam received the warning clearly, and thus changed his mind, offering to placate the Kurds. In March 1970, a manifesto between the government of Iraq and the Kurds was reached, granting the Kurds autonomy (Aburish, 2012: 133). What this shows is that when Saddam received a clear message, with little room for misinterpretation, he behaved in a way to ensure that he would not be ‘swimming upstream’. This does not mean that he did not try to undermine the Kurds, which he did, eventually destroying the agreement and causing a renewed Kurdish rebellion. Likewise, during Black September, Saddam refrained from supporting the Palestinians, although he had previously claimed he would, fearing that foreign powers would back Jordan against Iraq. He was thus willing

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and capable of making decisions that averted military conflict. Therefore, one can extrapolate he could have done the same during the crisis prior to the Gulf War, and that the conditions that were presented (domestic crisis and anomalous beliefs) hindered perceptions that the peaceful outcome was more preferable. Pondering on counter-factual questions seems to have strengthened the analysis presented so far. Although there are no absolute guarantees that counter-factual situations would produce the effects stipulated by other scholars and similar examples, it would be difficult to obtain a counterfactual interpretation with a different conclusion. This would require new evidence and how it links to the outcome studied here.

Conclusion This first case study shows the importance of using process tracing after a medium-N analysis. Much of what are simplified assumptions in a QCA analysis are extrapolated here, establishing an argument how a necessary condition, domestic crisis, together with an INUS condition, anomalous beliefs, produces an outcome whereby a minor power such as Iraq consciously accepted to engage in a military conflict with a major power (and in this case, its numerous allies). Overall, what seems to be a reckless decision by Saddam to take on 34 world states, including the USA, and most of them leading military powers, appears less reckless after deeper insight. More specifically, Saddam was successful in seizing power in Iraq and in holding on to it. Given Iraq’s history, Saddam’s obsession became his grip on power and how to ensure that his regime would not be toppled. Internal enemies were particularly problematic, and they became the focus of many of Saddam’s policies, including his foreign policy. Thus, the simplified explanation of Saddam’s choice to engage in a conflict against a major power is that he found himself in a difficult domestic situation, and violence was his preferred method. He had to maintain an extensive system of control, partially dependent on coercion, and partially dependent on incentives and rewards. However, when Iraq lost the war against Iran, Saddam had no backup plan, so his incentives and rewards became depleted, risking destroying the domestic support that he had built. While domestic crisis alone might not have induced Saddam to fight a losing war, his anomalous beliefs ensured that he thought he could win (window of opportunity). In other words, he likely felt that he was out of options and that invading Kuwait, as well as resisting foreign ultimatums, would be much less risky than was the case.

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There is a reason why the domestic crisis was reflected in economic problems. According to Karsh (1996: 307), Saddam did not want to invade Kuwait, but rather, he had to in order to ensure his survival. As such, no solutions and threats, even if they involved ‘saving face’ for Saddam, were deemed adequate for solving the difficult economic problems facing him. Brands and Palkki (2012: 654), among many other scholars, claim that the economic issue was the most important crisis facing Saddam. Also, the economic problems were exacerbated by the existence of a strong PR (public relations) campaign to undermine him, as well as the recurring Kurdish rebellions. While Saddam was familiar with the latter two, due to economic problems, he feared that the plight of the Iraqi people would lead to his deposition from power (Karsh, 1996: 305). The war in Kuwait for Iraq was an attempt for Saddam to achieve a crucial political objective that he could not do otherwise – namely, to recover the Iraqi economy through oil revenue. There were very few other options for Iraq, making the situation difficult. However, history is replete with countries going through crises without engaging in conflict. As such, a domestic crisis is not enough. What made Saddam do it required a bit more, and this ‘more’ is explained through his beliefs. In many instances, Saddam was described as having rational and moderate behaviour (Seliktar and Dutter, 2009: 281). Yet his life since childhood frequently entailed fostering anomalous beliefs: he lived in a very predatory state of nature, violence was crucial for him to achieve career goals, and he was a predestined leader with a mission to become one of the world’s most important historical figures. This was only exacerbated by his paranoia, lack of emotions and intolerance to anyone seeming to be better than him. Referring to his view of the world as very predatory, where only violence can ensure his security, Aburish indicates that ‘Saddam as an individual may be unique, even demonic, but he is also a true son of Iraq’ (2012: 7). While social and psychological factors are hard to separate, it is certain that they affected Saddam’s decisionmaking, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. Kevin Woods characterised Saddam’s worldview as a ‘curious mix of shrewdness and nonsense’, in the sense that he was sometimes an astute, calculating tactician that reinvigorated Iraq, while at other times he was a brutal, delusional tyrant whose views were distorted by the Ba’athist ideology, the sycophancy and nepotism, in addition to his own parochialism, paranoia, narcissism and megalomania (Woods, 2008: 307; Brands and Palkki, 2012: 629). When it came to confronting a threat from the USA, Saddam seems to have believed that a showdown with the USA was inevitable,5 and certainly that the USA lacked resolve – its people could not stomach

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another war. Whatever Saddam did to recover economically and prepare for that war, according to Aburish (2012: 388), his long-term strategy never had a chance. He may not have been fully aware of it, because his ignorance prevented him from acknowledging unfavourable news (Devlin, 1992: 1052). Nor were his subordinates willing to risk their lives to tell him the truth. Saddam started to believe his own propaganda and his psychological profile was heavily bent to narcissistic behaviour, to such an extent that he compared himself to an immortal, untouchable figure. He thought he was too powerful and too important to lose a war. According to Stoessinger (2011: 310), his belief in his invincibility ‘underestimated his enemy’s resolve’. A very accurate analysis of this behaviour and its consequence comes from Glad (2002: 1), who theoretically reflects on tyrannical leaders whereby ‘fantasies held in check when his power is limited are apt to become his guides to action. As a consequence, his behaviour becomes more erratic, he runs into difficulties in meeting his goals, and his paranoid defences become more exaggerated’. As such, the point is not to analyse rationality, for in some ways Saddam was rational, but that his wrongly held beliefs challenged conventional morality and decisions/political behaviour, an important constructivist (interpretivist) contribution to this case study. The window of opportunity as a condition deserves special mention, even though, as highlighted earlier, it never was present. The USA was as powerful as ever (the Soviet Union was falling apart), and it had enormous internal and external support against Iraq. Moreover, while the Vietnam Syndrome had existed in the past, the US government was determined to change that, to bring victory to its people. Nor was there internal disagreement in the US government as to whether Saddam presented a threat to US interests in the region. The problem with this condition is that the reality did not reflect Saddam’s beliefs. Wrong beliefs about the USA are tied to his profile. It is therefore the case that Saddam acted under an assumption of the existence of a window of opportunity. The conflict between reality and beliefs significantly changes the utility of this condition. It therefore opens the possibility of interpreting this condition similarly as it occurs in the case of Moldova, where a window of opportunity actually existed, as discussed in the next chapter. In sum, it is hard to separate the impact of the two conditions analysed: domestic crisis and anomalous beliefs. One impacted the other. Anomalous beliefs shaped solutions to a domestic crisis. Kuwait was a prize Saddam badly needed to give to his people and thus fill their bellies, and while in retrospect it was an impossible prize to take by force, Saddam’s anomalous beliefs led him to think otherwise. The counter-factual assessment provided additional evidence that a change in these two conditions would

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likely have led to a different outcome. Saddam, after all, fully complied with all UN resolutions once the war on the ground began, threatening his regime’s survival. Without process tracing, it would have been difficult to understand this causal logic, namely, how Saddam chose to go to war facing these two conditions. Finally, there are some unresolved debates here, for instance, whether Saddam was irredeemably targeted or not, and to what extent different actors offered a compromise. While the resolution of that debate would impact the analysis of this case, the results would not be changed significantly, since debates do not revolve around the fundamental premises that Saddam faced a dire economic crisis, and that he held anomalous beliefs that impacted his decision-making.

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Moldova: Military Confrontation with Russian Forces The second case focuses on the asymmetric conflict between Moldova and Russia, or more specifically, the Russian forces that supported the separatists in Transnistria (also known as the Dniester Moldavian Republic, or the PMR, using the Russian acronyms). Earlier in the book, following a theoretical discussion, it was identified that domestic crisis, regime stability and window of opportunity shaped the calculations of minor powers, Moldova being the unique case. This chapter aims to unravel some of the causal mechanisms and context of these three conditions. The chapter starts with the contextualisation of the conflict with a conventional narrative that describes the case and why it represents an asymmetric military conflict. Prior to the outbreak of the war, little negotiation was taking place, and so the narrative focuses on key actors and their actions. Following the conventional interpretation, the three conditions are examined to assess their conjunctural influences on decision-making by Mircea Snegur, the first President of Moldova. The focus is on Snegur’s role since the Parliament granted him the power to appoint and dismiss cabinet ministers without legislative approval (Dawisha and Parrott, 1994: 322). Examination entails using process tracing to establish the link between the decisions and beliefs of Snegur’s government and identified necessary (domestic crisis), as well as other contributing, conditions (regime stability and window of opportunity). The centrality of domestic crisis reflects several theories, although prospect theory best illustrates the underlying logic, complemented by assumptions from theories focusing on regime stability and window of opportunity. A counter-factual discussion follows to show how altering the conditions would have affected the outcome. The focus is thus not on Russia, the major power, but on the minor power, Moldova. As will be seen in the conclusion to this chapter, however, politics within Russia played an important role in Snegur’s calculations. Snegur’s choice

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to go to war against the separatists and Russian forces that supported them is directly linked to the inflexible situation shaped by our conditions of interest. The purpose of this chapter is to trace how that shaping unfolded.

Conventional interpretation of the crisis Unlike the Gulf War, the 1992 Moldovan-Transnistrian dispute that erupted into violent conflict, mostly in the city of Bender, has been much less studied. Although the war was of an internecine character, pitting Orthodox Christians and members of the same ethnic group against each other, the political character of the conflict is deeply embedded in the identity struggles shaped by different historical trajectories. More specifically, the conflict centred on the status of minority ethnic groups within Moldova that did not support the political developments taking place in Chișinău, the capital of Moldova. The interest of these minorities, Russians, Ukrainians, Gagauzes, Jews and Bulgarians was to reanimate and safeguard their national cultures in the face of the Moldovan (Romanian) euphoria that sought to unify Moldova and Romania at that time (Kolsto et al, 1993: 976). The conflict can be characterised as asymmetric due to the weakness of the Moldovan military facing the Transnistrian separatists, with the Russian army defending the separatist territory (Hale, 2015: 166). Moldova, on the one hand, is a landlocked country with an area of 33,371 km2. Its total population, including Transnistria, is slightly over 4 million. It was severely underdeveloped and one of the poorest countries in Europe, if not the poorest (Sanchez, 2009: 154–6). Thus, at the beginning of the conflict, the Moldovan national army was in an embryonic stage. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, was at the time still the second largest military power in the world. Its 14th Army was stationed in Moldova to defend against NATO members Turkey and Greece. Having established a strong presence, many of its troops had been born in Moldova and were keen to fight for the Transnistrian cause. According to an interview by a Romanian senator and former member of the 14th Army, during the 1992 war, 14th Army officials supported the separatists with 24 tanks, 12 combat helicopters, 37,000 machine and submachine guns, as well as 120 cannons (Sanchez, 2009: 163). The number of Russian soldiers in the 14th Army is estimated to have been 9,250 (Blakkisrud and Kolstø, 2011: 186). The conflict, which some refer to as a civil war, began to intensify after the formation of the Transnistrian Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic in September 1990. In early 1991 several Transnistrian cities, including

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Tiraspol, Rîbnița, Dubăsari and Bender, were starting to form paramilitary organisations (Nedelciuc, 1992: 70). The Moldovan declaration of independence in August 1991 further deteriorated relations between the central government and Transnistria, and on 2 September, Transnistria declared its independence from Moldova. The Moldovan government, led by Mircea Snegur, deemed that the Transnistrian officials, in particular future president Igor Smirnov, were traitors and terrorists rather than legitimate negotiators (Roper, 2004: 108). This led to the capture of Smirnov and leaders of the Gagauzian separatist movement while they were in Ukraine. They were imprisoned for one month in Chișinău until a Transnistrian railroad blockade put pressure on their release. In December, Smirnov became President of Transnistria (Roper, 2004: 108). The dispute between Moldova and Transnistria would not, of course, be seen as asymmetric were it not for the presence of the Russian Army in Transnistria (Sanchez, 2009: 154). The Russian 14th  Army was stationed there, giving support during 1991 and 1992 to the Transnistrian paramilitary force through the transfer of men and arms. Before the conflict, approximately 40,000 tons of ammunition was stored in Transnistria. There were also about 10,000  service personnel and 60,000 reservists. And in late 1990, the Soviet Ministry of Interior sent its own troops to Transnistria. The distinction between the Transnistrian regular fighters and the Russian 14th  Army soldiers was not clear. For example, the Russian Army soldiers were often placed under the command of the Transnistrian military, and in December 1991 the Army’s chief commander, General Gennadii Yakovlev, took up the position as a Transnistrian defence minister. According to Kaufman (1996: 131), the Russian Army probably played a key role in reassuring Transnistrian voters that Smirnov’s confrontational course was safe since the 14th Army would protect Transnistria. Less relevant but adding to the asymmetry was the presence of a large contingent of Don Cossacks in late 1991 (Roper, 2004: 108). They were put on the state payroll, receiving around 3,000 rubles a month. This is perhaps why Crowther (1997a: 322) reflected that the Moldovan military force had little or no possibility of achieving its ends using force. The crisis escalated in 1992, when the Moldovan Parliament became increasingly agitated, pressuring President Snegur to take more decisive action to resolve the conflict. Soon afterwards, Snegur issued an ultimatum to the leadership in Tiraspol, demanding full compliance with Moldovan laws. Tiraspol leadership remained intransigent, after which Snegur declared martial law on the entire territory of Moldova, with the words, ‘the knife has been put to our throat…. The equanimity which I have always advocated … can no longer help us. Our national dignity is

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under threat!… Let us give the foreign [sic] separatists and the traitors a decisive repulse’ (Kolsto et al, 1993: 987). Clashes between the Moldovan and Transnistrian paramilitary soon occurred along the River Dniester, resulting in over one hundred deaths. Skirmishes turned into a war. The Russian factor at this point became even more involved and supportive of Transnistria. Specifically, the Russian nationalists took the opportunity to frame the conflict as a test case for Russians in the ‘near abroad’.1 For example, Russian right-wingers – Albert Makashov, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, Viktor Alksnis, Aleksandr Nevzorov and others – had made pilgrimages to Transnistria. Yet a number of other public figures also supported the Transnistrian cause, such as the leader of the Democratic Party of Russia, Nikolay Travkin (a centrist) and chair of the Committee on Foreign Affairs in the Russian Parliament, Evgenii Ambartsumov. Later, Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) Commander-in-Chief Evgennii Shaposhnikov and Russian Defence Minister Pavel Grachev threatened to intervene on the Transnistrian side. Most importantly, Boris Yeltsin, the Russian President, who tried to find a point of balance, was under pressure to act to escape allegations that he was betraying fellow Russians, but at the same time to keep good relations with Snegur, who had supported Yeltsin during his struggle against the putschists2 (Kolsto et al, 1993: 993). Eventually, Yeltsin and certain members of his entourage showed support for Transnistria to keep a cohesive policy. Vice President Alexander Rutskoy was a leading champion of the Dniester cause. Even ‘soft-liner’ Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev declared that Russia would act to protect the rights of all ethnic Russians. Moreover, in April, Yeltsin placed the 14th Army under Russian control (it had previously been under CIS control) by having Lieutenant-General Iuri Netkachev assume the authority to act (Roper, 2004: 109). During the same month, the Russian Congress of People’s Deputies passed a resolution supporting the population in Transnistria, and Rutskoy travelled to Tiraspol to give his support. These moves raised the alarm in Chișinău. High levels of fighting between Moldova and Transnistria took place in May 1992, especially in the cities of Dubăsari and Bender. Elements of the 14th Army reportedly attacked the villages of Cocieri and Coșnița on 11 and 23 May. Those who opposed the Transnistrian leadership, such as several members of the Christian Democratic Popular Front (FPCD), were arrested and even initially sentenced to death, further escalating tensions. Attempts were made to broker a deal, but neither side was willing to capitulate, at least not until late June, when Transnistrian elements captured the last police station loyal to Chișinău, followed by the 14th  Army tanks that pushed out the Moldovan military. At this point, the Moldovan side accepted defeat, and in July 1992 Yeltsin and

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Snegur signed a ceasefire agreement, thereby ending hostilities (Roper, 2004: 110; Sanchez, 2009: 163). At the height of the conflict, in June and July, approximately 300 people had been killed (Kolsto et al, 1993: 975). In short, although Snegur took a gamble, he quickly realised that he could not win. His pathway to conflict involved three important conditions: a domestic crisis, regime stability and a window of opportunity. Although individually they have a certain importance, it is their combined (conjunctural) effect that sufficiently explains Moldova’s choice of war over acquiescence. The following sections analyse the role of each condition in the Moldovan government’s calculations. The conclusion to the chapter will show that, congruent with prospect theory, the Moldovan regime chose a risky policy due to domestic losses. While still holding power and legitimacy, Snegur decided to act, but only having perceived a window of opportunity. As such, the gamble was well-calculated, and certainly complements multiple theoretical insights.

Consolidating statehood amidst disintegration: the necessary condition The necessary condition carries the most weight since it is present in all three cases studied in this book. To reiterate, a necessary condition is one whose presence is mandatory for an outcome to be present. That is, the outcome cannot occur without the necessary condition. However, the necessary condition alone may not be able to ensure the presence of the outcome; it might need to be supplemented by other conditions. Just like for other cases in this book, for Snegur’s government, the domestic crisis was this necessary condition. It was clearly visible through the following dimensions: lack of sovereignty and identity (pertaining to the Moldovan relationship with Romania and Russia), as well as separatism in Gagauzia and Transnistria, and finally, the economic crisis. Snegur’s regime knew that it had to reform and dismantle Soviet-era political structures, create new institutions, and mobilise new forces. Therefore, Moldova began its existence as an independent state without clear sovereignty, territorial control and identity, but with a strong nationalist party in government. The new government needed to quickly decide on the identity of the new state – whether it would be sovereign and independent, or in a transitional stage to be incorporated into Romania. The following sections discuss this historical identity crisis, followed by an analysis of separatist challenges in Gagauzia and Transnistria. Finally, economic instability is added as an additional factor that exacerbated the crisis.

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Historical struggle for Moldovan territory, identity and sovereignty The domestic crisis that is spiralling out of control induces risk-taking. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, as a new state Moldova had to secure a new identity, sovereignty and territorial control. However, all of these proved to be problematic and risky to solve. Moldova’s identity struggle reflected historical tensions between Romanian and Russian identities, and the identity of a recently independent Moldova. As such, it was linguistic and cultural issues that proved to be pivotal, followed by political and economic concerns. To understand these political cleavages, it is worth revisiting some of the history, going back to the Russo-Turkish war of 1806–1812, which concluded with the Treaty of Bucharest when Russia annexed the Moldovan area, located between the Prut and Dniester rivers. It became known as Bessarabia and enjoyed considerable autonomy (Kolsto et al, 1993: 977). At the time, Bessarabia’s population was 86 per cent Moldovan, that is, Romanian-speaking (Crowther, 1997a: 316–17; Roper, 2004: 103). Eventually, Russia began to more actively assimilate Bessarabians, and by also encouraging an influx of Russians and other ethnic groups, the result was a larger share of Slavs in this territory. Moreover, van Meurs claims that the Bessarabian population had no mature identity, identifying itself only in a territorial, non-ethnic sense (1998: 41). According to Kolsto, Edemsky and Kalashnikova, it consisted mostly of Jews, Germans and Slavs, and hardly any Romanians (1993: 977). The Bessarabian region is not to be confused with the Moldavian and Wallachian principality that achieved independence in 1878, following the Berlin Congress, becoming recognised as the Kingdom of Romania in 1881. The Romanian self-determination movement had an opportune moment during the Russian Revolution and the First World War to press claims for the self-determination of Bessarabia and its integration with Romania (Kolsto et al, 1993: 978; Crowther, 1997a: 317; Roper, 2004: 103; Sanchez, 2009: 155). More specifically, in 1917 the movement made cultural demands in combination with political aspirations, including the formation of the independent Moldovan Democratic Republic of Bessarabia, whose borders extended from the River Prut to the River Dniester, thus excluding modern-day Transnistria. The newly formed Republic soon voted to unite with Romania, forming Greater Romania, even though Ukrainians, Germans and Bulgarians in the Assembly of Popular Representatives of Bessarabia (the Sfatul Tarii) did not support this. The new Romanian state, however, had to deal with this large percentage of non-Romanian minorities, which were to be integrated through new schools, language tests and loyalty oaths, among others. The

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Russian language and cultural influences remained strong, especially in the media, administration and religious institutions. Unsurprisingly, the project of integration did not go smoothly, with perceptions that the Romanian administrators were corrupt, inefficient and elitist (Roper, 2004: 104). These perceptions lingered until the dissolution of the USSR. While the Romanian project of integrating Bessarabia was relatively peaceful, its efforts were curbed by Soviet propaganda and counterefforts (Crowther, 1997a: 317; Roper, 2004: 104). Namely, in order to create a springboard for a re-conquest of Bessarabia, in 1924 the Soviet administration created the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (MASSR), whose capital was Tiraspol (initially Balta), by merging Transnistria with present-day parts of Ukraine. The Moldovan ethnic population comprised only about a third of the total population in the MASSR. The Soviets were particularly adept at using the MASSR as a propaganda vehicle and base for Soviet activities in the Romaniancontrolled Bessarabia, such as displaying the technological and economic superiority of the Soviet Union, thereby attempting to attract Bessarabians away from Romania (Kolsto et al, 1993: 978). For example, Kishinev (Chișinău) in Bessarabia was proclaimed as the symbolic capital of the MASSR. Given that Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov– Ribbentrop Pact in 1939, the Soviet Union was able to receive German support in demanding Romania surrender Bessarabia and Bukovina, which it did, forming a new Soviet Socialist Republic of Moldova by joining Bessarabia with six counties that had constituted the MASSR. Stalin, however, changed the administrative borders in order to create more homogeneous republics, and also to make the future return of the territory to Romania more complicated (Kolsto et al, 1993: 978; Crowther, 1997a: 317). Briefly during the war, however, Romania did recapture the area, giving the territories beyond the River Dniester the name Transnistria. Ultimately the Red Army triumphed, and the Soviet Socialist Republic of Moldova was re-instituted. The Soviet phase was crucial because Moldova inherited a large Russian-speaking community from the MASSR; the brutality of Soviet policies also created lingering anger concerning this period. The immigration of workers who sought to fulfil labour demands generated by industrialisation efforts in Moldova’s urban areas led to the doubling of ethnic Russians in Moldova, from 6.7 per cent in 1941 to 13 per cent in 1989 (Kolsto et al, 1993: 979; Crowther, 1997a: 318; Roper, 2004: 105; Horowitz, 2005: 111). At the same time, many Romanians fled the country for Romania. Ethnic Russians also received disproportional representation in important political and economic institutions, creating resentment among ethnic Moldovans.

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For example, non-Moldovans accounted for 52 per cent of positions in industry, 49 per cent in the party and state leadership positions, and 63 per cent in scientific work (Crowther, 1997a: 318). Based on these observations, one can see the formation of conflicting identities. Moreover, the Russification policy attempted to create a distinct non-Romanian Moldovan nation, for example, by changing the alphabet from Latin to Cyrillic, finding differences between the Romanian and Moldovan language, and creating a new mythology (King, 1994: 349; Kaufman, 1996: 121). Many Moldovans resented Soviet cultural policies and saw the boundary between Romania and Moldova as artificial. This changed with Gorbachev’s reforms in the mid-1980s, when titular majorities were able to express their resentment against Soviet Russification policies. As such, in 1987 Moldovan intellectuals organised informal discussion groups that focused on greater cultural and linguistic freedom. They appealed to the general public to garner mass support, used the language of glasnost when confronting the communist leadership, and had broad linguistic and cultural issues that included nonethnic Moldovans, such as Ukrainians and Gagauzes (Kaufman, 1996: 122; Crowther, 1997a: 319; Roper, 2004: 105). By mid-1988 these informal discussion groups formed the Democratic Movement in Support of Restructuring, and used it to push their agenda, essentially aligning with Gorbachev. At this point, there were no divisions among ethnic groups, only desires to end cultural repression and to revise Moldova’s language laws. A few other demands were also made, such as an end to Slavic immigration into Moldova, as well as the institution of democracy and the rule of law. The divisions existed between political elites and those aspiring to power. Still the Democratic Movement and its supporters organised well-attended rallies and demonstrations, eventually winning the linguistic debate in 1989, whereby the republic’s Supreme Soviet (Soviet-era legislature) passed a law declaring Moldovan as the official language, that is, Romanian in Latin script instead of Cyrillic (Horowitz, 2005: 113; Sanchez, 2009: 157). Still, the movement pushed further, joining forces with other associations (the Democratic Movement and Mateevici Club), becoming the Popular Front, also known as the leading Moldovan opposition force. It included Communist Party apparatchiks that sought to shift their policies, particularly among regional and mid-level cadres, excluding top leaders who tended to oppose the nationalist movement (Kaufman, 1996: 123; Crowther, 1997a: 319). Facing increasing threats to their interests, elites on both sides entered into a fierce competition that included the use of violence. Crowther (1997b: 299) describes the situation at the time as very chaotic.

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However, after proclaiming Moldovan as the state language, the Popular Front quickly adopted two parallel ideas that would later become a key political issue. One was a more radical platform, that is, favouring a proRomanian agenda over the pan-reform agenda. The goal of this movement was to unite with Romania. The other was a more moderate platform that sought an independent state (Kolsto et al, 1993: 979). This split in ideas reflected the ethnic Moldovan identity crisis: are they Romanians or a separate people? At the same time, the Communist Party became divided between reformists, which cooperated with the Popular Front as far as the electoral arena, and conservatives, who consolidated their control over Transnistria fearing that their positions as technocrats and factory directors (that depended on links to Moscow) were under threat. During the March 1990 elections to the republican Supreme Soviet, the Popular Front formed a parliamentary coalition with other parties, totalling 66 per cent of the seats. At the same time, the Communist Party of Moldova lost almost all its power. Popular Front member Alexandru Moșanu became a speaker and the Parliament confirmed a government composed almost entirely of ethnic Moldovans. Mircea Snegur, a leading Popular Front supporter, was elected as President by the Parliament while Mircea Druc, who advocated a union with Romania, became Prime Minister (Crowther, 1997a: 320; Roper, 2010: 475). The consequences of the prevalence of the radical platform soon became clear. The idea of Moldovan sovereignty was jettisoned in favour of a pro-Romanian and pro-unionist agenda. This is why, for example, many schools switched to teach in Moldovan, while Russian schools started to close down, partially due to parents’ preference for their children to be taught in the official language. The curriculum of all schools, irrespective of the language of education, became nationalised, and history classes no longer taught the history of the USSR but rather the history of the Romanians (Kolsto et al, 1993: 982). Followers of the Popular Front displayed banners telling the local Russians ‘Suitcase-Train Station-Home’, and a Russian student was beaten to death in May 1990 (Kaufman, 1996: 123). According to Kaufman (1996: 123), the driving force behind this violence and the security dilemma was fear of the ethnic extinction of Moldovan and Romanian roots, represented through language and culture. This led to nationalists being interested in pushing for their interests while ignoring, rather than intentionally repressing, the Russian speakers. However, minorities needed reassurances. In the words of Zabarah (2012: 183), lack of assurances reflects a commitment problem where there is a security dilemma. In particular, when some groups increase their security vis-à-vis other groups, these other groups will then seek to respond with similar measures.

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The domestic crisis further unravelled when the Second Soviet Congress of People’s Deputies in Moscow declared the Ribbentrop–Molotov Pact illegal. Certain groups, including the unification movement, understood that the annexation of Bessarabia to the USSR in 1940 was annulled. This led to a declaration of Moldovan sovereignty in August 1991 following the failed coup in Moscow a few days earlier (Blakkisrud and Kolstø, 2011: 182–3). However, suspecting that this was the first step toward unification with Romania, the move alienated the Russian minority in the Dniester area. For example, Iurie Roşca, president of the Front’s parliamentary faction, stated that ‘Moldova will unify with Romania – it is inevitable. We need time for Russia to lose power in Moldova’ (quoted in Roper, 2004: 107). According to Crowther (1997a: 321), the militarisation of the crisis by the Moldovan political elite was due to a growing sense of an external threat – Russia. Russia, that is, the USSR, helped fuel this feeling by refusing to recognise Moldova’s independence. In Chișinău, extremists thus took control of the agenda, drawing their support from the masses that participated in street demonstrations. Moderates found themselves marginalised and unable to create a reform agenda suited to attract support from all of Moldova’s ethnic communities. However, they did eventually manage to replace Prime Minister Mircea Druc with a less radical Valeriu Muravschi. Even President Mircea Snegur began to distance himself from the Popular Front, claiming to be an independent political actor. Still, these developments caused ‘reactive nationalism’ by the Russian-speaking community since they feared a change in the status quo, losing their language and elite privileges (Sanchez, 2009: 157). Moldova needed to act immediately on two fronts facing the threat of the creation of de facto states on its territory: Gagauzia and Transnistria. These two confrontations risked drawing Moldova into an uncontrollable situation that would, in the words of Chirtoaca (2004: 26), ‘have unforeseeable consequences for the future of the republic’. In sum, Moldova’s contentious historical and cultural leanings unravelled with the dissolution of the USSR. With the nationalists seizing power, society quickly became polarised. The domestic crisis was clearly present. The polarisation was most visible in the cases of Gagauzia and Transnistria, whose roles in the crisis are explored next.

Gagauzia Although separatism in Gagauzia was eventually successfully managed by the Moldovan regime, at the time, it presented a serious domestic challenge. Gagauzia is a region in Moldova composed mostly of

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Gagauzes, a Turkic minority with Christian Orthodox faith. Just like with Transnistria, Gagauz ethnic elites played on minority fears of losing their language and unification with Romania, because inter-war rule from Bucharest was remembered as a bitter period of ethnic oppression. The Gagauz language faced a serious crisis since younger people were not learning it. The Popular Front’s most extreme members also argued that the Gagauzes, like the Russians, should return to the places from which they had come (Chinn and Roper, 1998: 89). This angered the Gagauzes who claimed that they were an indigenous people, not migrants from Asia. Finally, most Gagauzes were fluent in Russian and did not want to learn another language – only 4 per cent spoke Moldovan in 1989 (Chinn and Roper, 1998: 91). These events stimulated Gagauz nationalism. The main organisation representing Moldova’s Gagauz minority during the early transition period was Gagauz Khalky (GK) (also known as the GagauzKhalky People’s Movement), which grew out of a cultural club in the southern Moldovan city of Comrat. GK demanded language rights for the Gagauz people inhabiting the south of Moldova. Following this, cultural demands were raised, as well as wider political demands. In particular, GK passed a resolution on 19 February 1989, demanding those regions with a majority Gagauz population the status of an Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic within the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic, irrespective of the introduction of planned language laws. The internationalist movement Edinstvo, the Transnistrian counterpart, was a natural ally. In fact, many of GK’s leading members, Bulgar and Capangi, were simultaneously members in both organisations (Zabarah, 2012: 184). Facing opposition in Chișinău, which did not support Gagauzia’s plans for autonomy, GK advocated autonomy through its deputies in the Congress of USSR People’s Deputies in Moscow. They made an official request for granting the Gagauzes their autonomous status, which was handed to the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union through the Soviet Congress deputy. Moscow subsequently demanded the Supreme Soviet of Moldova create a commission to look into Gagauz demands (Crowther, 1997a: 320; Zabarah, 2012: 185). Being ignored by Chișinău, Gagauz activists had begun creating parallel state structures in November 1989. For example, a congress attended by 600 delegates declared the Gagauz Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic within the border of the MASSR. Furthermore, GK began to carry out various meetings and gatherings throughout the villages, seeking to join the newly formed republic. It is not that the leadership in Chișinău was unsympathetic to Gagauz demands, according to Chinn and Roper (1998: 94), but rather that Gagauzia was seen as needing development assistance. Moreover, Chișinău felt that is was losing control and acted harshly to stop the Gagauz drive

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for autonomy. On 3 December 1989, GK created an interim committee that assumed the parallel functions of official state organs. Meanwhile, whatever attempt was made to negotiate with Chișinău failed. Neither did the Moldovan Supreme Soviet (parliament) reach any conclusion on the autonomy question (Zabarah, 2012: 186). Clearly, at the time, the status of Gagauzia seemed to be an indivisible issue, a common reason why negotiations fail. In the spring of 1990, the indivisibility widened when GK held elections for its organisation and the Moldovan Supreme Soviet, as well as the local Soviets, thereby establishing control over the local political institutions. Expecting no positive response from Chișinău, Gagauz elites began to plan for their exit strategies such as the creation of parallel state symbols and holding local elections for the Gagauz Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. Perhaps a foreseen event, in July 1990, the Moldovan Supreme Soviet, in particular, the Popular Front members, turned down the autonomy request, what was perceived in Comrat as a clear rebuff. As a countermove, Comrat declared independence in the southern part of the country, on 19 August 1990, even before Tiraspol (Roper, 2004: 102). Perhaps a prudent move, Russian was declared as the language of interethnic communication, in order to garner the support of non-Gagauz minorities. Stepan Topal, the head of the Rayon Soviet, became chair of the Gagauz Republic’s interim committee and later President of the Gagauz Republic, supported by factory directors, OSTK (Ob’edinennyi Soyuz Trudovykh Kollektivov, Council of Workers) and Edinstvo members (Zabarah, 2012: 186). When Moldovan volunteer units attempted to intervene by force, they clashed with the Gagauz and Transnistrian volunteers. The Soviet Bolgrad Division intervened in the scuffle, defending the Gagauz nomenklatura. Territorial control was then taken away from Chișinău (Roper, 2004: 26). Following the events in Transnistria, in March 1991 a referendum was held on the question of keeping the Soviet Union. According to the results, 99.2 per cent of the Gagauz electorate voted ‘yes’. However, when the August coup against Gorbachev occurred, the Gagauz leaders declared their final independence from the Soviet Union on 19  August 1991 (Chinn and Roper, 1998: 96). In December 1991 Stepan Topal was elected as the first President of Gagauzia. He had little interest in any agreement implying subordination to Chișinău, although this did not last very long. According to Horowitz, in May 1991 a moderate Gagauz opposition had already emerged that offered to cooperate with Chișinău. Topal himself became more willing to negotiate. In return for local political and cultural autonomy, Gagauzia was asked to accept Moldovan sovereignty. Snegur forcefully endorsed this solution, even though active hostilities lasted well into 1993 due to unilateral actions by a rogue paramilitary leader

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controlling a large faction of the Gagauz ‘Republican Guard’ (permitted to operate by Topal himself) (Horowitz, 2005: 118). Finally, in 1993 Chișinău launched a policy to engage the separatists back into the republic by offering significant regional autonomy, as well as assurances that Moldova would not unify with Romania. Extensive compromises were made to both the Gagauzes and Transnistrians. The Gagauzes accepted this new development and compromised with Chișinău, allowing elections to be held in their republic (Crowther, 1997a: 333). Cooperation reflects how the group capabilities of the Gagauz minority were much weaker than in the case of Transnistria (Spinner, 2007: 4; Zabarah, 2012: 188). Unlike Transnistria, Gagauzia did not control any industrial resources, and nor was it a unified territory, but rather a loose conglomerate of villages. Nor was Moscow very present in the Gagauz situation. Perhaps this is why Gagauz elites, especially Topal, understood that a Gagauz republic would not be viable on its own; the costs of independence were too high. It was the most backward region of Moldova, with a harsh climate altering between water shortages and floods. Zabrah (2012: 190) states that the costs of successful collective action were high for the Gagauzes, while their bargaining power was weak compared to Chișinău. This may also explain why the Gagauz elites always maintained a dialogue with Chișinău, eventually leading to a final agreement on autonomy in December 1994. The main takeaway, however, is that Gagauzia presented a significant domestic challenge to Chișinău at the same time an armed conflict in Transnistria was unravelling.

Transnistria Unlike in Gagauzia, the domestic crisis in Transnistria was never resolved. As mentioned, Transnistria was a region where approximately 55 per cent of the population was ethnic Ukrainian or Russian, while around 40 per cent was Moldovan (Kaufman, 1996: 119). Excluding Bender and a few right-bank villages, the region was never part of Romania apart from a brief period during the Second World War, and thus reunification with Romania did not make sense. Transnistrian mobilisation for separation from Moldova emerged due to perceptions of persecution of Russophone ethnic groups by the nationalist Romanian-speaking government in Moldova (Roper, 2004: 103; Balmaceda, 2013: 448). In the words of Kaufman (1996: 122), prioritising the Moldovan language and the Romanian tricolour flag seemed to foreshadow a renewal of the chauvinist policies of fascist Iron Guard Romania. The biggest damage, however, was made when Snegur refused to consider giving any political autonomy to

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the PMR; instead, he threatened to suppress the move toward autonomy. According to Nantoi (2004: 163), Chișinău made the mistake of ignoring the specifics and phobias of the Transnistrian population. The mobilisation for separatism was channelled through the Internationalist Movement for Unity (Edinstvo) and OSTK. Edinstvo and OSTK in Tiraspol organised factory strikes and demonstrations against the 1989 language law, which instituted Moldovan as the sole state language. Of course, the real threat was the shifting balance of power away from ethnic Russian speakers to Romanian speakers (Roper, 2004: 106). According to Kaufman (1996: 126), PMR politicians had much to gain, in particular increased power and career opportunities for themselves, by promoting secession, while they also had much to lose – their jobs, influence and perquisites, if they submitted to the language law. Likewise, Mason (2009: 160) stated that the passage of a package of controversial language laws threatened the position of many Eastern elites, such as factory directors, as well as their managerial and engineering support. The industrial workers, who organised strikes against the language law, could have escaped the burdens of the law by requesting an exemption. However, strike committees were dominated by the workers’ de facto bosses, Communist Party heads and deputy factory directors. PMR elites also used local media to stir up hostility and fear against Chișinău. Climbing the escalation ladder, in January 1990 a referendum was conducted in Tiraspol on the question of giving the city and its surrounding county status as an autonomous territory based on selffinancing and self-rule. Shortly after, the referenda were held in Bender and also some other towns. It seems that around 90 per cent of the voters were in favour of the proposal, and there was little reason to doubt this result given the high prevalence of Russian speakers in the polling districts (Kolsto et al, 1993: 982). However, PMR leaders also mobilised volunteer detachments to block roads and bridges, and thus provoke fights against Moldovan police forces. These fights were used to promote even more fear and confrontation in self-defence. Escalating the security dilemma, these steps only exacerbated the greatest fears of the Moldovan nationalists. In response to these moves by the government in Tiraspol, violent confrontations started on the streets of Chișinău, and Russophone deputies withdrew from the republican Supreme Soviet in May 1990. A few months later, Gagauzia announced the formation of its own republic. The Soviet Ministry of Interior troops arrived in Transnistria to establish support, and Dniester authorities declared their independence from Chișinău in September 1990, by proclaiming to be a constituent part of the USSR, that is, the legitimate heir to MASSR. The move was supported by ethnic Ukrainians,

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Bulgarians and Russians (Kolsto et al, 1993: 980). Two months later, Chișinău declared that support of Transnistria was a criminal offence, while police stations in Transnistria loyal to the Moldovan authorities were under siege until they surrendered. On 2 November 1990, the first military encounter took place in Dubossary, causing three deaths (Kolsto et al, 1993: 984). Both sides may have been acting in line with desperation theory, where violence becomes a preferred choice given the seemingly unbridgeable rift between the pro-Romanian government in Chișinău and the proSoviet government in Tiraspol. However, adding to the complexity was that the new government in Tiraspol also claimed sovereignty over the city of Bender (Tighina in Moldovan), on the right side of the River Dniester. The claim emerged due to the desires of the majority of the population of the city, which was Russian-speaking, to be included as part of Transnistria. Such a move was, however, hostile to Chișinău and had little legal backing in international law (Kolsto et al, 1993: 983). Separatism in Transnistria was quickly able to differentiate itself from Moldovan separatism from the USSR. That is, unlike Moldova, which is a national state for the Moldovan nation in which some other national groups also happen to be living, ethnicity therefore being a constituting principle, Transnistria sought to become a supranational state. The new republic adopted three state languages – Russian, Ukrainian and Moldovan – which was not the case in Chișinău. Of course, these three languages were not on equal footing, and Russian clearly dominated in official communications. According to Kolsto, Edemsky and Kalashnikova (1993: 983), political tolerance in Transnistria was greater than in the Moldovan-controlled part of the country, since one could buy official Moldovan papers in Tiraspol but not the other way round. However, a few media sources from Chișinău were still suppressed in Transnistria. In early 1991, Igor Smirnov, leader of OSTK and future president of Transnistria, was arrested and incarcerated in Chișinău. In response, a women’s committee affiliated with OSTK organised a railway blockade on the left bank, practically halting all Moldovan transport communication with the rest of the Soviet Union, choking the Moldovan economy. This forced the Moldovan authorities to release Smirnov. They later abducted Transnistrian defence minister, Gennady Yakovlev, in Ukraine. Facing hostility from Chișinău, Transnistrian citizens quickly began to form paramilitary organisations. Afterwards, the Russian-speaking cities of Tiraspol, Bender and Ribnitsa suspended application of central government edits in their territories, and instead asserted sovereignty over all local institutions under the banner of Edinstvo (Crowther, 1997a: 320). This was confirmed in a referendum on 1 December 1991,

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where allegedly 97.7  per cent of the votes supported the creation of Transnistria as a part of the Soviet Union but separate from Moldova. However, due to the lack of concrete documentation, the accuracy of the referendum cannot be established. Still, Kaufman (1996: 128) believes that intimidation served an important purpose in how people voted. Also, in parallel presidential elections, the pro-secessionist, pro-Soviet Igor Smirnov was elected head of the new Transnistrian Republic. Of course, independence within the Soviet Union was a mirage, for it would require the major Soviet Republics to sign a union treaty. However, insisting on the appearance of popular support served to obstruct any future compromise with Chișinău (Kaufman, 1996: 128; Blakkisrud and Kolstø, 2011: 183). Low-scale fighting occurred between pro-Chișinău police forces and PMR units throughout Transnistria, since the former sought to remain in control of the region while the latter sought to get rid of it. However, it was Transnistrian control of the right bank city of Bender that truly escalated the conflict in mid-1992 (Sanchez, 2009: 157). President Snegur, facing pressure in Parliament to deal with separatism, responded with force in June, fighting battles with both Transnistrian forces and parts of the Russian 14th Army (which, at this point, openly intervened), with little or no possibility for Moldovan forces to win (Crowther, 1997a: 322). Transnistrian elites, fearing for their status, yet having better resources (such as Russian support), successfully created a political disagreement over language, ethnic symbols, identity and the focus of loyalty. This resulted in a brief, but successful, war (Kaufman and Bowers, 1998: 129). Chișinău made an earnest attempt to resolve the secessionist problem, which was high on its agenda. In the words of Roper (2004: 106), the ‘status of Transnistria was the single most important domestic issue facing the Moldovan government’. The quote reaffirms that the domestic crisis centred on Transnistria. While the Moldovan regime contributed to constructing the crisis in the first place, the fear of loss of territory was both recognised by the Moldovan regime and induced it to act, in accordance with prospect theory.

Economic factors Often accompanying military crises are economic issues. The factors above highlight why Moldova was in a particularly acute domestic crisis. The acuteness, however, was exacerbated by lack of economic development. Although Moldova was historically agricultural and undeveloped, Moldova’s development in the Soviet Union did not start well, with the

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country experiencing a serious drought during 1946 and 1947, causing a famine that killed several thousand people. Afterwards, Moldova made some economic progress under Soviet rule, especially in Chișinău, Tiraspol and neighbouring areas where industrial activity boomed. Agriculture retained an important role, accounting for 42.4 per cent of national income, employing approximately 168,000 people at the end of the Soviet period. In many aspects, the Moldovan economy followed Soviet lines – industry, commerce and finance were state-owned. By estimate, one-third of industrial enterprises were subordinated to Soviet economic ministries, and two-thirds were subordinated to republican authorities. However, ethnic Moldovans were underrepresented in many of the more desirable professional, managerial and industrial production jobs, while they dominated the poorer agricultural sector. This led to symbolic, political and economic grievances (Kaufman, 1996: 121; Crowther, 1997a: 328). In many other sectors, Moldova made little progress and faced difficult economic problems prior to independence. For example, in 1987 Moldova was the fourth least urbanised of the Soviet Republics. Capital investment and industrial employment rates were below national averages. During the early 1980s, Moldova had lower national income per capita than any other non-central Asian republic. Regarding attainments in education, Moldova held the last place within the USSR (Crowther, 1997a: 319). When the Soviet Union dissolved, trade suffered since most factories produced for the Soviet market. Moreover, Moldova faced an almost complete lack of energy resources to fuel its electric power generation plants, and industrial enterprises were forced to reduce production (Crowther, 1997a: 328; Blakkisrud and Kolstø, 2011: 188). With the separatist threat, Moldova was risking losing significant industrial assets in Transnistria, approximately 40 per cent of Moldova’s total capacity (Sanchez, 2009: 158). Separatism threatened to disrupt traditional economic ties with enterprises located there. The blockage of transport routes prevented any serious market reform efforts. Moreover, nearly all of Moldova’s electric power generation capacity was concentrated in Transnistria, causing additional disruption. The Russian authorities also decided to periodically withhold energy supplies to Moldova in order to gain leverage over the fate of Transnistria and the 14th Army stationed there (Crowther, 1997a: 328). Not surprisingly, the conflict led to the bankruptcy of the state budget. It was under these conditions that Moldova had to enter rapid political transformation, but lack of clear policy direction and administrative organisation by the new regime only worsened the conditions. Namely, initial reform efforts lacked coherence and faced poor implementation.

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Not surprisingly, figures showed dismal performance. Production dropped in both industry and agriculture by 35  per cent between 1990 and the end of 1992, while foreign trade alone dropped by 34 per cent in 1991 (The World Bank, 1994: 5–7). Hyperinflation ensued. Thus, the population immediately felt the impact of wages declining by 33 per cent in 1991. The economic dimensions of the crisis were rather serious. The government did attempt to address the problem immediately, but reform and privatisation were slow to take place given the priority of consolidating the government and basic state competencies, including ending armed conflict. In short, economic challenges rapidly emerged. The consequence of economic problems was the alienation of the Transnistrian Slavs who feared their economic future. What they feared even more was the prospect of living under Romanian rule, which was considerably poorer than Russia, and even Ukraine (Horowitz, 2005: 123). Although such fears were never realised, perceptions and beliefs induced action, an important constructivist premise. The theoretical complementarity of other conditions will be seen below, as Snegur relied both on his popularity (regime stability) and crises in Russia (window of opportunity) to solve the domestic problems highlighted above. Relying on these two conditions made Snegur’s risk-taking well calculated.

INUS conditions Why do we need to go beyond domestic crisis? After all, prospect theory would highlight that it is enough for leaders to face losses in order to make risky choices. While domestic crisis captures the need to act quite accurately, other conditions augment the calculation that war against a major power is a risk worthwhile taking. In other words, having a stable nationalistic regime meant liability for inaction, while a window of opportunity offset the risk behind the gamble. The causal logic of these two conditions is elucidated next.

Regime stability: nationalism as the foundation of the regime’s popularity The idea behind regime stability is that Snegur was able to marshal the support of the winning coalition. Winning coalitions are a key element of selectorate theory. Risks are worth taking if they will not harm the winning coalition. In the case of Moldova, the top political hierarchy consisted of three roles: the presidency, the prime ministership, and the

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presidency of the Parliament. As already mentioned, legislative elections in 1990 resulted in a power seizure by the ethnic Moldovans. Approximately one-third of deputies elected to the republican Supreme Soviet were supporters of the Moldovan Popular Front. The Popular Front also had the additional support of centrist deputies, thus commanding a majority of the votes in the new legislature and backing the appointment of Mircea Snegur for the presidency (Crowther, 1997a: 320). However, the Moldovan Popular Front included two parallel and conflicting ideas. One was a more radical platform, that is, favouring a pro-Romanian agenda over the pan-reform agenda. The goal of this movement was to unite with Romania. The other was a more moderate platform that sought an independent Moldovan state (Kolsto et al, 1993: 979). As such, an important premise in this analysis is that the foundation of the regime’s popularity needed to include both the extreme and moderate elements, whereby the former proved pivotal to starting the war. Why did the regime need extreme nationalists in its winning coalition? Zabarah argues that since the centre (Moscow) was associated with communism, any struggle against the centre, that is, a way to achieve its own political goals, naturally facilitated non-inclusive ethnic nationalism (2012: 183). The struggle emerged from national elites who naturally had control over the cultural organisations and universities in their republics. Not surprisingly, it was two significant informal political groups that began the whole process of challenging the Communist Party, namely, the Alexei Mateevici Literary and Musical Group and the Democratic Movement in Support of Restructuring. Moldovan intellectuals and writers long opposed the Soviet language policy that subordinated Moldovan to the Russian language. Therefore, the language issue became a rallying point (Batalden and Batalden, 1997: 66). Finally, Gorbachev provided an opportunity to act by introducing reforms that allowed titular majorities to express their resentment against Soviet Russification policies, namely, ‘glasnost’ (Roper, 2004: 105). The Moldovan intelligentsia had a three-prong strategy in order to increase the visibility of their demands, according to Livezeanu (1990: 173). First, a decision was made to appeal to the general public for mass support that would put pressure on the Communist Party elites. Second, the intellectuals adopted the language of glasnost whenever they needed to affront the Communist leadership. They hoped that they would gain union-level backing for their reforms. And third, the movement initiative sought broad cultural, educational and linguistic issues so that non-ethnic Moldovans (Ukrainians, Bulgarians and Gagauzes) would be encouraged to participate. The strategy of including different ethnic groups and seeking broad support, however, naturally included the most

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vocal opponents of the Communist Party, the radical nationalists, who, with the support of government authorities, led the elections of the Moldovan Supreme Soviet in early 1990. Particular attention needs to be paid to the presidency. Unlike the contradicting elements within the Popular Front, the presidency was both stable and the main source of power. Specifically, even though Moldova was a state in transition, it was democratic. According to Freedom House scores, Moldova was a consistent leader in terms of democratic performance in the post-Soviet space (excluding the Baltic states) (Protsyk, 2012: 177). President Mircea Snegur enjoyed the most influential position. Snegur’s initial political motto was ‘one people, two states’, referring to his desire to see Moldova and Romania as two states with the same people. Romania provided diplomatic and economic support to Moldova during the early years. Nonetheless, while the presidency was stable, it was the legislature that was divided between the extremists and the moderates, as well as the opposition. More specifically, the extreme elements of the Popular Front increasingly expressed a desire to unify with Romania, but many ethnic Moldovans did not support the idea of unification, which is where a new catch phrase developed, ‘cultural Romanian-ness and political Moldovanness’. There are three reasons why unification was not supported by most Moldovans. First, the process of democratisation in Romania was developing slowly, and many Moldovans feared that the political and cultural freedoms that they had gained since independence could be lost again through unification. Second, many Moldovans recalled that life in interwar Romania had been far from idyllic. Politicians from further south tended to dominate Romanian political life, treating Moldova as a backward province. And third, Romania did not have much to offer economically. In fact, Romania had lower living standards than Moldova. Moldova wanted to continue to trade with the former Soviet Union while Romania focused on the Balkans (Kolsto et al, 1993: 986; Horowitz, 2005: 116). This clash eventually led to the legislative deadlock (Crowther, 1997b: 308). The Popular Front’s unravelling and radical statements did not threaten Snegur’s popularity (and thus, regime stability), but they do reflect Snegur’s difficult position of balancing between the moderate and extreme factions. In fact, it was this balancing that put pressure on him to initially act against a peaceful settlement over Transnistria. While on the one hand, the government was not ready to deal with separatism – according to Valeriu Muravschi, Premier during the 1991–92 fighting, ‘we were not ready, on the moral-psychological plane, to recognise some kind of administrative territory’ (Kaufman, 1996: 125) – on the other hand, the Popular Front

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extremists were on the move. For example, when the Gagauz minority in southern Moldova announced a referendum vote on autonomy for their self-declared Gagauz region, Popular Front leaders called for volunteers to stop the vote. These volunteer detachments, legalised by Premier Mircea Druc, were blocked by Soviet armed forces, but then turned to Transnistria and fought a brief battle there. With this kind of antiRussian behaviour deemed as ‘too anti-Russian’ even by some Popular Front radicals (Interior Minister Ion Costaş), the government was clearly unable to move in a more peaceful direction without a major shake-up (Kaufman, 1996: 125). A shake-up would have threatened the winning coalition, and thus, regime stability. While Snegur would later part ways with the Popular Front, during the conflict with Transnistrian and Russian forces, he allegedly engaged in ‘competitive authoritarianism’, whereby he used harassment and manipulation of the electoral rules to exclude his main rivals in the presidential race. Snegur also imposed steep fines and prison terms for ‘slandering’ the President (Levitsky and Way, 2010: 203). Kaufman (2015: 143) also describes Snegur as being initially too stubborn to discuss offering political autonomy to Transnistria. In lieu of compromise, Snegur sent deputy parliamentary chair Victor Puscasu to the Transnistrian congress to threaten criminal action against its participants. And in September 1990, he had the Parliament declare a state of emergency and ‘presidential rule’ in order to suppress the region’s move toward autonomy. Kaufman refers to this behaviour as an ‘authoritarian temperament’ resulting from Snegur’s Communist Party background (2015: 143). However, a former adviser to Snegur stated that the political climate was such that compromise was a symbol of weakness and humiliation (Snyder, 2000). A different view pointed out that Snegur’s procedure reflected his judgement that the Transnistrian leaders would be uncompromising, so that if he had compromised first, then they would simply have made more extreme demands (Horowitz, 2000: 175–80). Yet, according to Hale (2015: 166–7), Snegur was the kind of leader who was moderate and preferred to compromise, rather than enter a conflict, with a desire to orient himself toward Europe and having a personal network with parliamentary leaders. He wanted to establish democracy by building ‘consensus among people in one political boat’, and it was ‘necessary to share power and establish a certain balance’ (Hale, 2015: 167). For Snegur, the compromising character of the Moldovan government was important in being accepted by Europe which is why, not surprisingly, in 1995 Moldova became the first CIS country to be accepted into the Council of Europe (Luchinskii, 2007: 327–8). Most importantly, Snegur survived the early years because he recognised a need

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to distance himself from the Popular Front. He thereby declared that he was acting as an independent political actor. This change in behaviour confirms that Snegur wanted to follow popular demand, eventually achieving not only a more moderate type of governance but also an end to the conflict, that is, a compromise with Russia. It is worth adding that Snegur anticipated military defeat at the hands of the Russians. He had to act to show strong resistance to the separatist challenge and Russian support to those movements. However, he also had to act due to pressure by the Moldovan Popular Front’s Romanianist goals and policies. It seems that Moldovans understood this, because the resulting defeat in the conflict was not blamed on Snegur and the Agrarian Democrats, but rather on the Moldovan Popular Front. The Moldovan government’s acceptance of defeat and dependence on Russia was viewed as inevitable (Horowitz, 2005: 122–3). It was the Moldovan Popular Front that lost much of its power due to the war, while Snegur was able to retain power and change his domestic approach due to his popularity and wise political manoeuvring. More specifically, following the conflict, Snegur realised that the winning coalition was losing popular support. He induced a leadership crisis in order to remove Pan-Romanian Mircea Druc from the post of Prime Minister. To do so, Snegur began by moving more toward the moderates, namely, the Agrarians, who were gaining popular support. By switching his allegiance, the monopoly of the Popular Front was broken. Subsequently, the dismissal of Prime Minister Mircea Druc gained him the support of Moldova’s ethnic minorities. Furthermore, to consolidate his own position as a powerful and independent actor, he held direct popular elections in December 1991 (boycotted by the Popular Front) to confirm himself in the presidential office. He succeeded with overwhelming support, receiving 98.2 per cent of the votes cast (Crowther, 1997a: 322). The elections established a new winning coalition and affirmed Moldova’s path toward independence and away from the domestic crisis. Interestingly, such an outcome may well reflect the fact that the democratic character of the regime matters, as well as the size of the ‘winning coalition’, following selectorate theory (Bueno de Mesquita et al, 2005). Snegur was sensitive to the feelings of the general public as they were paying the price of conflict. He was also was apt in channelling the discontent to his own advantage. What emerges from the above analysis, however, is that during the conflict with Transnistrian and Russian forces, Snegur was less able to make political manoeuvres that would avert the conflict, since the conflict was pushed by the Popular Front. The risk to fight the Russian Army was taken because it was a policy in line with his ‘winning coalition’. Such a policy was rooted in nationalist sentiments, a

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cultural element that has been observed as driving the weak to fight the strong (see Fischerkeller, 1998).

Window of opportunity: crises in the USSR/Russia The idea behind the window of opportunity is that the use of force may help one attain one’s goals (or secure an otherwise weak negotiating position) while an adversary is temporarily weakened. Snegur likely perceived that the adversary, Russia, was indeed temporarily weak. He was, after all, part of the Soviet political system. Buckley (2013: 175) mentions identification of a political crisis, a nationality crisis and an economic crisis during the dissolution of the USSR. For Cohen, the crisis was economic, social and political (2009: 112). Still, while there may be a debate regarding the scope of the crisis, the impact of the crisis on the Soviet Union and early Russia should be clear, for the following reasons. First, it was certainly obvious to Snegur that there was a leadership crisis in the late Soviet Union. The last Soviet ruler, Gorbachev, was rapidly losing popularity in the second half of 1990 to euphoria around Boris Yeltsin who was elected President of the Russian Republic by a popular vote. Gorbachev’s presidency of the Soviet Union was deeply shaken and seen as substantially less legitimate. Even Gorbachev’s most important constituency, pro-reform intelligentsia (known as his own ‘foremen of glasnost and perestroika’) began to defect to Yeltsin. According to Cohen (2009: 114), Gorbachev’s original perestroika coalition had completely collapsed. Others, such as his close ally and foreign minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, resigned. His chief military adviser stated the common view of Gorbachev’s former allies, namely, ‘Gorbachev is dear to me, but the Fatherland is dearer!’ (Cohen, 2009: 114). According to Buckley (2013: 175), Gorbachev was capitulating, in a ‘self-destructive’ drift. There was a broad dissatisfaction with Gorbachev’s leadership, policies and the Soviet system, dubbed ‘Gorbastroika’. Not surprisingly, rumours spread of a coup deposing Gorbachev. A potential coup meant that the window of opportunity was indeed ‘temporary’, an important theoretical caveat. Gorbachev’s reforms, along with other developments, had significantly contributed to the removal and weakening of the elements of party state command and control that had defined the Soviet economy and made it workable in important ways for decades (Cohen, 2009: 123). Prices for Soviet oil dropped to almost nothing. The government’s budget deficit and foreign debt soared. This caused inflation, rising prices, fewer consumer goods and rising unemployment. Local mafias made the situation worse by setting

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prices and preventing the laws of supply and demand from operating (Buckley, 2013: 187). Still, Cohen argues, the economic crisis has been exaggerated. The serious crisis forming around Gorbachev’s policies was political. Gorbachev’s democratisation policies had opened public space for all types of long-repressed discontents and newly aroused demands. Part of those, as we saw earlier, were the greater cultural and linguistic freedoms demanded by the Moldovan intellectuals. What also mattered to Snegur was that when the crisis between Moldova and Transnistria escalated in 1990, the Soviet Union was undergoing a ‘parade of sovereignties’, since constituent federal units and lesser entities were declaring their sovereignty en masse (Walker, 2003: 55–85). This diluted any effects that Moldovan declaration of sovereignty and actions in Transnistria might have had. Facing possible disintegration of the USSR, Moscow insisted on an all-union referendum on the problem of preserving the USSR. Moldova did not participate in the referendum, but the separatist republics considered that the laws of the Soviet Union still applied to their territory. In 1991 public space was already being extensively filled by elections all across the Soviet Union, with nationalist demands for greater sovereignty in many republics (including outright secession in the Baltics, Western Ukraine and parts of the Caucasus), ethnic pogroms, mass political strikes, as well as a nationwide ‘rally mania’ featuring large anti-Communist (but also pro-Communist) demonstrations in Moscow and many other cities (Cohen, 2009: 113). According to Buckley (2013: 182), declarations of sovereignty in the republics ‘laid the legal basis for the disintegration of the USSR’, unleashing a war of laws, the outrage of separatist bourgeoisnationalist forces, rejections of the united fate of the people, and thousands of refugees. Thus, even without the crisis in Moldova, the Soviet Union and subsequently Russia were embroiled on multiple fronts. Second, Moscow authorities during this time were themselves divided on how to deal with the centrifugal forces. Gorbachev insisted on a Union with federation characteristics that would have a central power leading to the consolidation of relations between Moscow and other republics. Yeltsin, however, pleaded for a Confederation based on the sovereignty of the republics with direct agreements between them accepting the maintenance of central power, albeit one deprived of possibilities for interfering into inter-republican relations. There was a third option, namely, the secession of republics that would just leave the Union without its component parts. Gorbachev sought what he considered an ‘optimal solution’ to get out of the complicated situation facing the Soviet Union. He believed he could achieve that by having a new Union Treaty (Chirtoaca, 2004: 28).

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Yeltsin and Gorbachev also disagreed on how to handle the crisis in Moldova. Yeltsin initially supported Chișinău against Tiraspol. In September 1990, amid the confusion over the Union Treaty, Yeltsin travelled to Chișinău to sign a Russian–Moldovan ‘Treaty on Principles of Interstate Relations’, thereby accepting Moldova’s claim to sovereignty. This move was, of course, made by Yeltsin to also establish Russia’s sovereignty and gather external support. However, such a move was not domestically popular. Subsequently, Yeltsin and Kozyrev had to shift hardline attacks on their foreign policy into the mainstream of Russian politics. For instance, Yeltsin’s adviser, Stankevich, seized the opportunity to raise Moldova’s responsibility in acts of massive, ruthless slaughter. Likewise, Yeltsin’s foreign policy adviser, Andranik Migranian, having observed a lack of serious protest from the West, called for Russia to take a direction of unconditional defence of the Transnistrian Republic (Kaufman and Bowers, 1998: 134). Kozyrev quickly lost his influence to the individuals associated with the ‘power ministries’ – the military, intelligence and security – as well as parliamentary ‘centrists’ and hard-liners. Third, for Snegur, it was even more problematic that the Soviet military stationed in Moldova favoured Transnistria from the inception of the crisis. The Soviet Army unit, the 14th Army led by General Gennady Yakovlev, agreed to serve Transnistria, while the democratic leadership in Moscow was initially somewhat neutral on the crisis in Moldova (Kolsto et al, 1993: 984). The rationale for this, according to Kaufman and Bowers (1998: 131), is that the Moldovan government had implemented a number of policies that the Soviet military saw as hostile: obstruction of efforts on its territory to conscript soldiers for the Soviet military; revoking military officers’ privileged access to apartments; and passing resolutions denouncing the military as ‘occupiers’. Not surprisingly, the Russian Defence Ministry was much more supportive of Tiraspol. Its military newspaper, Krasnaia Zvezda, repeated the accusations that Transnistrians had raised against Chișinău. The newspaper even signalled recognition of Transnistria at the time when the Soviet government had not. Only later, when Moldova’s leaders insisted on preserving the Moldovan sovereignty in any future Union Treaty, had Gorbachev began slightly favouring Transnistrian separatists in order to provide leverage against Moldova’s leaders (Kaufman and Bowers, 1998: 130). The window of opportunity reached its climax when the Soviet Union officially collapsed. The collapse started in August 1991 with an attempted Soviet Coup, along with declarations of independence by Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Armenia. The coup was led by the Vice President of the USSR, the Prime Minister, the Director of the KGB (Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti, Committee for State

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Security), Ministers of Defence and Interior, but also supported by many others. They saw the coup as a way of ‘defending the vital interests of the people and citizens of the USSR, independence and sovereignty of the state, enforcement of legal order, stabilization of the situation and overcom[ing] the crisis in order to avoid chaos, anarchy and fratricidal civil war’ (Chirtoaca, 2004: 28). In fact, most of the Communist Party officials supported the coup against Gorbachev, indicating his low level of support (Cohen, 2009: 97). The attempted coup led to the paralysis, and soon after the disintegration, of the USSR. According to Cohen (2009: 63), the coup weakened the Soviet leader’s central government so that it could not withstand the centrifugal forces unfolding across the country. Thus, the events in Moscow further eroded any chances of maintaining the Union. The Moldovan government was not only aware of the crisis in Moscow but also helped it unravel. It denounced the coup plotters and declared Moldovan independence in response to the events in Moscow (Crowther, 1997a: 321). The moment could not have been better. According to Horowitz (2005: 122), ‘the newly independent Moldovan government probed to see whether the former Soviet, now Russian, forces in the region would support the separatists.’ However, when the coup failed, separatist leaders in Tiraspol (who favoured the coup plotters) then declared their independence from Moldova, claiming to uphold the values of the former Soviet Union (Blakkisrud and Kolstø, 2011: 183). Yeltsin’s official delegation from the Russian Federation’s Supreme Soviet, however, denounced the Tiraspol separatists as ‘rightists’ (supporters of the coup attempt), and vouched for the Chișinău government’s good faith (Kaufman and Bowers, 1998: 131). Had Yeltsin and Chișinău established such good faith, Moldova’s crackdown in its separatist regions would have paid off. The problem with such a seeming opportunity was that Yeltsin’s good relations with Chișinău did not last very long. After the conflict in Transnistria escalated, Yeltsin was aware that he had to face significant challenges from domestic right-wing forces in how he handled the crisis. His one-time Vice-president, Alexander Rutskoy, as well as Vladimir Zhirinovsky (founder of the Liberal Democratic Party), were particularly hostile to Yeltsin’s policies, along with the parliamentary opposition. Tensions within Yeltsin’s circle were easily visible to the government in Chișinău. For example, in April 1992, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Andrei Kozyrev visited Chișinău two days after Rutskoy. While Rutskoy was making statements in clear support of Transnistria, Kozyrev ‘seemed to be running after him with a fire extinguisher’ (Kolsto et al, 1993: 993). Not surprisingly, Rutskoy shortly afterwards advocated recognition of the

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PMR to the Parliament, which impeded the establishment of diplomatic relations between Russia and Moldova. Evident, therefore, are the various attitudes within the Soviet Union and later Russia that highlight internal weakness and division. It could be said that the Moldovan government made a good initial guess about the opportunity to act while the Soviet Union/Russia was weakened. In many aspects, the USSR/Russia failed to deliver a clear message and to act cohesively. The literature on commitment problems can be used here to interpret Moscow’s stance as lacking a credible promise. We can see that it was the opposition groups in Russia that played a key role in pressuring Gorbachev, and especially Yeltsin, to act in support of Transnistrian forces. Nonetheless, Russia was in chaos, and a window of opportunity for Snegur was clearly there. However, even a weak and divided Russia managed to muster a force that dealt a devastating blow to poorly equipped Moldovan forces. On realising this, Snegur changed his course of action, both internally and externally.

Counter-factual: what if conditions were different? In the previous chapter on Saddam’s Iraq we observed how counter-factual analysis could be important in helping us understand what happened, and in particular, what would have happened if different policies had been pursued or events had played out differently (Cottey, 2009: 606) – that is, if conditions or the outcome slightly varied. Using thought-experiments or alternative evidence to assess the changing nature of conditions or the outcome, we can analyse the impact such changes can make on our theoretical claim. Instances that might help assess changing conditions in Moldova’s case are: the changing nature of regime stability, attempts to avoid the outcome (conflict with Russia), and similarly, what if the window of opportunity had not been as propitious. We look at each of these in the following. Pertaining to the changing nature of regime stability, it is worth observing Snegur’s behaviour without the Popular Front. Such behaviour can reveal to what extent Snegur’s decision was a product of the condition – regime stability. In July 1992, at the conclusion of the Transnistrian conflict, almost all of the members of the Popular Front-dominated government resigned, and Andrei Sangheli was named Prime Minister, given that many Moldovans blamed the Popular Front for the conflict. During the same month, President Snegur removed Defence Minister Ion Costaş from his post. Later, in January 1993, Petru Lucinschi replaced Alexandru Moșanu as the parliamentary speaker (Roper, 2004: 110).

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With the benefit of hindsight, of course, this seems to have been a move by Snegur to take a more flexible approach, to reduce the level of ethnic hostility by bringing up leaders labelled ‘pro-Moscow’ (reform communists). By 1994, recognising the military reality, and having new parliamentary support, Snegur also accepted autonomy for Tiraspol. This observation indicates that Snegur had changed policy under different conditions. He pursued cooperation when his government depended on more moderate factions. Interestingly, what seems to matter more is not whether a regime is stable or not, but what kind of support base it has, similar to Paul’s (1994) focus on the insecure and militaristic characteristics of the regime. A more moderate approach was what many of the minorities in Moldova desired, a fact Snegur was cognisant of. Both in Transnistria and Gagauzia, as already discussed, the public supported separatist elites because they feared for the loss of their language and cultural rights. They especially feared re-unification with Romania, whose historical legacies in Moldova many abhorred. Having been given autonomy, it did not take very long for Topal to accept a compromise with Chișinău. Had a more moderate approach been taken by Snegur early enough, he would have faced more compromising opponents. Lack of assurances is what created a security dilemma (Zabarah, 2012: 183). Of course, the analysis of this chapter suggests that if Snegur had in fact provided assurances while dependent on nationalist support, he might have lost power too early, causing the presidency to collapse. His dilemma was between options that were extremely costly: appease the minorities, but destabilise the regime, or appease the regime, but face hostile minorities. Whether Snegur had chosen a less costly one, in the end, is open to debate, but it remains clear that it was not his personal or ideological conviction behind the conflict, but rather the delicate balance of power at home. A second instance for a counter-factual analysis is to reflect on the attempts to avoid the outcome, that is, Chișinău’s attempts to appease the Russians. Such reflection can help us reveal if we missed any important decision-making dynamics. So, what was the USSR/Russia trying to achieve in Moldova? According to Kaufman (1996: 130), when the Soviet Interior Ministry dispatched troops to Tiraspol in September 1990, the goal of the Soviet Union (and later Russia) was twofold. The first goal was conflict management – deterring Chișinău from suppressing Tiraspol by force. The second goal was to pressure Moldova to abandon its bid for independence, or else face dismemberment. Snegur and the Moldovan Parliament initially showed a willingness to accept Gorbachev’s terms, that is, to consider a Union Treaty, only if Gorbachev helped end the Transnistrian separatist bid. However, Gorbachev refused to abandon

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Transnistria. Snegur then openly demanded independence from the Soviet Union and rejected any Union Treaty. At the same time, Snegur also failed to co-opt Transnistrian elites. All actors involved in the conflict wanted to show a strong resolve or did not trust that the other side would abide by an agreement. Regardless, for the Moldovan regime domestic crisis was more important than the bid for independence. Unfortunately for Snegur, his uncompromising resolve only increased the Soviet aid to Transnistria in response (Kaufman, 1996: 131). Had Chișinău chosen to approach the Russians differently, would the conflict have been different? The data is not clear whether the Soviets or Russians would have abandoned Transnistria if Chișinău had shown a desire to remain in the Soviet Union, given Gorbachev’s response. However, Soviet aid to Transnistria would have been different, because Chișinău would have been deemed as less hostile, and more as a potential ally. According to Kaufman and Bowers (1998: 130), Gorbachev decided to support the separatists in Moldova because President Mircea Snegur and Premier Mircea Druc demanded that any Union Treaty must preserve Moldova’s independence, rendering the Soviet government powerless. In fact, Gorbachev is documented to have said to Moldovans privately that he was using Transnistrian separatism as leverage to force Chișinău to sign the Union Treaty (Kaufman and Bowers, 1998: 130). Similarly, on 8 December 1991, in Beloveskaia Puschia, the leaders of Russia, Belarus and the Ukraine decided to abandon an all-union treaty and instead created the Commonwealth of Independent States. This initiative was also approved by the Council of the Middle Asian States, as well as Kazakhstan. Only the Baltic States rejected this agreement. However, even here Moldova was reluctant to sign into the CIS. While President Snegur signed the Alma-Ata Declaration creating the CIS in December 1991, the Moldovan Popular Front refused to ratify the agreement (Crowther, 1997b: 298). The agreement was ratified only later when Snegur lost the conflict in Transnistria and allied himself with the moderates (Agrarians) (Chirtoaca, 2004: 33). Therefore, from these observations, one can conclude that the Soviet power wanted to remain an influential actor in Moldova. However, the domestic crisis, and regime stability dependent on extremist views, meant facing the Russian hard power directly. This discussion is beginning to touch on the question of ‘what if the window of opportunity had not been as propitious?’ Would Snegur have been more likely to compromise had the Russians been more assertive since the beginning? That is, what if Russia had been more decisive and thus the window of opportunity was diminished? As has been analysed earlier in the chapter, the Soviet regime was initially neutral on the crisis.

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Later, Gorbachev and Yeltsin disagreed on how to handle the crisis in Moldova, meaning that Moscow could swing either way (Kolsto et al, 1993: 984). It was hardly certain for Snegur that Russia would intervene. It is likely that had the Soviet Union (and Russia) shown a stronger stance, the Moldovan regime would not have acted by engaging in conflict. In fact, to some extent, this did happen. According to Kaufman (1996: 136), most of the conflict in Moldova occurred in the towns of Bender and Dubossary, where the Soviet troops were not immediately present to deter Moldovan forces. A different outcome occurred in the Gagauz region where the Soviet troops blocked the Moldovan volunteers’ march, and engaged in direct confrontation, not merely sending a ‘warning’. In other words, a stronger position by the Soviet troops did, in some instances, deter Chișinău. It might have increased the success of deterrence altogether. So it can be deduced that after witnessing the failure of the use of force in Transnistria, Snegur changed his tactics to accommodate Moscow, and this tactic proved to be more successful. Had he made this move before the war, it is likely that he would have avoided the need to fight pro-Soviet/Russian separatism. Finally, and unfortunately, a good counter-factual assessment regarding Snegur’s choice to fight cannot be provided had Moldova experienced no domestic crisis. However, given that the crisis was triggered by all ethnic groups fearing the loss of their linguistic and cultural rights, had Moldova consolidated its sovereignty and appeased its minorities, it would not have been in a desperate situation to fight Russia. Even with a window of opportunity and a stable regime, Moldova would not have needed to use force. This is best established by Horowitz’s claim that Chișinău was not entirely sure how Russia would act over Transnistria, as well as that Chișinău anticipated losing to the Russians (2005: 122–3). Had that expectation been the same, but there had been no domestic crisis, there would not have been a dilemma. Being a very calculated and successful leader, it is unlikely that Snegur would have chosen war with the Russians without a desperate situation that necessitated such a move.

Conclusion Process tracing of Moldova’s decision to enter a costly conflict has illuminated why such a reckless decision has a certain logic. The war emerged due to a failure to find a political compromise that was acceptable to Tiraspol, Chișinău and Moscow. According to Kaufman (1996: 132), all three capitals showed inflexibility. Theoretically speaking, there was no zone of possible agreement. However, as the weaker side, Moldova had

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much more to lose by fighting. While this chapter has also shown why Tiraspol remained intransigent (due to Moscow’s encouragement), the main focus was to show why Chișinău seemed unyielding. We have now established that Mircea Snegur, President and thus the most powerful man in Moldova, had a very good assessment of the situation, which is different from the poorer assessment that Saddam had in Iraq. Regime type matters, confirming many theoretical nuances, such as that of selectorate theory or the neoclassical realist framework that emphasises that different types of regimes undergo different decision-making processes. In a democratic system, we see how Snegur’s leadership changed following popular discontent. We established this by assessing the nature of regime stability. Like Iraq, Moldova also faced a domestic crisis. The underlying argument is primarily based on this necessary condition, namely, that Chișinău had a domestic crisis that needed immediate attention. Unlike Iraq, Moldova was trying to claim its sovereignty, where an important step entailed establishing a common identity and territorial control. The Russians, however, were directly involved in supporting the separatists in an attempt to stymie Moldova’s withdrawal from the Soviet Union. Snegur knew that he could not appease both the extreme nationalists who brought him to power and the Russians, who demanded greater concessions from Moldova. Both choices entailed losses. Prospect theory highlights that the fear of loss incites risk-taking. More specifically, such fears of loss were twofold in Moldova. First, there were separatist movements of mostly Russian speakers in Transnistria, and Gagauz Turks in the South. However, this was intricately tied with an identity/sovereignty crisis whereby some Moldovans wanted an independent Moldovan state while others favoured unification with Romania (Horowtiz, 2005: 115). Ethnic minorities (Russians, Gagauzes, Ukrainians and Bulgarians) feared being ruled by Romania, remembering the Second World War with the brutal fascist Iron Guard, so the image of Romania was rather negative. Thus, the two identity groups feared domination by the other. As Crowther (1997b: 282) exclaimed, Moldova has historically struggled due to its Slavic population and the Romanian tradition. Finally, there was an economic crisis that further exacerbated these problems. The conventional wisdom is to address the problem sooner before it gets out of hand. There is little doubt that it was necessary to act; otherwise Snegur would have been blamed for inaction and domestic losses. Still, a necessity to act was not enough to fight a losing war. Snegur knew that if the Russians were to intervene, Moldovan forces would lose. Two additional conditions supplement decisions behind Snegur’s dilemma, prompting him to choose war: regime stability and a window of opportunity.

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Regime stability refers to the fact that Snegur enjoyed popular support. The presidency was powerful and stable. However, this stability was upheld by extreme nationalists in the Parliament. It was these nationalists who had elected Snegur in the first place. As long as they held the majority in the Parliament, Snegur needed them in order not to paralyse the government. It was due to their nationalist agenda, and in order to ensure his own survival, that Snegur decided to declare martial law and send troops to Transnistria. Once the nationalist regime lost popularity, and thus stability, Snegur quickly formed a new government and adopted more moderate and cooperative policies. Finally, the window of opportunity also played an important role. Such moments of opportunity are temporary, but offer a strong incentive for the weaker side to size the land, or to strengthen an otherwise weak negotiation position. In fact, the opportunity was recognised by President Snegur who took a risk to test Russian cohesiveness and resolve. The Soviet Union was crumbling; Russia was in chaos. It was unable to govern at home, let alone credibly commit to a conflict. Still, even a wounded and a confused bear is dangerous, and there is no doubt that Moscow played an important role. In the words of Kaufman (1996: 110), the war in Moldova happened as it did because Moscow, on behalf of its ethnic kin, intervened to stop the Moldovan side. Moscow helped the Dniestrian elites start the war, and then win it, especially after 1 April 1992, when the 14th Army became directly subordinate to Moscow. Evidence presented here shows that Snegur’s government knew that it was taking a high risk, and that if Moscow had decided to act militarily, Moldova would have been defeated, and that is what precisely happened. However, there is little else Snegur could have done. Upon failure he quickly attempted to reconcile with Russia, indicating that although he had pursued a conflict, it was under the hope that Russia would not be able to respond adequately. Perhaps not even many Russians knew how Russia would respond since their country was undergoing multiple crises. The Russian attitude only hardened as Yeltsin came to power and the fighting escalated. Still, in combination with a domestic crisis and regime stability, it was this window of opportunity that gave Moldova a chance to win. A counter-factual analysis shows that a change in these three conditions would very likely have changed Snegur’s calculations. Overall, Kaufman and Bowers (1998: 143) stated that Moldova had no alternative to reaching some sort of accommodation with Russian power. Yet, when Moldovan central authorities in the mid-1990s faced the possibility of two secessionist movements at the same time, while also grappling with the consolidation of statehood and establishing a viable economy, there was little choice for Snegur. He had to appease nationalists

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at home, and Russian weaknesses provided him with a possibility to establish territorial control over Transnistria. Once the conditions began to change in 1992, so did the geopolitical reality. No longer dependent on the nationalists, and facing a more assertive Russia, Snegur accommodated both the separatists and Russia. The conditions therefore surely made a strong impact on Snegur’s decisions. This forms the second pathway that results in a conflict. The last pathway is explored through the case of Serbia.

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Serbia: Military Confrontation with NATO The third case study is representative of the third pathway discussed in Chapter 3. It covers the military confrontation launched by NATO against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia1 in 1999, which received significant attention at the time, especially given the earlier involvement of Western powers in Croatia and Bosnia. Much of the attention was given to either understanding the conflict or framing the West’s responsibility in intervening, either diplomatically or militarily. Scant attention, especially outside of Serbian circles, has been given to understanding why the Serbian regime chose to defy the most powerful military alliance in the world. This chapter assesses how the following conditions, domestic crisis, regime stability and foreign support, played a conjunctural role in the Serbian regime’s calculations. Contextualisation of the conflict with a conventional narrative forms the first part of this chapter to understand the main reference point – negotiations prior to the conflict. Attitudes and beliefs taken by the Milošević regime during these talks directly impacted the decision of whether to go to war. This is followed by an examination of the three conditions to extrapolate their influence on decision-making by the Milošević regime. In this case, process tracing entails establishing the decisions and beliefs of the regime when it rejected a negotiated settlement. Subsequently, this chapter poses a counter-factual discussion to show how altering these conditions would have affected the outcome. Finally, the chapter ends by concluding that the Serbian regime’s choice to go to war in 1999 is directly linked to the previously established political processes of the Milošević regime, primarily Slobodan Milošević’s rise in politics at the time when Serbian–Albanian relations in Kosovo were quite antagonistic (domestic crisis), and his subsequent desire to maintain regime stability by cracking down on the centrifugal forces and appealing to nationalism. Russia’s limited, but crucial, support

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(foreign support), added the final impetus for challenging NATO. While prospect theory retains its centrality, as in the other cases covered in this book, this chapter also shows that foreign support is a similar source of leverage to a window of opportunity, provided that we also observe some sense of regime stability.

Conventional interpretation of the crisis Conventional interpretation of the crisis covers the dilemma that the Serbian regime found itself in, essentially one between challenging a major power (conflict) and acquiescence (non-conflict). The crisis that led up to the war is deeply intertwined with Serbia’s counter-insurgency in Kosovo, pitting Serbia’s Milošević regime against the Kosovo Albanian separatists. For NATO, events in Kosovo deeply resonated with Serbian atrocities in Croatia and Bosnia2 (Kaufman, 2002: 3, 153). The Kosovo conflict had begun to escalate to violence in 1997, when Kosovo Albanians realised that Ibrahim Rugova’s3 strategy of non-violence was not producing results, partly due to the better results that Croatia and Bosnia had achieved through more violent means (Malcom, 1998: 339; Majstorovic, 2014: 168). In response to earlier and ineffective student demonstrations against the Serbian educational system that attempted to break the status quo, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) made its first appearance in 1992, advocating more violent methods to achieve Kosovo’s independence. This newly established military formation began to coordinate attacks on Serbian police patrols and collaborators of the Serbian regime.4 The Serbian response to these initial attacks was brutal and involved civilian casualties, including women and children (Webber, 2009: 449). There was increased support for the KLA by the Kosovo Albanian population, while the concerned international community, led by the USA and European Union (EU), condemned the KLA as a terrorist group; they considered the Serbian authorities culpable of using excessive force and threatened to intervene in response (Majstorovic, 2014: 169). The escalation of the crisis was also shaped by another factor. In early 1997 Albania had been plunged into a profound social and economic crisis due to the collapse of several widespread financial pyramid schemes (Austin, 2005: 725). This was particularly destructive in Albania because of the scale of these schemes compared to the size of its economy. The political and social consequences were profound. For example, about twothirds of the Albanian population had invested in these schemes. Inevitably, when they collapsed, so did the government, triggering uncontrollable

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rioting and anarchy. The situation was beginning to resemble a civil war. It has been estimated that some 2,000 people were killed in Albania during this period (Austin, 2005: 725). While the situation was devastating to ordinary Albanians, it was propitious to KLA’s heroin-for-weapons trade as numerous arms depots in Albania were raided given the prevailing chaos. Stocks of weapons subsequently made it into Kosovo, escalating the conflict (Hajdinjak, 2002: 12). It seems that Milošević already faced a dilemma, but arguably threats from NATO at that point may not have been credible, a common reason why deterrence fails. As such, KLA’s rearmament and popularity led to the conspicuous introduction of the Vojska Jugoslavije (VJ) (Yugoslav Army) as reinforcements for the Serbian police. After all, Milošević and his advisers believed that the only way to eradicate the KLA was ruthless suppression (Mojzes, 2011: 207). The VJ began major military offensives in an attempt to root out the KLA, which became known as a ‘week of terror in Drenica’, the region of the birthplace and stronghold of the KLA (Mojzes, 2011: 207). The campaign also indiscriminately targeted civilians, while the KLA suffered few losses. By the fall of 1998, the counter-insurgency campaign had resulted in 2,000 deaths in Kosovo and displaced 400,000 people, mostly civilians (Demjaha, 2000: 34). The high number of civilian casualties in Kosovo reflected a classic problem of counter-insurgency, namely, the difficulty in distinguishing between combatants and non-combatants (Kaldor, 2008: 34). However, as Serbian policy and the army implemented draconian measures, Albanian civilians increasingly supported the KLA, which only led to ever-increasing numbers of killings, torture, beatings, arson, arrests and human rights abuses (Mojzes, 2011: 207). The vicious circle of violence pressed the international community to finally act. International efforts were made to restore stability on several fronts, such as through the Contact Group (which included Russia) and the UN Security Council. The USA made efforts to persuade Milošević to withdraw Serbian forces from Kosovo and to allow the entry of a verification mission from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Milošević consented in what became known as the October Agreement, and some Serbian troops did withdraw. However, there were also incidents of non-compliance with the Agreement evident on both sides, although it was reckless Serbian behaviour that gave rise to a hardening of attitudes within NATO. NATO’s stance can be interpreted as a classical ‘commitment problem’ in the literature on bargaining – given the incidents of non-compliance, the Serbian regime could not have been counted on to adhere to international agreements, thus warranting a ‘preventive war’. NATO’s

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focus on Serbian acts should have sent Milošević a strong signal of the strong possibility that NATO would intervene. Moreover, the Alliance conducted an air military exercise over Albania and Macedonia in June, called ‘Operation Determined Falcon’, and in October threatened air strikes against Serbia if Belgrade failed to comply with Richard Holbrooke’s demands5 to accept unarmed OSCE monitors and reduce Serbian forces in Kosovo (Webber, 2009: 449). Fearing an escalation of violence, foreign diplomats began to leave Belgrade while the Milošević regime reiterated that it did not want a conflict with NATO, but that they would defend their territory if NATO was to intervene in the conflict (Kaufman, 2002: 161–2). The KLA sensed an opportunity to harness international support, and thus stepped up the insurgency, which culminated in fierce fighting between the KLA and VJ in the village of Račak in January 1999. This fighting resulted in 45 Kosovo Albanian deaths, some of whom were civilians (LeBor, 2003: 285–6; Mojzes, 2011: 208). At this point, the USA and NATO pressured Milošević to enter talks on de-escalation or face a bombing campaign. Starting on 2 February 1999, talks were held at Rambouillet and Paris between Yugoslav representatives and the KLA. Milošević was offered an internationally backed compromise, which would have restored Kosovo’s autonomy within Serbia and provided for extensive NATO and other international involvement to stabilise the situation. The KLA initially rejected this deal, but then accepted it after the USA said that without their signature, the Alliance would be unable to carry out its threat to bomb Serbia (Mojzes, 2011: 210–11). If the Serbian side had rejected the plan, NATO’s Secretary General, Javier Solana, would have given the green light to implement punitive measures against Belgrade (Bellamy, 2001: 34). Milošević rejected the plan, fearing that it would open the prospect of an independent Kosovo (Weller, 2001: 222). On 21 March, Holbrooke decided to try one last time to persuade Milošević by giving him an ultimatum: either desist from military action and accept the Interim Agreement or face NATO counter-measures (Hosmer, 2001: 20; Webber, 2009: 450). Milošević remained intransigent, so the talks fell apart (LeBor, 2003: 287–8). The attitudes and beliefs taken by the Serbian regime during these talks directly impacted the decision of whether to go to war or not. Some sources claim that by September 1998, anything Milošević could have done short of admitting defeat and complete withdrawal from Kosovo would not have prevented an intervention, which had been NATO’s surreptitious plan all along, as indicated by Henry Kissinger’s claim that Rambouillet was just an excuse to start the bombing (Herring, 2001: 228; Phillips, 2001: 169; Mojzes, 2011: 210–11). However, Gow

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(2013: 336) presents evidence of NATO’s inadequate preparation for sustained military operations, as well as political and strategic differences over how to execute the campaign, indicating that NATO’s intention at Rambouillet was to secure an agreement. He also points out that the much-discussed military annex, the most controversial part of the Agreement, was not a stumbling block for Western representatives, who were open to revision. Moreover, the Belgrade delegation returned to the negotiations with a counter-proposal that derailed from the previous terms that had been agreed. Often overlooked is the difference between Western countries themselves, which could have been perceived as a ‘window of opportunity’ by the Serbian regime. But the US President George W. Bush had already warned Belgrade in 1992 that ‘in the event of conflict in Kosovo caused by Serbian action, the US will be prepared to employ military force against Serbians in Kosovo and Serbia proper’. It can be conceded that US preferences were constrained by the European allies acting through NATO (Kay, 2004: 263). In light of such constraints, all that Washington managed to initially achieve was to adopt a policy of coercive diplomacy through a slow and deliberate public process, but it led to a forceful intervention in 1999 after human rights violations escalated. An important point to highlight, therefore, is that Serbia was repeatedly warned by NATO that its actions against the KLA and atrocities against Albanian civilians in Kosovo would lead to international intervention. Moreover, NATO had already acted against Serbs in Bosnia. Despite such signals, the Milošević regime remained defiant, at the risk of paying a high price for such intransigence. The conflict was inordinately asymmetric. The Serbian media had no illusions about it. For example, the Serbian Air Force consisted of 29 MiGs while NATO had at least 600 fighter planes. The Serbian air defence system did not even try to challenge NATO strikes, leading to NATO’s immediate air supremacy (McKenzie Jr, 2000: 9). As a state under several years of sanctions and international isolation, Serbian forces lacked funding, readiness and training. Although Thomas observed that Serbian forces remained mostly intact during the campaign, this observation overlooks the fact that dispersing assets and not allowing them to emit radar signals was Serbia’s way of conserving its forces (which it did manage to do) (Thomas, 2003: 195). According to CINC scores (Singer et al, 1972), measuring annual values for total population, urban population, iron and steel production, energy consumption, military personnel and military expenditures, the USA alone was about 72 times stronger than Serbia. If all NATO members’ capabilities are included, the figures are astonishing: 228 times bigger, 67 times more populous

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and 518  times wealthier in terms of national income. According to Antonić, ‘it was the most asymmetric conflict ever recorded in history’ (2015: 250). According to the literature on bargaining and war, actors tend to conceal their true self to gain an advantage in bargaining. Following this logic, Gow describes how Milošević correctly believed that NATO was bluffing about its plan to conduct a prolonged air campaign (2013: 336). Others reason that Milošević had two logical reasons to reject the offer at Rambouillet. First, the settlement reduced Belgrade’s actual control over the province to almost zero. And second, the presence of NATO soldiers in Kosovo, and throughout the Yugoslav territory, to oversee the implementation process allegedly infringed on Yugoslav sovereignty because it allowed NATO to use force if necessary without being accountable to the UN or any other international body (Carpenter, 2000: 16; Herring, 2001: 226). NATO’s role was specified in ‘Annex B’ of the Rambouillet Agreement, the sticking point of negotiations for the Serbian delegation (Johnstone, 2002: 246). However, in retrospect, the consequences of these failed negotiations were inordinate, questioning Milošević’s calculations. And if NATO operations had caught him by surprise, Milošević could have attempted to reverse his position later on. Rather, the beginning of the NATO campaign seemed to have been an expected outcome for Milošević. He took NATO’s warnings seriously, substantiated by the observation that Serbian troops moved out of their garrisons, dispersed petroleum, oil and lubricant stocks, and evacuated a number of likely targets prior to the 24 March bombing campaign (Hosmer, 2001: 20; Bulatović, 2005: 287). He was clearly choosing war as the preferred option if negotiated conditions were deemed too difficult to accept. The following section shows how background conditions impacted the regime’s decisions to gamble on war as an attractive, or at least the preferred, choice. Milošević gambled because he faced a configuration of conditions that made such a gamble worthwhile. Serbia’s pathway to conflict involved three important conditions: a domestic crisis, regime stability and foreign support. Individually they do not explain much, but when occurring together, these three conditions produce an outcome whereby a minor power is likely to choose war over peace. In order to explain why this is so, we need to analyse the role of each condition in the regime’s calculations. This naturally entails a counter-narrative since the perception was different from that of a great power. As will become evident in the conclusion to this chapter, a domestic crisis is a necessary factor supported largely by prospect theory, while the remaining two conditions, regime stability and foreign support, are contributing factors, or INUS conditions.

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Albanian separatism in Kosovo: the necessary condition The necessary condition must be present for an outcome to occur. In Chapters 2 and 3, the domestic crisis was highlighted as a necessary condition, reflecting prospect theory’s premise that actors in a ‘loss domain’ are more likely to take risks (Berejikian, 2016). This section shows how, for the Milošević regime, the domestic crisis was Albanian separatism in Kosovo. Separatism was a crisis because the KLA’s armed insurgency challenged Serbia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. As Cottey claimed, ‘an independent state (or perhaps unification with Albania) had long been the goal of the majority of Kosovo Albanians’ (2009: 594). Although Kosovo Albanians lacked resources to reach such a goal, once the KLA emerged as an alternative to Rugova’s peaceful resistance, conducting selective attacks against Serbian officials and their collaborators, Milošević understood that this was a challenge to Serbia’s sovereignty and his own rule. Unlike in Croatia or Bosnia, Kosovo Serbs were directly under his jurisdiction, so ignoring the problem would have been a particularly risky policy. In the following sections, the aim is to discern the following dimensions of Kosovo’s troubling situation: Serbian perception of the Albanian ‘threat’ in Kosovo, comparison of Serbian positions in Croatia and Bosnia with Kosovo, and the economic situation.

Construction of the ‘Albanian threat’ This book builds on a constructivist premise that the identities and interests of actors are constituted by intersubjective sets of norms, ideas and beliefs (Adler, 2012). Thus far the assumption has been that the Kosovo Serbian and Kosovo Albanian national aspirations were incompatible. This assumption, however, is rooted in the way historical events and their interpretations have entrenched incompatibility between the two ethnic groups. In other words, the interaction of actors and social structures conditioned the belief in ‘incompatibility’. What were these past interactions that can explain why the ‘Albanian threat’ existed in the Serbian mindset? Tracing the process to more distant history, according to Simić (2000), the Ottomans were the first to establish inequality between Albanians and Serbs by Islamising the Albanians while repressing the Christians. Johnstone (2002: 202) claims that the Turks used Albanian converts to Islam to suppress the Serbs in Kosovo. However, the Albanian view presents that the medieval kingdom of Serbia was the first to oppress the Albanian population (Clark, 2000: 24). What most historical accounts

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agree on, however, is that unlike Serbian history, Albanian nationalist and mythical history is a much more recent phenomenon. It was only back in 1912 that Midhat Frashëri, one of the founding fathers of Albania’s independence, called for Albanian clans to unite into a nation, which would inevitably include Kosovo, at the time under Serb and Montenegrin control (Clark, 2000: 24; Judah, 2008: 11). The call for unity was in response to the Serbian–Turkish wars of 1876–78 that caused massive dislocations. As a result, the First League of Prizren was created, where Albanian leaders decided to demand an Albanian vilayet, or region, to be created in the main areas where Albanians lived, which included what many today refer to as the ‘Greater Albania’ (Simić, 2000; Judah, 2008: 36). Incompatibility is reflected in the name of Kosovo itself. For Albanians, the name of Kosovo is problematic because of its Slav origins. Albanian leaders had often toyed with the idea of Dardania, after the ancient Illyrian tribe supposed to have lived in Kosovo during antiquity. Allegedly Dardanians were the ancestors of Albanians, whose churches used to be Catholic, which were usurped and turned into Orthodox ones by the invading Slavs. Similarly, some Albanians consider that contemporary Albanians are the true descendants of Aristotle and Plato (Judah, 2008: 31–2; Majstorovic, 2014: 172). The link with more recent history has been constructed in equally problematic terms. According to Arnakis’ historical insights (1963: 141), leading up to the First World War, Austro-Hungarians encouraged Albanian nationalism to counter Serbian and local Slav nationalisms, which were deemed a threat to the empire. Facing favourable geopolitical conditions, in 1912, the Albanian deputy in the Ottoman Parliament declared independence of the Republic of Albania on 28 November. However, the Balkan Wars then broke out, leading to Serbia, Greece and Montenegro taking most of Kosovo and Albania, driving the Turks out and repressing the Albanians. Great Powers (Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary and Italy), convening in London in December 1912, however, granted the creation of an Albanian state according to Austro-Hungarian wishes, while keeping Kosovo within Serbia, according to Russian wishes. The Albanians did not want a truncated state, so they tried to revolt, but were brutally crushed (Clark, 2000: 26). Austro-Hungary and Bulgaria had briefly taken over Kosovo during the First World War, allowing Albanians to be taught in their language. During this time, it was the Serbs who were repressed. However, in 1918, the Serbs returned, and Yugoslavia was created. The Albanians resisted this new state until the mid-1920s, supported by the Committee for the National Defence of Kosovo in northern Albania. The Albanian

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regime did not support such actions and eventually the resistance folded (Clark, 2000: 27–8; Judah, 2008: 38–9). The next step of the process tracing would take us to the Yugoslav years when the identification of a threat focused on Albanian development of underground schools to teach their ‘national awakening’. The ‘first Yugoslavia’ held a semblance of stability, although the Albanian population faced repression and thus remained strongly anti-Serb (Clark, 2000: 29). In the Second World War, Italy invaded Albania, and Nazi Germany invaded Yugoslavia. Kosovo was divided into three parts, one given to Albania, forming Greater Albania. Following the founding of the Second League of Prizren, the Serbs were now repressed by the Albanians in both Italian and German-occupied territories, as they were perceived as the ‘real enemy’. The Germans tended to recruit Albanians into an SS battalion that then focused most of its atrocities on the Serb populace (Clark, 2000: 29; Judah, 2008: 45–8; Metz, 2014: 36). Eventually, the communists took over the whole region and implemented ‘pacification’ in Kosovo, which the Albanians resisted (Clark, 2000: 29). Kosovo was then soon annexed to Serbia in 1945. Josip Broz Tito, however, had good relations with Enver Hoxha, hoping to incorporate Albania into Yugoslavia, until the Soviet– Yugoslav split of 1948. Until then, the Yugoslav–Albanian border had been relatively open, while Serbs and Montenegrins had been prevented from returning to Kosovo (Johnstone, 2002: 208). During Tito’s rule, there was somewhat less enmity, although the Albanians were initially suspicious of the new socialist state. Very few of them had been in the partisan ranks during the Second World War, and, moreover, they did not have any loyalty to the new state, giving them little share in the state institutions. Still, the communist regime did not expel them as it had done with the Italians, Germans and Poles, among others (Judah, 2008: 52; Metz, 2014: 37). Especially after the fall of Aleksandar Ranković in 1966, the head of Yugoslavia’s security services, the Albanians had begun to enjoy decreased repression (Clark, 2000: 38). The opportunity had presented itself for Albanians to voice their demands. Consequently, in 1968, student protests called for Kosovo to be a republic. Some concessions were granted, namely, independence of Priština’s university, greater political autonomy, its own police force and even a Supreme Court (Clark, 2000: 39). During the 1970s Kosovo Albanians were deemed to have lived in a ‘golden age’, since Yugoslavia was prospering, inevitably benefiting Albanians as well as others – for example, textbooks and teachers were imported from Albania (Judah, 2008: 55). Overall, there was a semblance of tolerance. During this period, it is worth zooming into the 1974 constitution that defined Kosovo as a ‘constituent element’ of the federation with

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rights and responsibilities equal to those of a republic, including a veto within the presidency – except, crucially, the right to secession (Clark, 2000: 39). Under both the 1946 and 1963 constitutions, the Republic of Serbia administered the rights and scope of Kosovo. In 1974, the Yugoslav constitution was changed to permit greater political autonomy of the autonomous provinces, devolving Serbia’s powers. Both the Serbs and Albanians were disappointed by this change, the former due to Serbia’s diminished powers while other republics gained power, the latter for not being granted the status of a republic (Mertus, 2009: 463–4). There is also some truth in that Tito feared Serbian nationalism and thus intentionally stoked Croatian and Albanian nationalism (Johnstone, 2002: 129). The Serbs perceived many of Tito’s moves as preparing Kosovo Albanians for secession given their perception that by 1981 the Albanians were running the party, the policy, the administration and the economy in Kosovo (Johnstone, 2002: 214). From the Albanian perspective, even with many concessions given to them, the Albanians were treated as ‘historical guests’ (narodnost) while the Serbs were the ‘hosts’ (narod) of the state, since the Albanians were considered to have an outside home, Albania. This left the Albanian population feeling that they held a lower status compared to the Serbs and Croats, among others (Clark, 2000: 40). Tito’s death decapitated the central government, again opening the space for political changes, which Kosovo Albanians utilised to protest in 1981, calling for a republican status for Kosovo. This time, the response from the Yugoslav state was brutal, with as many as 300 civilians killed, followed up by the incarceration of over 3,000 Albanians who, in turn, expressed their dissatisfaction by targeting the Serbs, many of whom fled Kosovo fearing future socioeconomic problems (Mertus, 2009: 464). The repressions of Kosovo Albanians continued throughout the 1980s, but it was the Albanians who had to administer them (Clark, 2000: 43). Kosovo Albanians then turned to non-violent resistance, but this led to the dismissal of central Albanian leaders, including Kaqusha Jashari, Sinan Hasani and Azem Vllasi, partially due to demands from Serbian demonstrators in Belgrade (Antonić, 2015: 38). During this period, Belgrade simultaneously implemented a cultural war against Kosovo Albanians, by, for example, changing place names to Serbian, introducing family planning for Albanians, banning media sources and demanding that state-employed Albanians take an oath of allegiance to Serbia (Phillips and Burns, 2012: 10). In response, in September 1991 the Albanian Coordinating Council of Political Parties organised a referendum for Kosovo’s independence, with 99 per cent of participants, excluding the Serbs, favouring independence (Mertus, 2009: 466). Moreover, while

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Milošević’s policies had repressed the Albanians in many socioeconomic activities, they still managed to form a non-violent resistance and parallel institutions that fostered independence, including education, market and banking structures, as well as a tax system. However, the parallel system only further radicalised the Kosovo Albanian population as they saw failure in pacifism, shifting their perceptions in favour of more radical methods (Mertus, 2009: 468; Webber, 2009: 455). At the same time, by boycotting official Serbian elections, Kosovo Albanians had indirectly helped to empower Milošević (Simić, 2000). This last point became a critical issue for Milošević, as will be assessed below. Reflecting on the aforementioned processes, the exclusion of Albanians from the peace talks in Dayton, the failure to further improve Kosovo’s education system, coupled with an economic collapse in Albania, are factors that accumulated support for the KLA as it collected weapons from unguarded Albanian stockpiles (Hajdinjak, 2002: 12; Phillips and Burns, 2012: 86). Although the first armed attacks in Kosovo by the KLA had occurred in 1992, by the end of the decade armed young Albanians were regularly targeting the police, Serbian refugees and Albanians employed by the Serbian government. The Yugoslav army intervened to support the Serbian police patrols and finally, in February 1998, decided that the KLA had to be eliminated (Johnstone, 2002: 236). Inevitably, some saw this as the beginning of an intrastate war (see, for example, Webber, 2009). Whatever steps had been taken to resume the dialogue, such as when the Albanian delegation visited Belgrade in 1993, the attempts were perceived at home as ‘national betrayal’ (Simić, 2000). Already by this point the positions of the two parties seemed irreconcilable, and prospects of any settlement seemed all but impossible. Putting the various processes together, for Milošević, the Albanian drive for Kosovo’s independence was, therefore, a ‘looming threat’ that prospect theory terms as a ‘loss frame’. When in the 1990s Kosovo Albanian leaders reiterated that their recognition for independence needed time, Milošević was aware of the threat, paradoxically one he had helped to cement. Even though Kosovo Albanians did not have the resources and support to build a functioning state, that is, capability, their intent seemed clear, and from the perspective of the Milošević regime, the problem had only worsened with time, morphing from sporadic protests into a full-scale insurgency. The scale of the problem was confirmed by Simić (2000), who stated that the Kosovo crisis was perceived by the Milošević regime to be ‘too hot of a topic to be resolved through a dialogue’. What Simić (2000) was referring to was the national programme of the 1990s which, for Serbians, symbolised Kosovo as the ‘Serbian Jerusalem’ while for Albanians, the ‘Albanian Piemont’. Using a term from bargaining, this can be seen

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as lack of a ‘zone of possible agreement’. Nowhere was the ‘threat of independence of Kosovo’ more directly stated in the foreign media than in an article in Der Spiegel (1998), where a spokesman for the KLA, Jakub Krasniqi, stated that ‘we want more than independence. Our goal is to unite all Albanians in the Balkans’. Perhaps attempting to salvage the situation, in September 1996 Milošević had reached an agreement with Rugova on normalisation of the educational system in Kosovo, but the two sides interpreted the agreement differently, confirming the deadlock (Thomas, 1999: 403). Similarly, the 1997 dialogue on applying the ‘South Tyrol’ model, although accepted in principle, failed due to the increasing popularity of the KLA and its less compromising attitude, on the one hand, as well as Milošević’s increasing intransigence. For example, both the Bosnian Serb and Yugoslav delegations walked out during the Contact Group meeting in Bonn (1997) (Thomas, 1999: 403). Milošević was hopelessly trying to prevent the internationalisation of the Kosovo problem. Similarly, whatever agreement had been achieved through the Bertelsmann Foundation’s working group in 1997, it also failed due to lack of interest from key decision-makers. According to Simić (2000), while the Serbian and Albanian negotiators had maintained some initiative in fostering dialogue, this was lost to a more extremist tide at home. Overall, it can be concluded that past interactions between the Serbs and Albanians were violent, whereby the social structures only further entrenched mistrust rather than inducing cooperation. The history has been constructed in a way that reflects hostility and such high levels of mistrust. Apart from a brief period of prosperity for Communist Yugoslavia in the 1970s, there were limited opportunities for the two ethnic communities to focus on shared interests. As we see above, Milošević was not the one who constructed the problem, but he certainly worsened it by framing it as an issue that could not be resolved through dialogue. Thus, the perception of a domestic crisis was severe, and to understand this, it also helps to look into a similar situation in Croatia and Bosnia, as well as the economic crisis.

Kosovo compared to Croatia and Bosnia The argument that Kosovo was a peculiar domestic crisis problem for Milošević can draw on similar situations in Croatia and Bosnia. Unlike problems in Croatia and Bosnia, Kosovo was his own domestic crisis, while problems in Croatia and Bosnia were a foreign policy issue. When the Serbs in Croatia attempted to secede from Croatia, they did not

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claim that they had a historical right. Instead, they based their argument on demographics, simply, that the majority of Krajina’s6 people were Serbs (Judah, 2008: 13). In 1991 Milošević stated that, according to the Yugoslav constitution, each Yugoslav host nation (narod) had a right to self-determination, which meant that the Serbs in Croatia (Krajina) and Bosnia (Republika Srpska) had a right to stay within the Yugoslav federation. ‘The Serbs should also decide in a referendum whether they do or do not want Yugoslavia’, were his exact words (Johnstone, 2002: 26). Although Croatian territory inhabited mainly by Serbs was considered by Serbs as their historic land, it was not equivalent to Kosovo, as it lacked the mystical element. The Serbs in Croatia had a collective memory of the area referred to as a ‘military frontier’ (militärgrenze), a borderland of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that served as the cordon sanitaire against incursions from the Ottoman Empire. In exchange for their promise to fight the Turks, the Serbs in this military frontier were given a significant degree of economic and religious autonomy. Eventually, the Serbs living there came to be a large majority in regions that had been traditionally Croatian (Cox, 2002: 36). Since Croatia had become recognised as an independent state in 1991, Krajina Serbs were not under Milošević’s jurisdiction. As such, they had a more limited influence on Milošević’s power than the Kosovo Serbs and Albanians. In other words, Krajina Serbs’ votes and voice did not have as direct an impact on Serbia’s politics as Kosovo Serbs’. The same logic applies to Bosnia, where the Serbs formed a natural land connection with their counterparts in Croatia, all part of what used to be the military frontier. They shared a similar history with the Serbs in Krajina, although Bosnian Serbs were more compact and numerous. Still, they formed a single nationalist party, initially opposed to secession from Yugoslavia by reference to their ‘constituent people’ (narod) status in order to block the Bosnian Muslim and Croat leadership’s attempts to secede (Sakwa and Pavković, 2011: 162). Despite their initial desire to stay within Yugoslavia, unlike Kosovo Serbs, Bosnian Serb leadership often defied Belgrade’s advice (Johnstone, 2002: 34–41). Tense relations between Bosnian Serbs and Milošević resulted in Serbia and Montenegro proclaiming the new Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1992, which separated the Serbs in Bosnia and Croatia from politics in Serbia. Sell (2003: 239) goes as far as to claim that Milošević was completely indifferent to the fate of the Krajina Serbs. However, Burg and Shoup believe that Milošević was bluffing, leaving the possibility that Croatian and Bosnian Serbs could join Yugoslavia in the future (1999: 98). Either way, independence was the primary goal of the Serb secessionists, and Milošević extended only limited support to them.

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Perhaps with the benefit of hindsight, Milošević might have excluded Serb secessionist regions in Croatia and Bosnia to appease the Western powers who saw Milošević as the key problem in Yugoslav troubles (Cohen, 2002: 305). However, while it might have been clear to Milošević that he could distance himself from the Bosnian and Croatian Serbs with minor costs to his regime, such an approach could not be taken with Kosovo, whose future status was perceived to impact politics in Belgrade directly, and therefore his own position. As such, Kosovo was a unique crisis that carried with it a higher value because it was a domestic crisis directly impacting Milošević’s popularity. External crises did not carry the same weight.

Yugoslavia’s economic downturn We now turn to the economic situation in Serbia, which further exacerbated the overall domestic crisis emanating from ethnic antagonisms in Kosovo. This analysis starts with the premise that development aid was a method that had previously placated ethnic antagonisms. More specifically, not being part of the Soviet Bloc, Yugoslavia had received substantial credits from the West to finance its industrial modernisation in order to export to Western markets (Ceh, 2002: 121; Gouge, 2003: 239). Starting in 1979, however, interest rates skyrocketed on the massive dollar lending of the previous decade, causing Yugoslavia to fall into the ‘debt trap’ that was also strangling Latin American countries. As they were dependent on imports for their own domestic industry, Yugoslavian policy-makers made keeping up with payments on foreign debt a priority. International Monetary Fund (IMF) austerity policies were implemented, creating a ripple effect throughout Yugoslav society, leading to the rising cost of basic necessities, the slashing of social spending and the elimination of jobs (Johnstone, 2002: 21). Simić (2000) argues that investments were made in Kosovo, but of a wrong kind. Instead of investing in labourintensive industries and environmental resources, of which Kosovo had plenty, investments were made in capital-intensive industries. Inevitably, lack of, or wrong, economic policies caused people to strike and protest, as they blamed the ruling communists and other ethnic groups. Doubts about the Yugoslav socialist model were emerging throughout the federation. Kosovo was particularly affected since it had the highest rates of unemployment, the lowest per capita incomes and the highest birth and infant mortality rates in Europe (Liotta, 2001: 65). So Milošević, isolated through economic sanctions, could do little to alleviate the situation in Kosovo through economic measures.

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In sum, the domestic crisis, a necessary condition in our theoretical framework, had three dimensions in Serbia’s case, all of which demonstrate that a ‘loss frame’ was very likely. First, the focus on the importance of Kosovo for constructing Serbian national identity clashed with the perceived secessionist problem of ethnic Albanians. Simić’s (2000) impression from meeting with Kosovo Albanians was that they believed they could only defend their interests by leaving Serbia. Evidence seems to weigh in favour of this interpretation. Milošević’s actions, however, only exacerbated the problem, and compromise with the Kosovo Albanians became exponentially more difficult. The second dimension was that territories in Croatia and Bosnia claimed by the Serbs did not carry the same weight for Milošević as they lacked a direct influence on politics in Belgrade. Neither was Milošević very influential among the Serb secessionist leaders abroad. And third, economic problems plagued the whole country but had particularly strong effects on Kosovo, which relied on development funds from wealthier Yugoslav republics such as Slovenia and Croatia. The difficulty of the crisis sharpened with the ethnic tensions, which escalated into a fullscale insurgency and threatened to tear the state apart. Unsurprisingly, the President of Yugoslavia during the brief 1992–93 period, Dobrica Ćosić, warned that the Kosovo problem was destroying Serbia (Johnstone, 2002: 227). Such a problem, that is, defence of sovereignty and territorial integrity, is a core value of the state (Than, 2007: 173). If it were not for the ethnic tensions, the economic problems would have likely taken on less importance. In short, perceptions and beliefs necessitated solutions that were hard to find, especially when all parties likely believed that there was no zone of possible agreement in the first place.

INUS conditions Just as with the preceding chapters, readers may be left thinking that it still defies logic to fight a war that will result in further losses, despite domestic problems. There are robust indications that regime stability and foreign support were additional conditions in a causal combination with a domestic crisis, the necessary condition explored above. After all, various scholars have highlighted regime stability and foreign support, as reviewed in Chapter 2. Their conjunctural effect further emboldened Milošević. More precisely, similar to the case of Moldova, Serbia’s regime stability depended on maintaining a nationalist platform, while potential Russian influence offset the risks behind the gamble. Before addressing the Russian influence (foreign support), this chapter demonstrates how the conditions offered to Milošević at Rambouillet

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threatened to undermine his regime’s stability. Rambouillet was only an interim agreement, and the more important question was what would follow. The Agreement stated that after three years from the entry of the Agreement into force, an international meeting would be convened to determine a mechanism for a final settlement for Kosovo, on the basis of the will of the people (Hosmer, 2001: 13). Madeleine Albright apparently gave assurances to the Kosovo Albanian delegation at Rambouillet that the reference to ‘the will of the people’ meant the will of the people of Kosovo, and not of Serbia or Yugoslavia, to be expressed in a referendum. With this perception, Milošević responded that ‘what they practically attempted to impose in Rambouillet was not autonomy but independence’ (Herring, 2001: 227). On the one hand, Western mediators seemed to have entrenched Milošević’s scepticism, for they justified his rejection by introducing the prospect of an independent Kosovo (Phillips and Burns, 2012: 102). On the other hand, the prospect of independence was the only way to secure the KLA’s signature since it had rejected earlier agreements that promised only autonomy within Serbia (Herring, 2001: 227; Hosmer, 2001: 13–14). Yet the potential for Kosovo’s independence was unacceptable to Milošević’s calculus. Perhaps a desperate attempt, Serbia’s counterproposal on 23 March, the day before NATO started bombing, was to return to an earlier agreement of October 1998, which stipulated a ‘wideranging autonomy’ for Kosovo within a sovereign Yugoslavia (Herring, 2001: 227). Kosovo as an independent state was clearly a threat to regime stability. The following sections explain why.

Kosovo as the foundation of the regime’s popularity Process tracing Milošević’s decision-making on Kosovo’s future at the time helps us establish the link between such an outcome and Milošević’s ardent supporters – mainly the ethnic Serbs in Kosovo. Selectorate theory would refer to them as the ‘winning coalition’ because they were the winners of Milošević’s policies. Milošević promised benefits for Kosovo Serbs, his winning coalition, using the frame of the ‘Albanian threat’ as a problem. Kosovo’s significance was in the mystical properties that enabled another element of the ‘winning coalition’, the Serbian Orthodox Church, to resist secularisation, modernisation, the Albanian demographic ‘threat’ and even communism (Judah, 2008: 24). More recently, Kosovo has been a very sensitive topic among the Serbs who considered the constitutional amendments of 1971 and 1974 as unjust since Kosovo and Vojvodina gained autonomy, diminishing Serbia’s

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control over them. Carrying these grievances, Serbs and Montenegrins emigrated from Kosovo in the late 1960s due to ethnic tensions, but by the 1980s they were lobbying the Serbian government for protection (Antonić, 2015: 33–4). It is not surprising then that Milošević found Kosovo essential in ensuring the loyalty of those who sought to return or establish control over Kosovo (Webber, 2009: 454). Doing otherwise might have been detrimental to Milošević’s leadership. Yugoslavia, and Serbia in particular, were deeply divided, a legacy of the Second World War. According to Johnstone (2002: 18), to have taken charge of the Serbian League of Communists required reforming communist ‘bureaucracy’ while defending both Serbian and Yugoslavian interests. Nationalist parties were gaining popularity throughout Yugoslavia, winning multi-party elections in 1990 in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Joining the nationalist tide was a popular thing to do, perhaps even a prudent move, as it helped Milošević to wrest the leadership of the Serbian League of Communists (Antonić, 2015: 30–40). Milošević’s view of the importance of Kosovo in Serbia’s politics was confirmed by Momir Bulatović in a personal interview,7 who conveyed Milošević’s beliefs that ‘you cannot separate Kosovo from Serbia in the Serbian identity’.8 How much influence over the rising nationalist tide Milošević had, however, is open to debate. What is clear is that he secured his leadership on the issue of identity that many Serbs found uncompromising, without having a clear vision as to how to solve the Kosovo problem. His choice to act against the prevailing desires of Kosovo Albanians inflamed the smouldering conflict (Antonić, 2015: 52). Naturally, by 1998, the problem was worsening since incidents in Kosovo were becoming more frequent and more violent. The ‘winning coalition’ was therefore facing potential losses. Not surprisingly, Majstorovic states that Milošević came to power by using Kosovo ‘as a call to arms to the Serbs’ (2014: 171). Once in power, Milošević might have realised the limited room for manoeuvre behind his rhetoric – he seems to have explained to Bulatović that ‘Serbs and Montenegrins from Kosovo were more difficult for him than the Albanians’ (2005: 223). Again, this belief can be traced back to the 1980s, when the Kosovo Albanians demanded greater rights and clashed with Kosovo Serbs while Serbian politicians sought to reinforce their own claims to power by decrying the treatment of Serbs in Kosovo and demanding immediate action to resolve the situation. Serbian intellectuals further called for defending the status of Serbia and of the Serb nation within Yugoslavia through a petition and a controversial memorandum which, although never approved, inflamed the nationalist rhetoric, both among Serb nationalists and Croat secessionists (Johnstone, 2002: 215;

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Mertus, 2009: 465). It may not be surprising that Milošević perceived that nationalism was both an opportunity and a constraint to his options. Let us now analyse nationalism as an opportunity in more depth. Before Milošević rose to power, nationalist tendencies already existed among the members of the League of Communists of Serbia (Antonić, 2015: 12). Reformist and anti-secessionist moves had a powerful populist appeal for Serbs, a trend that Milošević recognised and exploited for his own gains, by removing his rival, Ivan Stambolić, for example. Sensing an opportunity, Milošević also made a strong, but controversial, statement to a large Serb crowd in Kosovo Polje in 1987 that no one should dare to beat the Serbian people again, positing himself as the defender of Serb minorities in Kosovo. Again, this position was very popular among the Serbian public (Cottey, 2009: 594; Phillips and Burns, 2012: 8; Antonić, 2015: 32). Following this gambit, Milošević’s popularity allegedly skyrocketed, as inferred from the ostensible elections for the Serbian presidency in 1989, when supposedly 80.4 per cent of voters supported him (Antonić, 2015: 42). Re-election allowed him to change the status of Kosovo and Vojvodina as granted in the 1974 constitution, as well as to sack Kosovo Albanians from their public jobs, giving these jobs to ethnic Serbs, particularly in police units. The Serbian military presence was also reinforced (Mertus, 2009: 466). In retrospect, therefore, Milošević’s rise to power directly benefited the nationalists as well as Kosovo Serbs, at the expense of his rivals and many Kosovo Albanians. Somewhat paradoxically, Milošević was expecting that regime stability would be maintained because of the exigency in Kosovo. External involvement in this domestic problem was framed as imperialistic. As Doder and Branson indicate, ‘rejecting a foreign ultimatum fitted the nation’s psyche’ (1999: 9). As problems in Kosovo mounted, he relied on this card to stay in power. Precisely because it was Kosovo, the mythological cradle of Serbian nationalism, which was under ‘attack’, defending it as though it was under foreign assault merged Kosovo’s problems together perfectly with a desire to maintain regime popularity by appealing to his supporters. Support for the regime was particularly prominent among pensioners, who were accustomed to political difficulties, according to Boris Malagurski, a domestic activist I interviewed.9 However, the situation in Kosovo had another advantage for Milošević in maintaining regime stability: by boycotting Serbian elections, Kosovo Albanians left open about 30  seats in the Serbian Parliament, which Kosovo Serbs ostensibly rendered to Milošević’s Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS). In reality, Albanian votes were used as a reservoir of phoney votes to boost his electoral support. Milošević’s indirect benefits from the crisis in Kosovo was a point the opposition parties in Serbia often raised with the

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Kosovo Albanian leadership, asking them to participate and help restore democracy in Serbia (Simić, 2000; Sell, 2003: 92; Antonić, 2015: 185). Yet, if Milošević rode on the waves of popular support among nationalists, his winning coalition, it might be surprising that he acquiesced to the OSCE verification mission that was agreed in Belgrade on 16  October 1998 and confirmed by the UN Security Council Resolution 1203 (Henriksen, 2007: 154; Phillips and Burns, 2012: 95). The resolution called for Kosovo Albanians to pursue their goals by peaceful means only, and for both sides to improve the humanitarian situation. Most importantly for the regime, the resolution reaffirmed the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. As such, the resolution did not threaten Serbia’s claim to Kosovo or its military presence on the ground, allowing Milošević to keep Kosovo and appease his nationalist supporters. Such an agreement, after all, was an acceptable concession, a low-cost solution, if the Serbian regime believed that a war with NATO over Kosovo was inevitable, as conveyed to me by Bulatović.10 Negotiating Kosovo’s moves towards independence could not be sold to the regime’s domestic supporters. Thus, a negotiated solution at Rambouillet was perceived as a farce, highlighting that the Kosovo Albanian delegation was to be led by one of the KLA leaders, Hashim Thaçi, and his Western adviser, Morton Abramowitz (Phillips and Burns, 2012: 103). Their presence only served the nationalist rhetoric in Serbia that countered that it was NATO that only understood the language of the use of force. There is some truth in this. The USA saw Milošević as the source of the Kosovo problem. During the war in Bosnia, only through force had NATO achieved a political settlement. Understandably, the USA was ready to apply the same approach to Kosovo. This meant using coercive diplomacy, which Milošević would naturally reject (Henriksen, 2007: 109). Therefore, it is not surprising that Serbian delegates such as Milan Milutinović, who may have attempted to salvage the negotiations, disappeared from the public scene after returning to Serbia. One can safely assume that deployment of NATO forces in Yugoslavia and opening the future of Kosovo to a referendum would have secured peace, but to a high cost to Milošević’s power base (Carpenter, 2000: 16; Simić, 2000; Herring, 2001: 226). To use the language of selectorate theory again, winning the coalition’s support mattered more than addressing the ultimatums of a looming foreign threat. Based on Blainey’s (1973) focus on miscalculation, it might also seem that Milošević’s ostensibly dogmatic approach was due to a failure to comprehend international geopolitical trajectories. Since 1986, Yugoslavia had no longer enjoyed a special status in the USA

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as ‘the symbol of difference’ in the communist world. When Warren Zimmermann became an ambassador to Yugoslavia a few years later, he also made this clear, particularly given the rising importance of Hungary and Poland in opposing the Soviet Union. This clarification foreshadowed how events would unfold. Milošević, however, initially ignored the role of foreign powers. Simić (2000) documented how foreign ambassadors had a difficult time meeting with the Serbian presidency, indicating inadequate attention to the Serbian administration’s foreign policy. Similarly, whenever successful attempts were made by Serbian intellectuals to find an acceptable solution for Western partners, the Yugoslav regime repudiated the internationalisation of the Kosovo problem, a point Milošević emphasised during his speech in Priština on 25  June 1997. Later, Milošević allegedly admitted that he was a ‘stupid, stubborn fool’ regarding this recalcitrant behaviour (Antonić, 2015: 254). This is not to say that Milošević was entirely ignorant of the geopolitical reality, that is, that he had anomalous beliefs – a condition also present in Saddam’s case (see Chapter 4). He supported Milan Panić’s candidacy as Prime Minister of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1992, believing that this Serbian-American business tycoon would improve relations between the two governments. Milošević made a similar attempt during peace negotiations in Dayton in 1995. These attempts failed, perhaps unsurprisingly, because in a conversation with Ratko Marković in 1996, Milošević was recorded as saying that ‘the Americans want to turn us into a rogue state, only so that tomorrow they could force us to negotiate on Kosovo. They will ask for this because half of their senators and congressmen were lobbied by the Albanian narco-mafia’ (Antonić, 2015: 214). Although sounding somewhat crude, Milošević was correct that he had been irredeemably targeted, Metzler concludes (2010: 198). After all, Albright observed that Milošević has been at the centre of every crisis in the former Yugoslavia over the last decade. For her, he was not part of the problem; he was the problem (Cohen, 2002: 305). This stemmed from the belief that the crisis in Kosovo was a replay of Bosnia. Albright and her aides also correctly understood that Milošević would be unable to make a negotiated diplomatic deal on Kosovo – because he had used Kosovo as a vehicle to gain power in Serbia (Henriksen, 2007: 134). Thus, it is not surprising that if Milošević had wanted to stay in power, he would have had to give priority to domestic considerations – regime stability – a former adviser to the Serbian government revealed in an interview.11 In as much as foreign pressure was significant, he faced more prominent issues at home, and therefore it is likely that foreign affairs were of secondary importance to him.

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Related to regime stability, Henriksen states that part of the US administration believed that Milošević was facing a growing ‘domestic weakness’ (Henriksen, 2007: 134). This might sound as though it contradicts the empirical evidence that Milošević had maintained regime stability. While the argument here is that Milošević ensured his power, and thus regime stability, by conspicuously playing the Kosovo card, the stability of the regime could not have been taken for granted, especially if he were to lose control of Kosovo. The opposition was strong all along, Bulatović admitted in an interview.12 As far back as 1989 there were those who advocated Serbia’s integration into the European Community through democratic and market changes. While Milošević’s notorious speech in 1987 secured the alternative option, that is, a modern Yugoslav federation with centralised powers, the opposition could not be dispelled. Milošević was walking on thin ice during the early 1990s, managing to retain power only because the opposition was divided, as revealed in an interview with one of the domestic actors.13 Events engendered immense pressure for him to step down. He nearly did, veering away at the last minute (Djukić and Dubinsky, 2001: 57; Antonić, 2015: 105). A particularly difficult crisis for the regime occurred soon after the Dayton Agreement ended the war in Bosnia in 1995. The opposition won the Serbian local elections in 1996, leading to the largest demonstrations on the streets of Serbia since the early 1990s. Even within the regime, dissenting voices emerged, such as that of Belgrade’s city mayor Nebojša Čović, who supported the demonstrators (Simić, 2000; Antonić, 2015: 218). In addition to domestic pressure, Bulatović (2005: 220–31) describes his visit to the White House in 1996, where he claims that he was advised to distance himself from Milošević. In return, Bulatović was promised support and recognition, including financial and economic assistance for Montenegro. He refused to follow this advice and instead attempted to convince Milošević to compromise with the opposition. The evidence therefore highlights that during certain periods of his rule, Milošević’s power diminished, and with it, regime stability. However, Milošević managed to regain control following a showdown with NATO, instigating a new crackdown on the opposition (Bideleux and Jeffries, 2007: 260). Specifically, in 1997, parliamentary elections were held in Serbia, and were boycotted by the opposition. The outcome was the formation of a so-called ‘patriotic coalition’ in 1998, which effectively further marginalised those who had attempted to find a negotiated solution to the Kosovo crisis (Simić, 2000; Bideleux and Jeffries, 2007: 260–1). Perhaps there is some truth in what Bulatović claimed in a personal interview,14 namely, that international sanctions began to have the opposite effect of what was intended. They strengthened the regime

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because the Serbians blamed the international community for the lack of goods in the country. Simić (2000) similarly observed that many years of sanctions meant that the Serbian population was disillusioned toward the West. Such an outcome may partially explain why the ultra-nationalist SRS (Serbian Radical Party) had gained almost twice as many votes compared to the liberal-nationalist SPO (Serbian Renewal Movement) (Bideleux and Jeffries, 2007: 259). Therefore, closer to the peak of the Kosovo crisis, the regime strengthened its popular support. This point can be strengthened by looking at the so-called ‘patriotic coalition’ that was formed after Serbia’s 1997 parliamentary elections. The coalition made Kosovo a pivotal factor for Milošević in Serbian domestic politics, which was not the case with the territory in Bosnia (Herring, 2001: 228). Milošević’s original coalition partners included the Yugoslav United Left (JUL) and New Democracy (ND). However, in 1998, the former opposition – SRS and SPO – joined Milošević’s SPS and JUL to form a new ruling coalition (ND left the coalition), with Vojislav Šešelj, who became Deputy Prime Minister (Cohen, 2007: 463). The new regime thus mitigated two possible critics of the government’s policy in Kosovo through incorporation. Growing cooperation with the nationalists led Milošević to repress internal dissent, for example, by purging university professors who were critical of the regime. Repression was also felt in Kosovo, which only helped fuel extremist sentiment among the Kosovo Albanians (Simić, 2000). Simić argues that even the supposed ‘opposition’ parties that existed in Serbia sometimes did not differ from Milošević significantly in their policy toward Kosovo. Hosmer (2001: 61) describes that the rationale behind such a similarity was because the Serbian opposition feared repression, even murder, but also knew that supporting NATO would have been political suicide. Nonetheless, the new coalition put forward ideas of so-called ‘new patriotism’ that merged ideals of leftist and nationalist parties based on the thesis that Serbia and Yugoslavia were victims of a ‘new world order’ based on globalisation, and through it, the military and political domination of the neocolonialist ambitions of the USA (Simić, 2000; Stevanovic, 2004: 165). This dogmatic ideology imbued the regime with the power to implement draconian measures of repression and to redirect the blame to external factors. The move strongly resembles the logic of the diversionary theory of war. In short, in 1999 the Milošević regime was profoundly adamant about maintaining regime stability, but stability depended on how the situation in Kosovo would unfold. Addressing the Kosovo problem in line with international interests would have meant disregarding the stability of the regime. Not being able to address both foreign and domestic pressure,

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Milošević chose to reject the terms offered in Rambouillet. Foreign pressure on Milošević only further emboldened Kosovo Albanians, thereby introducing uncertainty and the prospect of a loss of territory for Serbia. Conflict in Kosovo was something Milošević could not ignore or lose, lest the nationalists would no longer support his leadership. This was recognised by Mahmut Bakalli, ruler of Kosovo during the 1970s, who, upon meeting with Milošević, stated that ‘he showed much understanding for the Albanian positions and demands but I noticed that his hands were tied by nationalism in Serbia’ (Simić, 2000). This is why the existence of a conflict permeated all other aspects of society among the Serbs and Albanians, enabling the survival of the regime only through the nationalist rhetoric. Given Milošević’s prior failures in Croatia and Bosnia, a failure in Kosovo threatened to shake up his power base (Webber, 2009: 454). Somewhat counter-intuitively, the war with NATO was initially beneficial, as it strengthened the regime by building up the national myth, at the same time denying Kosovo Albanians independence.

Russia’s foreign support The foreign support condition is particularly important in offsetting the risks behind the costs of engaging in a war with a major power. Foreign support was an essential condition during the Cold War, when minor powers could exploit rival major powers, the USA or USSR, for their own benefit. The case of Serbia shows that a similar logic may have persisted beyond the Cold War. Although Milošević was successful domestically, to survive immense international pressure, he needed more. Russia’s role was pivotal in his calculations, especially in vetoing any Western military action (Hosmer, 2001: 33; Antonić, 2015: 271). During the Bosnian War, Bosnian Serbs had already unsuccessfully tried to implicate Russia in Bosnia’s troubles (Simić, 2000). Understandably, Russia’s behaviour during the Bosnian War reflected its early attempts to enter the club of prosperous, democratic states, that is, Russia attempted to join the Western collective security system by following the US leadership. This meant that Russia was willing to put pressure on the Bosnian Serbs who were besieging Sarajevo and consequently creating a humanitarian calamity. By following Western leadership, Russia quickly lost its influence over the Bosnian Serbs. In 1995, perceiving that Western policy towards Southeastern Europe was counterproductive to its interests, Russia slowly began to change its foreign policy orientation away from Western interests. By the time the Kosovo crisis had erupted, Russia had attempted to become engaged in a diplomatic activity, partially to

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appease the intense lobbying efforts by Belgrade and the increasingly vocal domestic opposition to the West. For the Russian opposition, the crisis in Serbia was an opportunity to put pressure on Yeltsin’s regime (Simić, 2000). The negotiations leading to Rambouillet were instrumental in shaping Russian foreign policy, which eventually ‘revived the worst instincts and stereotypes of the Cold War’ after Russia perceived it could not defend its interests that clashed with the West (Arbatov, 2000: v). Such interests were primarily defended through diplomatic means, that is, the Contact Group that included Russia. However, Russia was in many ways a dissenting voice within the Contact Group by attempting to veto any decisions pertaining to the imposition of sanctions on Yugoslavia (Simić, 2000). When it became clear that the USA wanted to bypass the Contact Group because of a more recalcitrant stance toward Belgrade, the Russian diplomatic support tried to help Milošević by stymieing the international community’s legitimacy to act, therefore hoping to disrupt the fragile consensus that existed within NATO. Russia also hoped that it would prevent NATO from acting by using its veto at the UN Security Council. Such diplomatic initiatives were expected in Belgrade (Hosmer, 2001: 32–3). However, Russia was vigilant in not going too far. In an interview with Bulatović, I discovered that when Andrei Kozyrev, Russian foreign minister at the time, was shown a UN Security Council resolution, he allegedly responded with ‘everything that is written, that is how it will be. Those are the wishes of the Americans.’15 In other words, Russia was not willing to act beyond what was agreed at the UN. Specifically, Russia had a military and an economic weakness, combined with Yeltsin’s decisiveness in keeping Russia on the sidelines of the Kosovo conflict. Hosmer quotes Yeltsin’s opinion of Milošević’s actions: ‘he [Milošević] wagered on an explosion of popular dissatisfaction with my foreign policy’ (2001: 34). Yeltsin’s government hoped that its successful diplomatic intervention in Kosovo would preserve the spirit of the NATO–Russian Founding Act of 1997, despite increasingly vociferous dissent within Russia (Henriksen, 2007: 116). In a way, Yeltsin was walking a tightrope between preserving Russia’s cooperation with the West and addressing the rising domestic pressure that favoured stronger involvement in the Kosovo crisis. Milošević’s wager was therefore not unfounded. Some foreign policy and military officials in Moscow did consider Milošević to be Russia’s primary partner in the Balkans (Hosmer, 2001: 43). Simić (2000) recalls that Belgrade was frequently visited by Russian diplomats and opposition figures, who were becoming increasingly influential at home. Yeltsin’s government was always under fire from the Russian Parliament due to his

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unpopular foreign, as well as domestic, political decisions. For example, when Milošević applied for Yugoslavia to join the Union of Russia and Belarus, the Russian Duma rejected it by a few votes. Likewise, Russian officers constantly lamented the lack of military support for Serbia. Perhaps this is why Russia attempted to despatch some jet fighters to Serbia, but these were intercepted in Azerbaijan (Bugajski, 2004: 184). Regarding Russian support, Milošević should have known that he was not likely to receive meaningful military support, but he had powerful sympathisers in Russia and could at least count on Russian diplomatic support. This ensures that foreign support as a factor had at least some influence on Milošević’s decisions. Other dimensions of foreign support did exist but played a minimal role. For example, China, although mainly keeping to the sidelines, also provided a legal objection to NATO’s military intervention. Organisations such as the Rio Group of Latin American states, the Non-Aligned Movement and the Group of 77 also provided objections to the intervention (Webber, 2009: 453). They opposed recognition of the right of national minorities to secede when subject to sustained human rights abuses as well as the loss of the sovereign right of states when carrying out such abuses. Milošević also expected disagreements within NATO to be a significant impediment for NATO to act (LeBor, 2003: 287). Some NATO member states did show ambivalence toward NATO intervention in Yugoslavia, in particular Germany, France and Italy. In Germany, for example, Oskar Lafontaine left his position as Minister of Finance when NATO attacks on Yugoslavia began. In France and Italy, the political left constantly pressured their governments not to intervene. NATO intervention also threatened to undo much progress made in US–Greek relations in the years before 1999 (Simić, 2000; LeBor, 2003: 287). Still, it was Russian support that played the most crucial role in Milošević’s calculations. On the other hand, there is not much evidence to show that Russia tried to constrain Milošević. Rather, Russia tried to constrain NATO, making Milošević’s gamble potentially worthwhile.

Counter-factual: what if conditions were different? A counter-factual analysis has already been applied in Chapter 4, on the Iraq–USA conflict, as well as the Moldova–Russia conflict in Chapter 5. Despite being an inaccurate science, the counter-factual analysis ought to confirm if a change in one or more conditions would have affected the outcome. Therefore, this chapter offers a counter-factual analysis to

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address the question of what would have happened if different conditions existed or if different policies had been pursued. One central counter-factual question here is what would have happened if Albanians in Kosovo had not rebelled. Would Milošević have accepted NATO’s terms if it was not for a crisis in Kosovo? An interesting comparison is with peace negotiations in Bosnia, where Milošević had played a constructive role by pressuring the Bosnian Serb leadership to accept a peaceful settlement, which they had initially rejected, leading to an end in cooperation between the two governments (Burg and Shoup, 1999: 309; Bulatović, 2005: 162–8). A similar stance was taken by Bosnian Serbs regarding anticipating negotiations in Dayton in 1995, where Milošević had to use the influence of a religious leader, the Serbian patriarch, to get the Bosnian Serbs to agree to a negotiated settlement. At that time Serbia’s territorial integrity was not threatened by events in Croatia and Bosnia, thus, understandably, Milošević was cooperative, even ostensibly attempting to improve relations with the USA (Bulatović, 2005: 177; Antonić, 2015: 159). According to Grigorian (2006: 59), Milošević was the most cooperative member of the Balkan trio. This was one instance when Milošević was willing to compromise because it enhanced his position as a regional mediator. Another instance when Milošević compromised, although reluctantly, was when he showed acquiescence in preventing overt conflict in Croatia. Facing the rearmament of Croatian paramilitaries in 1990, Milošević and his general staff plotted a coup (Djukić and Dubinsky, 2001: 51). The coup against the federal government would have enabled Milošević to seize power and to implement decisive measures against the secessionists. Such an option was very risky, however rewarding. Milošević later backed down after his supporters turned down the idea (Armatta, 2012: 123). According to Antonić (2015: 71–9), neither had the Yugoslav National Army supported such an idea, because the result of the intervention would have been too bloody and too risky – that is, neither the West nor the Soviet Union supported such an option. Milošević then had to settle for a rump version of Yugoslavia, a smaller but stable state, over a riskier and more rewarding option. Sell (2003: 160) attributes Milošević’s decision as a temporary desire to camouflage his covert involvement. Either way, Milošević had sought to reduce his risks, because otherwise, he would have faced external and internal opposition, including from his key allies (Gow, 2003: 55–6). His priority was to keep power by keeping his winning coalition content. The desire to concentrate power in his own hands also became evident later when Milošević refused to cooperate with the opposition in Serbia – which advocated forming a coalition of national salvation – preferring to make decisions on his own (Antonić,

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2015: 80). From such behaviour, it seems that Milošević was ready to compromise on issues that did not undermine his domestic support base. In a third instance, more than a decade later, Milošević took a similar approach toward Milo Đukanović, President of Montenegro. Đukanović presented himself as an alternative to Milošević during the Montenegrin parliamentary elections of 1998, given that the Montenegrins had grown tired of international isolation as a result of their union with Serbia (Djukic and Dubinsky, 2001: 118). Đukanović’s coalition won, and thus Đukanović’s candidate should have received the post of a federal prime minister. Instead, Milošević chose a member of the Montenegrin opposition. Claiming that this was unconstitutional, Đukanović refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of the federal institutions, and the federation became dysfunctional (Djukic and Dubinsky, 2001: 119; Lukić, 2005: 68; Huszka, 2014: 118). Relations between the two governments further deteriorated after Đukanović submitted a proposal to the federal government calling for the creation of ‘two sovereign states’ linked by a common currency and the exercise of some joint responsibilities in defence and foreign affairs (Lukić, 2005: 69). Milošević, however, ignored this document. Fearing a repetition of Croatian and Slovenian experiences, Đukanović decided not to proclaim outright independence, but rather to do it gradually (Lukić, 2005: 59). Evidence seems to indicate that military intervention in Montenegro would have been too risky for Đukanović. As Phillips and Burns (2012: 80) state, while Montenegro was on the brink of a civil war, the army in Montenegro waited for Milošević’s instructions. Why Milošević never took the risk of using the military is not clear. One reason could be that the USA promised to help Đukanović in case Milošević provoked violence (Huszka, 2014: 119). However, unlike Kosovo, Montenegro also lacked some mythical elements. And Montenegrin voters could not affect Milošević’s grip on power. The case of Montenegro confirms that Milošević avoided confrontation with the West when the situation allowed him to keep his political position. Regarding Kosovo, however, Milošević risked losing his political support. As Simić (2000) describes, the existence of the Kosovo problem meant that dialogue with the Kosovo Albanians before the insurgency was riskier than conflict because Serbian voters were to be won through confrontation, not dialogue. That said, had the Kosovo problem not been tied to voters’ national preferences, it is likely that the Kosovo problem could have been solved peacefully, as was the case with Montenegro. This observation does not negate that some of the Serbian public did not support any violence in Kosovo. According to Boris Malagurski in a personal interview,16 it was the Kosovo Serbs who were particularly

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supportive of Milošević, and thus, by losing their support, Milošević would have faced a serious leadership crisis. It was also the Kosovo Serbs who originally demanded the abolition of Kosovo’s autonomy, demanding a tougher stance by Serbia’s political leadership (LeBor, 2003: 86). Other Serbians were more flexible. Many Serbian intellectuals such as Bratislav Krstić and Aleksandar Despić pondered a peaceful separation of Kosovo and Serbia since the alternative – full integration of the Albanian population into Serbia’s political life – was deemed a risky endeavour (Simić, 2000). The nationalist approach, which entitled the regime to stay in power, was more important than international norms. At the time, international norms were used to reform Central and Eastern Europe into functioning democratic states, and the more practical policy that Krstić and Despić contemplated would have contributed to achieving that. Yet the policy of peaceful separation would have stripped the regime of its power and legitimacy. Milošević was aware that he was caught in a dilemma. On the one hand, he had to cultivate good ties with the international community. On the other hand, he was coming under attack for failing to fulfil expectations, precisely in the context of the Kosovo myth on which much of his political career was constructed (Popolo, 2011: 198). Without the need to protect the statehood and the cradle of Serbian nationalism – Kosovo – regime stability would have no longer be dependent on territory. Since the response to the Albanian threat in Kosovo made Milošević popular in the first place, if the threat had not existed, it is doubtful whether Milošević would have secured regime stability this way. It is more likely that he would not have come into power at all. Members of the League of Communists in Serbia before Milošević’s emergence were deeply afraid of unleashing the nationalist rhetoric. Following the ideological communist line was very unpopular among the public. As Bremmer observes, ‘Milošević did not create Serb nationalism. Serb nationalism created Milošević’ (2006: 185). This was evident on 28 February 1989, when demonstrators in Belgrade expressed their unhappiness with the status quo in Kosovo and its leadership by demanding the arrest of Azem Vllasi (Phillips and Burns, 2012: 10; Antonić, 2015: 38). Unsurprisingly, Milošević promised to act against those who were undermining Yugoslavia, and arrested Vllasi. Therefore, it seems that when the situation offered Milošević space to compromise, he did do so. At the very least, he was capable of discerning that some situations required some compromise. As such, given his successful evasion of problems during his early years in power, and his preference for power and stability over riskier but more rewarding options, the question as to whether Milošević would have

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compromised had the Kosovo problem not existed can be answered. The presented evidence leans toward the answer that he would not have secured and maintained power, and nor would Kosovo Albanians and NATO powers have been likely to find such a problematic leader to deal with. Essentially, the entire dynamic of the conflict would have been different, even if the Serbian regime was stable and Serbia had strong foreign support. Still, Milošević’s chosen options in Croatia, Bosnia and Montenegro reveal that if a compromise over Kosovo had kept him in power, he would probably have agreed to cooperate. Milošević’s legitimacy depended on keeping Kosovo, and the closer he came to losing it, the more he became intransigent. US leaders were wrong to believe that Milošević was a cowardly individual who would succumb if confronted by force (Grigorian, 2006: 59). This was only so because Kosovo was unique to his survival. In other cases, he showed he was more willing to cooperate.

Conclusion The case study of the Serbia–NATO military conflict demonstrates clear links between the three causal conditions and their importance in the Serbian regime’s thinking. This chapter has illustrated that although the Milošević regime emphasised its ‘victimhood’ by demonising the West’s intentions, he was competent enough to understand the threats his regime faced. Milošević even made some correct assumptions about Western intentions at Rambouillet, including that Madeleine Albright would insist on NATO’s leading role, either in reaching an agreement or pressuring Serbia to accept one via military action. After all, the USA wanted to avoid repeating its failure in Bosnia where, according to Holbrooke, it had become clear somewhat late that only NATO’s role was respected (Henriksen, 2007: 106). However, Milošević also made many wrong assumptions, which led him to enter into a war. By declining the conditions offered to him by the West, Milošević was taking a perilous gamble, the results of which were catastrophic if one considers his loss of territorial integrity, power in the country and personal freedom (his subsequent prosecution for war crimes). Borislav Milošević, a brother of Slobodan Milošević, stated in the Serbian media that if Slobodan had accepted offers from great powers, he would still be alive and Serbia would have kept its territorial integrity (Telegraf, 2012). Such consequences are hardly unique to Milošević. Thus, the analysis here has focused on the amalgamation of conditions that led Milošević to take such a gamble in the first place.

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This gamble was primarily influenced by the existence of strong separatist elements in Kosovo (domestic crisis), under the leadership of the KLA that proved to be more effective in rallying Albanian public support; this was in contrast to earlier endeavours at peaceful resistance by Ibrahim Rugova. The Kosovo crisis proved to be critical for the Milošević regime to eventually resist offers given to him during negotiations. It was a territory that carried a high symbolic value, and therefore a high price would have to be paid by any politician who lost it. Many Serbs considered Kosovo as part of their identity, while many intellectual figures in Serbia invoked nationalist rhetoric in response to perceptions of Serbia’s subjugated role during communism. When Yugoslavia was struck by an economic crisis in the 1980s, these perceptions of injustice became conspicuous, leading to an increasingly hostile environment. When Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Macedonia split from Yugoslavia, the Kosovo Albanians made it clear that they no longer wished to be part of the Yugoslav state. The sovereignty and territorial integrity of mythic Serbia was under threat, and Milošević decided to act. This is why Kosovo presented a domestic crisis, a necessary factor in this chapter. Problems in Kosovo, a necessary condition in this quagmire, could still have led to a non-conflicting outcome – that is, while the crisis in Kosovo explains an integral part of the puzzle, the picture would not be complete without two additional conditions: regime stability and foreign support. These two conditions are INUS conditions, thus, they are not always necessary for all our theoretical pathways. They augmented the importance of the Milošević regime to act. Regime stability as a factor is somewhat apparent. Milošević’s regime was stable, especially in 1998, but its stability depended on defending Serbia’s territorial integrity. The regime’s support originated in Kosovo when Milošević chose to defend Serb interests in the province. His tough stance against centrifugal forces was well perceived by the Serbian public and intellectuals. The boycott of Serbian elections by the Kosovo Albanians also gave Milošević’s SPS extra seats in the Serbian Parliament. Without this support, regime stability would have been less certain. Efforts to maintain power at home, however, made Milošević less apt to handle foreign pressure. His initially cavalier approach to the West changed in the mid-1990s, but it was too late. His failure to comprehend changes in the international geopolitical situation was detrimental to his public and personal life.17 Still, a second INUS condition, foreign support, kept Milošević under the illusion that he could emerge from the military crisis unscathed. Foreign support refers primarily to Russian diplomatic support, but also to indications by many other UN and NATO members that they would voice opposition to military intervention in Yugoslavia. Regime stability

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and foreign support are therefore a concomitant phenomenon with a domestic crisis in Kosovo, engendering a risky decision to go to war against a major power. A comparison with Milošević’s earlier decisions during the wars in Croatia and Bosnia, as well as his apathetic stance toward Montenegrin secessionist tendencies, indicate that Kosovo was different. After all, Milošević was more willing to compromise on territorial issues that did not undermine his domestic support. In retrospect, the loss of Kosovo undermined the foundation on which Milošević’s regime had maintained itself since 1987. By losing this foundation when he signed the Kumanovo Agreement in June 1999, Milošević quickly lost the support and votes he used to get from Kosovo (Stevanovic, 2004: 188; Antonić, 2015: 347–8). Once conditions changed, the mechanism that defined Milošević’s political reality also changed. The purpose of this chapter has been to identify this mechanism through process tracing, and the evidence presented here indicates that the regime believed it had no exit strategy. PR and media statements in the West that Milošević was implacable at least corroborate the fact he did not see a peaceful exit, an essential element of prospect theory. This chapter has focused on the conditions that the Serbian regime was confronted with and how they impacted decisions in the face of a threat from a major power. This is the third and the last pathway identified in this book.

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Conclusion: Dealing with Complexity, Defeat and Beliefs At the beginning of the book, I posed the question, why, or under what conditions, have minor powers attempted to resist or challenge others they know to be significantly more powerful by force of arms in the post-Cold War period? Having assessed all the empirical material, the simplified answer is that minor powers have done so when facing a more important domestic crisis, and when either foreign support or a window of opportunity have led the minor power to think that the opponent would be constrained in escalating what was expected to be a very limited war. However, this simplified answer is drawn from the empirical results that contain four important elaborations. The first point for elaboration reflects the productive application of concepts of complexity and problem-driven pragmatism since there are three answers to the research question, rather than one. The second point for elaboration reflects more in-depth how a seemingly asymmetric conflict faced by a minor power is a potentially lesser threat to the regime than a domestic crisis spiralling out of control. The third point for elaboration highlights the common pattern found in the book’s case studies, namely, that minor powers’ expectations from war were far more modest than expected. The fourth point for elaboration concerns the Iraq case, where anomalous beliefs played a particularly critical role for a minor power to miscalculate. Each of these points is elaborated on below, before concluding by reflecting on the theoretical implications for understanding the conflict in Syria, as well as brief policy recommendations.

There is more than one way for a conflict to brew This book has addressed a number of limitations found in previous studies on asymmetric conflict. First, studies on asymmetric conflict have largely

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focused on the perspective of major powers, according to which minor powers are identified as rebellious or characterised as largely irrational. Thus, it has placed the onus probandi on other scholars to make sense of minor powers’ strategies. Second, many past and current studies have investigated asymmetric conflict as a conflict involving non-state actors. Such a focus has left few studies addressing minor powers, that is, states (and state-like entities), and their role in asymmetric conflicts. Third, the study of asymmetric conflict, and IR in general, has suffered from a lack of engagement with multiple theories, multiple conditions and therefore more complex notions of causality. This lack of engagement has given rise to discrepancies between several theoretical contributions in terms of the importance of the conditions selected in this study. Fourth, some prior contributions have differentiated between conflicts initiated by the weaker side, as Argentina did during the Falklands War in 1982, and those in which the weaker side was on the defensive, as was Iraq during the first Gulf War, even though there is no theoretical justification to do so. The side that fired the first bullet is not necessarily the one that was more inclined to start the conflict. Fifth, even in studies that have looked at militarised disputes between states, the focus has not been on minor powers as opponents of major powers, but on major and middle powers. Again, the example of Argentina in the Falklands War is not one of a minor power. Sixth, no study of asymmetric conflict after the end of the Cold War has included the whole universe of cases. And finally, the observation that some minor powers win conflicts has usually applied to conflicts in which one side embraces asymmetric methods – guerrilla warfare or terrorism. Such a view does not help us to understand interstate conflicts involving conventional military assets. This book has attempted to address all these limitations. Oftentimes, the most fruitful line of inquiry into any international or global phenomenon requires an intuitive and reflexive theoretical framework that draws on a range of available explanatory ideas (Strange, 1994; Rosecrance, 1999; Wendt, 1999; Barkin, 2010). In this book, I have referred to this as problem-driven pragmatism. Most of the theoretical logic in this book has been borrowed from prospect theory, the rationalist literature (especially selectorate theory) and constructivist elements focusing on beliefs. This book has aimed to highlight the importance of asymmetric conflicts as empirical phenomena rather than with maintaining a particular theoretical dogma. None of these individual approaches adequately explains why minor powers engage in armed conflict with major powers; each holds key insights. A similar logic has been applied in other studies (for example, Abbott and Snidal, 1998). What emerges is a promising theory of minor powers in interstate asymmetric conflict focusing

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on the following conditions: foreign support, window of opportunity, domestic crisis, regime stability and anomalous beliefs. Unlike Arreguín-Toft’s theory on how the weak win wars, the theory of minor powers in interstate asymmetric conflict is primarily concerned with the decision to engage in such a conflict in the first place. Moreover, to attain robust results, QCA and case studies were used. These methods complement each other. The results provide a more complex, but also more confident and precise response to conflicting theoretical claims over the importance of studied conditions in an asymmetric conflict. The results presented in each chapter have been crucial for exploring the research puzzle in its entirety. Chapter 3 on the QCA revealed that all five of the selected conditions matter, although in different ways. One way (pathway 1) is for a minor power to have a regime characterised by anomalous beliefs and for the regime to face a domestic crisis. Iraq belongs to this group of states, and was explored in depth in Chapter 4. The chapter concluded that, for Saddam, an unravelling domestic crisis was his primary concern before deciding whether to go to war against the Coalition in the First Gulf War. The case of Iraq shed light on Saddam’s belief that Iraqis would only tolerate an oppressive regime such as his if their ‘bellies were full’. After all, after losing an extremely costly war to Iran, Saddam witnessed and feared growing domestic turmoil as people lacked the means for a good livelihood. Thus, Saddam invaded Kuwait in the hope of gaining control over its oil production and thereby re-establishing ‘full bellies’ in Iraq. In addition to this revelation, the case of Iraq under Saddam critically opened an important debate about the discrepancy between beliefs and reality. Saddam’s regime fostered anomalous beliefs, which shaped his calculations in a way that made it seem that war not only held the possibility of victory, but was also inevitable. Specifically, Saddam believed that the USA suffered from Vietnam Syndrome – that it feared another costly war. The USA would thus naturally be susceptible to feeling queasy when body bags of its soldiers arrived home. While he believed that the USA would not be able to bear the costs, he also strongly felt that the USA would attempt to attack him at one time or another. In many of his notes and policy options, Saddam foresaw or prepared for such an eventuality. Given his beliefs that he had a window of opportunity for a war against the USA, we are confronted with a challenge to understand Saddam’s perception of reality, one skewed by the very nature of his identity and rule. Without anomalous beliefs, Saddam might not have opted to remain intransigent. The dashed portion of pathway 1 in Figure 3.2 represents this belief that there was a window of opportunity against the USA, while in reality there was none.

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The second way (pathway 2) for a minor power to choose war occurs when a minor power has a stable regime together with a domestic crisis and a window of opportunity. Moldova, as the only case in this pathway, was studied in Chapter 5. As such, the chapter on Moldova revealed some opposite tendencies to those of Iraq. The Moldovan President at the time, Mircea Snegur, found himself battling the Russian Army only because he had a window of opportunity to act in the separatist region of Transnistria, while the Soviet Union, later Russia, was busy with the near-collapse of its governance in Moscow in the early 1990s. This window of opportunity, however, closed too soon, and the Russian regime decided to act against Moldovan forces despite turmoil at home. Although Snegur’s regime was stable, at least in terms of his own presidential role, a domestic crisis presented a potential threat to that regime stability, as the failure to establish the sovereignty of the state would have exposed the regime as not fit to rule. More specifically, the Moldovan state had just gained independence from the Soviet Union and its leadership was confronted with a need to establish an identity, but identity issues threatened the disintegration of the republic, devastation of the state’s economic potential and degradation of its human potential (Chirtoaca, 2004: 26). For Snegur, acting swiftly in Transnistria, and potentially winning, meant keeping his regime stable and possibly resolving the domestic crisis. The Moldovan example is the strongest case indicating that as soon as these conditions changed (providing a good basis for a counter-factual assessment), Snegur quickly reversed his policies to stem further losses. In fact, after losing control over Transnistria, the regime became unstable, and to salvage his role, Snegur quickly induced a leadership crisis to remove the prime minister and to join a more moderate coalition. The third way (pathway  3) is for a minor power to have a stable regime, together with a domestic crisis and foreign support. The case of Serbia belongs here (Chapter 6). The Serbian case is similar to that of Moldova, as it contained the same configuration of conditions; however, instead of having a window of opportunity, the Serbian regime had foreign support. The results from this case indicate that, for Serbia, confronting a major power was not a hasty decision. Rather, the decision originated in the geopolitical configuration that the Milošević regime found itself in – a configuration that was underpinned by a growing domestic crisis, namely, the desire of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo to be independent, at almost any price. This crisis presented a threat to Milošević’s claim to power, as that claim rested on defending Serbian nationalist interests in Kosovo. Losing a particularly sensitive territory for ethnic Serbs would have meant a potential loss of regime stability, given that Milošević promised to defend Serbian interests, a popular

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move in a region that sought to sever its links with its communist past. For Milošević, his political career, that is, his survival, lay above all his principles, which may be why his close aide, Borisav Jović, described Milošević as someone who was focused on good tactics at the expense of a viable strategy (Antonić, 2015: 8). In other words, Milošević’s obsession over maintaining his grip on power, or regime stability, meant that he focused excessively on his image as the defender of Serbs in Kosovo, his winning coalition, while ignoring the international community’s increasing intolerance for Milošević engaging in another ugly war. The case of Serbia was also the only case where foreign support was present. While that support did not entail military support, Milošević secured the maximum he could from Russia, namely, a diplomatic commitment by Russia to oppose NATO’s justification for war and to veto any resolutions in support of military action against Serbia. Milošević succeeded insofar as NATO was denied the legitimacy to act in accordance with international law, and instead, NATO had to rely on humanitarian imperatives as a prerogative to act. Overall, the case of Serbia provided a suitable representation of those cases falling between those characterised by anomalous beliefs (Iraq) and that of Moldova, which was a transitory democracy. Looking beyond these three pathways leading a minor power to choose war, the results provide valuable clarification of the role and importance of the chosen conditions, as conceptualised in previous scholarly debates. The use of QCA highlighted that the chosen conditions are not necessarily competitive in significance, but may be complementary and often interdependent. The impact of a single condition may be small but necessary to trigger other conditions. The domestic crisis was found to be a necessary condition in all the cases, meaning that whenever the outcome occurred, the condition was present. Regime stability and anomalous beliefs were identified as INUS conditions, that is, conditions that were only important in some pathways and not all of them. The window of opportunity and foreign support were categorised as SUIN (Sufficient but Unnecessary part of a configuration that is Insufficient but Necessary for the outcome) conditions, meaning that either one of the conditions needed to be present to lead to the outcome. All these conditions play very specific roles, which contributes to a more complex theoretical framework utilising the language of complexity to provide greater clarity. After all, prior to the evidence presented in this book, it was unclear whether regime stability contributed to conflict or acquiescence. After analysing the results, it has become clear that the role of regime stability in a minor power’s choice of conflict is dependent on having a domestic crisis and either a window of opportunity or foreign support.

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Major powers are not the main threat The results in this book do not seem to hold much support for the statement that war can be an outcome simply because a minor power is unwilling to live under the heel of the enemy, and because it places honour and its cause above survival (C.Q. Schneider, 2009: 3). Neither was it an issue of a pure gamble. Although foreign policy is not simply an extension of domestic policy, we have observed how internal policy and the situation in a country often decisively influence foreign policy (Holsti, 1995: 255). That being said, a domestic crisis that threatens the sovereignty, integrity and social fabric of a state indeed precedes the foreign threat in importance for regimes of minor powers. A domestic crisis can create losses that cannot be ignored. All three cases revealed that the foreign threat was as a ‘loss’ additional to domestic crisis, but one that was likely rectifiable, or at least one that would have allowed the regime to survive. Thus, in slight contrast to prospect theory, it seems that minor powers choosing a war tend to face a loss–loss situation, with no clear ‘gain’ domain. Consider Serbia’s loss–loss framework stated by Simić (2000): ‘for the regime in Belgrade, international consequence of war, even with the cost of losing Kosovo, would be smaller from the consequences which Rambouillet agreement would bring’. Thus, regimes of minor powers are faced with paying the costs of war on the one hand or, on the other hand, losing legitimacy pertaining to the domestic crisis. Milošević and Snegur paid material costs but salvaged the source of their legitimacy, Snegur more so than Milošević. Naturally, a close relationship exists between the domestic crisis and regime stability. Domestic crisis can threaten regime stability, and an unstable regime can worsen the domestic crisis. The concern for minor powers was over what would happen with regime stability given the domestic crisis. Regime stability in this light offers some counterintuitive points, that is, it plays an important role in both the choice of war by a minor power and the choice of acquiescence. It is no wonder that previous studies have not been able to offer a uniform prediction regarding the importance of this condition. Stable regimes tend to choose acquiescence when domestic crisis is absent. In other words, by itself, regime stability fosters peace. However, regime stability is conducive to war when it faces domestic crisis. The way regime stability becomes a concern for a minor power facing a domestic crisis is quite clear in the case of Iraq, confirming the literature on coup-proofing (Quinlivan, 1999; Gaub, 2013; Brown et al, 2016). This literature highlights how reliance on groups with special loyalties to the regime and the creation of parallel military organisations and multiple internal security agencies makes regimes coup-proof (essentially, more

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stable). However, again, protecting oneself from military-led coups d’état comes at the expense of effective policy coordination and reaching full military potential. Clearly, such a policy reflects regimes’ concerns over domestic threats, even if it comes at the expense of having an effective military. Hosmer (2007) established similar findings, whereby Saddam and his advisers were ignorant of international and military affairs while their focus was on instilling fear and ensuring Saddam’s role in a topdown decision process. Again, such a set-up also made addressing foreign threats ineffective. Naturally, McMahon (2015a) describes such regimes as insecure, perhaps given the paradox of ‘needing protection by the military and needing protection from the military’ (Feaver, 1996: 154). The term for this is the ‘guardianship dilemma’. Nonetheless, such regimes are usually characterised as ‘resilient’, despite military incompetence (Hertog, 2011). Dynamics in other regimes, such as in Moldova’s transitory democracy or Serbia’s more authoritarian rule, displayed a different source of stability. Snegur was, after all, able to use popular support to his advantage, while Milošević’s quick downfall following the NATO conflict questions what parallels can be drawn between these two cases and the ‘coup-proof ’ regimes. Nonetheless, they all share the concern for regime stability at the expense of external dynamics. In any case, it has become clear in all three cases a minor power must have a military that is competent enough to ensure that the regime will survive. Even if stable regimes are often better able to deal with threats at home than external threats, unstable regimes would likely have fared far worse. After all, Katagiri (2013) argues that ‘organisational stability’ enhances fighting capability. Thus, some fighting capability is necessary. The minor powers studied in this book believed they were resilient enough to face a limited conflict with a major power. Furthermore, an external threat can unite potentially subversive internal forces; thus, paradoxically, an external threat can help to further stabilise the regime. According to McMahon (2015b: 2), ‘external threats may induce loyalty [of the military], encouraging nervous leaders to behave aggressively’. Saddam attempted to unite Iraqis and even Arabs behind his cause by accusing Israel of masterminding against the Iraqi regime. Others, such as Levy (1988), Miller and Elgun (2011), also argue that the presence of internal threats can lead to an aggressive foreign policy. This is the logic behind the diversionary use of force theory. Indeed, part of Saddam’s motive behind the invasion of Kuwait was to divert attention away from domestic problems. A similar motive drove Argentina’s decision to invade the Falklands in 1982. Diversion of attention can also occur on a domestic level. Schweller (2009) suggests that decision-makers sometimes manipulate societal discourses about conflict to mobilise

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domestic opinion (as cited by Berejikian, 2016: 4). We have seen in the case studies in this book how Saddam, Snegur and Milošević sought to mobilise domestic opinion, especially of the ‘winning coalition’. Clearly, therefore, understanding regime stability requires a more nuanced, complex view. This book suggests that, while a regime may be stable, a domestic crisis signals that its stability may be threatened in the future. This is essentially what Park (2004) and Berejikian (2016) argue by using prospect theory, namely, that it is the perception of worsening problems in the future that leads a weaker state to choose war. The evidence in this book also confirms Bueno de Mesquita et al’s (2005) selectorate theory, which emphasises that tolerance costs are acceptable because they do not affect the regime’s loyal group (the winning coalition). Rather, it is the general population that suffers from conflict, while the loyal group reaps the benefits. In other words, the regime and its supporters are often shielded from paying the costs of conflict. In addition, in authoritarian regimes, with small winning coalitions, regime members do not dare to disagree with the ruler and their immediate executives, and are thus particularly prone to producing anomalous beliefs, both because psychology has a greater impact when fewer individuals make all the decisions, and because of the groupthink phenomenon whereby members of the group tend to reinforce each other’s anomalous beliefs. In cases of democratic regimes, for example, Moldova’s, we have seen that the regime was more sensitive to public opinion, and thus Snegur was quick to compromise. After all, democratic regimes rely on popular support and not on smaller loyal groups. As such, liberal schools of thought may find it intuitive that non-democratic minor powers are particularly concentrated in the group with anomalous beliefs. In fact, most of the minor powers studied were characterised by militaristic and undemocratic governments. Less authoritarian regimes tend to be in the other two pathways, but even they were not established democracies. Moldova and Georgia were only emerging as democratic regimes. The finding that we have no established democracies in conflict might corroborate democratic peace theory, despite the fact that both Moldova and Russia were undergoing democratisation when they clashed. Paul’s (1994) claim that militaristic regimes favour conflict resonates here, but less so his claim that such regimes lack legitimacy or popularity. Moldova and Serbia’s regimes were initially quite popular as they provided a platform to shed their communist past. It is also important to reflect on the fact that threatening major powers were intrinsically linked to the domestic crisis, meaning that any action taken to deal with the domestic crisis would have had an impact on the external threat and vice versa. Specifically, the major power, as the

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external threat, naturally had interests that challenged the policies of the minor power, such as its foreign policy or precipitating regime change. Since the minor powers in these cases were largely intransigent, the major powers saw an opportunity to coerce (and punish) the behaviour of their minor opponents, partially by defeating them on the domestic front. In other words, the major powers had an interest in opposing the policies of the minor powers’ regimes in their domestic quarrels. Not surprisingly, for the minor powers, even to attempt to solve the domestic crisis naturally meant opposing the will of the major power. Consequently, as long as the minor powers’ main threat remained a domestic crisis that was spiralling out of control, any action on the domestic front meant having to deal with the foreign threat at the same time. The strong link between domestic and foreign threat complicates the discussion and the question of whether the issue is one of asymmetric conflict, intrastate war or one of survival. Even democratic and democratising regimes cannot afford to be seen as weak when confronted by separatist challenges, and cannot give up their right to lie down and enforce the rules (Ayoob, 2007: 138). It is hardly surprising, therefore, that a minor power offers resistance when facing a serious domestic challenge. Minor powers do seem to be more intransigent when their territory or political independence are challenged, as already discovered by Allen and Fordham (2011). Nonetheless, despite minor powers’ difficult loss–loss perception, they need more leverage to ensure their survival. The results in this book confirm the observation raised by Brown, Fariss and McMahon (2016), namely, that survival-seeking political leaders can seek to develop influence (this can be seen as akin to a window of opportunity) or alliances in order to balance out against the military power of other states (which this book treats as foreign support). Without this additional leverage, minor powers would likely have acquiesced.

War objectives are reachable When minor powers enter into an asymmetric conflict against major powers, they do so with a good understanding of the risks. In other words, this book has revealed that minor powers’ expectations were far more realistic and logical than we would expect. As Bulatović (2005: 290), former Prime Minister of Yugoslavia, wrote, ‘only if we were idiots and fanatics would we take our country into a conflict with the strongest military alliance in the history of mankind, and the opponent which according to all parameters, was six hundred times and one full technological generation in front of us.’ This quote is important for two

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reasons. First, it confirms that the regimes of minor powers, even when defending themselves, acknowledge that they bear some responsibility for the outcome. Second, the quote hints at the idea that minor powers do not enter a conflict expecting to lose. The case studies indeed establish that in all three cases, of which two were somewhat initiated by the minor power, diplomacy preceded the war. It was the failure of diplomacy that induced major powers to issue ultimatums. These ultimatums gave the Iraqi and Serbian regimes clear expectations that the war was going to happen. The Moldovan regime, on the other hand, did not expect an escalation. Thus, when Saddam and Snegur made the first move, they did not do so out of a desire to defeat the major power, but to reach limited objectives. After all, according to Sullivan (2007: 505), the objectives in a war can vary. Speaking of objectives, Sullivan (2007) concludes that the minor power’s tolerance for the costs of war can negatively affect the major power’s willingness to bear the costs. Similarly, this book finds that minor powers do not seek to defeat the major powers, but rather, hope to diminish their appetite for war. It is thus justifiable to deem a limited aims/fait accompli strategy as common to all minor powers, based on the case studies, confirming one of Paul’s (1994) findings. However, the limited objectives of minor powers can be quite particular. In the case of Moldova, the goal was simply to get the Russians to realise that their support for the secessionists would be costly. For Saddam, the objective was simply to survive, to defy expectations that an impoverished, weakened Iraq would succumb to brute force in a way that would destroy Saddam and his ruling elite. Not surprisingly, after the war, Saddam quickly began to present himself as the victor, a man who had survived against great odds. While it is certainly true that he had also lost all hope of quick recovery to the Iraqi economy by annexing Kuwait, for Saddam the game was not over, and he did manage to slowly rebuild parts of Iraq. In a similar comparison, even though Milošević knew that the war would begin, he also thought it would not last very long. His strategy was also to outlast NATO’s determination to fight and to deny Kosovo its independence. In light of this, it cannot be argued that these minor powers were simply forced into armed conflict. They expected and calculated for the escalation. After all, the Serbian regime had been preparing for an eventual war against NATO since 1994, just as Saddam had been doing for several years. Only Snegur acted without expecting the Russians to retaliate. Although Snegur knew that the Russian military forces partially supported the Transnistrians, their involvement was limited during the early phases of the conflict. Therefore, Russian decisiveness was not part of Snegur’s projections, and so, when the Russian forces made quick breakthroughs, Snegur pleaded

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for peace. He admitted that he had gambled, and indeed he might have had a winning strategy had there been no change of heart in Moscow. Especially in the case of Iraq, the idea of winning was also shaped by beliefs – the strong effects that will be discussed in the next section. It should also not be surprising to hear that Milošević believed that he had partially won, as he had succeeded in denying Kosovo Albanians their independence while keeping his regime intact. Although different events in Serbia would unfold a year later, this last point indicates that there are no clear lines between success and failure. Minor powers may see losses as inevitable, but by putting up resistance, they may dampen their losses, or at the very least, survive. If minor powers define victory in this very limited fashion, it is surely questionable whether we can still see their choice of war as somewhat irrational. Although it is still hard to judge, the case studies elucidate that the actions of the minor powers were not completely suicidal, as they carried with them the possibility of counteracting the damage that might have happened anyway. Apart from Milošević, the other two leaders studied in depth, Saddam and Snegur, managed to hold on to their power for some time, and even experience some level of recovery. More importantly, in all three cases, the minor powers avoided the worst-case scenarios during and after the war. Iraq did not fall apart (at least not until after the 2003 war); Moldova managed to deal with one secession successfully by reaching a deal with Gagauzia, reintegrating it and giving minorities significant rights; and Serbia lost physical control, but retained some leverage over Kosovo, even to this day. Consequently, it is interesting that even a seemingly zero-sum game was not truly such. In all the three cases studied, the war against a major power ensured political survival. Only in Milošević’s case can we observe the regime’s downfall, but it happened more than a year after NATO intervention, and required significant domestic mobilisation combined with international support.

Reconciling beliefs and reality At the beginning of this book it was highlighted that there is value in stepping into the shoes of minor powers. In doing so, this book reflects a consistent struggle between an objective assessment of interstate militarised crises and an exploration of the ways in which such crises were interpreted by the minor powers’ regimes. In effect, to understand the actions of minor powers, such as Iraq, one has to account for potential discrepancies between the somewhat objective observations1 that we may call ‘reality’ and the subjective beliefs of certain leaders who fail to

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comprehend ‘reality’. Although the coding of the data in Chapter 3 aimed for an external and objective assessment, several theoretical observations can account for these types of anomalous beliefs that played an important role in Iraq’s case. One option to explain the anomalous beliefs of individuals within a regime is to use the theoretical and empirical contributions of the political science literature that does not deal with asymmetric conflict. For instance, the mythic-rational consciousness structure formulates that a mythic-rational person uncritically accepts the universal conventions of the society in which he or she lives. In doing so, the mythic-rational mind cannot easily comprehend other possible worldviews. Authoritarian regimes are particularly prone to fostering mythic-rational group values that can lead to the addictive thrill of experiencing power when victimising others (see Jordan, 1998). Seliktar and Dutter (2009: 227) identify five possible explanations as to why authoritarian regimes have this propensity. The first focuses on the ‘madman hypothesis’ whereby a leader is perceived to be disconnected from reality. The second focuses on clinical psychology, which seeks to identify the specific pathologies that may affect an autocrat’s goals and behaviours. The third focuses on cognitive psychology, which deems that even dysfunctional or pathological autocrats have consistent, logical ways of thinking, but that these can have misperceptions and biases. The fourth is the unitary rational actor model, which explains seemingly irrational behaviour by indicating that individuals, a modified set of policy options or a different sequencing of the discussion of options can lead to different results. Finally, the fifth is individual rational choice, whereby personal psychological characteristics have a maximum impact on a government’s policy choices. There are numerous other explanations that can expand on these results, especially from the perspective of psychological frameworks (see, for example, Glad, 2002). The point is, that the results indicating that anomalous beliefs shape policy decisions are consistent with a range of scholarship dealing with behaviour and rationality. The other option is to accept the validity of some already established contributions to asymmetric conflict. Studies focusing on beliefs, such as Fischerkeller (1998), highlight the problem of certain beliefs being potent enough to influence the leadership of a minor power to think that its much stronger opponent is actually inferior. The case study of Iraq highlights this situation somewhat. Iraq fostered a cultural judgement that the USA lacked resolve, although this was hardly the case in reality. Iraq’s situation can also be interpreted using Berejikian’s NCR framework (2016), who argues that decision-makers are more likely to fall prey to wrong framing effects when there is lack of competition. In other words,

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the lack of competitive ideas fosters groupthink within a regime. The presence of alternative frames can dislodge a settled frame. Both of these contributions elucidate more cognitive explanations that are consistent with observations in this book. Some rationalist models are also applicable, where relative power capabilities are a central cause of war (Fearon, 1995; Powell, 1999). Specifically, when adversaries do not share similar beliefs about the likely outcomes of war, they do not reach a negotiated settlement based on those shared expectations (Levy and Thompson, 2010: 64). Had the beliefs been matched, it is doubtful that the likely loser would have accepted the high probability of loss and still chosen war. This is why in Figure 3.2 (in Chapter 3) a dashed section of the pathway line represents a mere belief, not the actual presence of a window of opportunity. Counter-factual assessments in all three case studies reveal that after the major power had clearly indicated that it was capable and committed, the beliefs of Saddam, Snegur and Milošević changed, and they quickly scrambled to accommodate the demands of their stronger opponents. Thus, the significance of anomalous beliefs seems to lie in how they shape other conditions, such as the window of opportunity, but also possibly others. In other words, reflecting on commitment problems raised in the rationalist literature, had the major power credibly committed, we would have likely observed the lesser willingness of minor powers to engage in conflict. Thus, while Allen and Fordham are correct that large power disparity reduces uncertainty about the balance of capabilities (2011: 1026), it is the major power’s resolve, or commitment, that minor powers hope to weaken. We saw this very clearly in the case of Iraq, and somewhat in the case of Serbia. This brings the discussion to the issue of power. The main focus of this research is on power, a concept held sacred by realists. While materialism is the main focus of measuring power, anomalous beliefs can skew the value of materialism, since the ideas that are formed regarding entities or policies, even if not directly observed, are equally, if not more, important when actors act as a function of private and public information. This brings together rationalism and constructivism, for the outcome of the conflict is a function of calculatable material elements and immaterial (morale, beliefs, strategy). There is indeed a reality out there, but such a reality can be subject to different interpretations. We assume that actors rationally set their preferences to maximise their gains and minimise their losses. The problem is, of course, that actors are ultimately human beings that make decisions, and wrongly held beliefs can result in choices that maximise losses, not gains. As such, in this book, utility maximisation must be viewed together with beliefs.

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In the case of Iraq, beliefs, together with the emotions and mental health of Saddam, overshadowed what seemed to be common sense to most of the international community. Yet, as Petersen (2011: 3–22) highlights, current theories of conflict in political science largely ignore emotions. It may be that political leadership, just like suicide bombers, can be driven to have a sense of dignity and self-respect, and be associated with anger, shame and sadness (McCauley, 2012: 143). That Saddam was more concerned over what people would think of him 500 years later than his image at the time illustrates this point well. The case study of Iraq also shows that Saddam was prone to emotional outbursts, such as crying, hiding himself and killing even those friends who were more intelligent than himself, among other things. Therefore, it should hardly be surprising that such a deep, complex and dark psychology steered Saddam away from common sense. This is not to say that he was irrational, for Saddam’s seemingly anomalous approach to gaining power at home was rather surprising and thus successful. On the international scene, however, anomalous beliefs tend to be no longer supported by groupthink. Believing in their immense power, tyrannical leaders become more paranoid, erratic and defensive (Glad, 2002: 1). Thus, a seemingly rational and successful leader can soon be seen as irrational and suicidal. Although they are partially shaped by emotions and mental health, beliefs are also importantly shaped by information. Numerous studies on war indicate that incomplete information is one of the key causes of conflict (see, for example, Fearon, 1995; Wagner, 2000; Slantchev and Tarar, 2011). Indeed, this book shows that Saddam Hussein not only grew up fostering anomalous beliefs and values but also, as a brutal dictator, he rarely received any true information from his subordinates, due to their fear of displeasing him. It is no surprise, then, that he harboured wrongly held beliefs, as these were partially the consequence of wrong information. These beliefs led him to assume that he could outlast US resolve – that he had a window of opportunity when he did not. Even in the case of Moldova, where Snegur correctly assumed that he could not defeat the Russian military, he still miscalculated due to the conflicting information he had received prior to the conflict. As a result, he believed that the Russian forces would not actively fight on behalf of the Transnistrian forces. In short, wrong information can easily lead one to overestimate one’s own capabilities. Unfortunately, the crisp-set QCA analysis in this book could not capture both subjective beliefs and what we can deem as ‘reality’, as I measured conditions according to the reality reflected through agreed-on facts in the scientific literature. The case studies, therefore, became very important in highlighting that, just because we can establish certain parameters as to

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what constitutes a ‘true’ answer, it does not mean that the leadership of a minor power acted according to the belief in those parameters. Instead, the leadership of minor powers is often driven by their own interpretations of the world, especially in the case of authoritarian regimes. As the results of the QCA showed, in all four cases where anomalous beliefs were present in the conflict outcome, an authoritarian regime ruled the minor power. Expectedly, the strongest critiques of this book might come from hermeneutic approaches to IR, which consider the very methods of natural science to be grossly unsuitable for studying human beings (Vidgen and Braa, 1997: 526). As such, interpretivist scholars might point out that the very concept of asymmetric conflict is problematic, in that major powers do not refer to their minor power opponents as weak or small, but rather, as very real threats to regional, if not international, peace and values. Thus, the very social agents studied here may understand the dynamics differently than the external observer (Doty, 1996: 4), and asymmetric conflict might not exist as such in the minds of the actors. Admittedly, many assumptions of this book are certainly positivist in nature and prone to critique from an interpretivist perspective. However, I have sought to reduce the gap of potential ontological and epistemological critiques by constructing a research question that favours an answer to ‘what’ and ‘why’ questions over ‘how’, necessitating more positivism. At the same time, using more detailed case studies and including the condition of anomalous beliefs I have attempted to address the obvious discrepancies between the realities and subjective beliefs of the social actors studied. Moreover, this book has partially abandoned neutral explanations of global political dynamics by also addressing the subjective views of the regimes of minor powers, which may portray major powers as aggressive. However, since the motives of major powers have often been a more important focus of previous studies, such known narratives have not been repeated here in depth. Interpretations have been dealt with only insofar as they have helped to address the research question, which is one of the premises of problem-driven pragmatism. Constructivist premises were therefore particularly helpful, especially those focusing on identities and how they can have causal power (Adler, 2012). Understanding the constitution of identity is instrumental in explaining how entities with such identities behave and what causes foreign policy outcomes. Foreign policy scholars trained in psychology have already highlighted the importance of national role conceptions as intersubjective products of history, memory and socialisation that have had a great influence on state action (Ilgit and Ozkececi-Taner, 2012). In this book, the focus was on all three, but the heaviest emphasis was on history. Saddam’s success and downfall were based on a violent and

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mistrustful understanding of life in Iraq. His beliefs were a product of his social life – as Aburish (2012: 7) claims, Saddam was a true son of Iraq. But the fear that he fostered in his surroundings led to an inadequate assessment of the international reality. In Moldova, identity fears were instrumental in creating the domestic crisis. The resentment of Soviet cultural policies was the very reason why Moldovan intellectuals sought greater cultural and linguistic freedoms. Yet, the minority ethnic groups that did not speak Romanian did not wish to be part of a new state that initially contemplated a merger with the Romanian state. Thus, much of the internal conflict was about identities. Serbia’s domestic troubles were also a product of a long history of identities between Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo that were incompatible, even hostile. It was expedient for Milošević’s regime to build its populist platform by exploiting these hostilities. Constructivism therefore enriches our understanding of policy outcomes. Surely such an incorporation of constructivism also provokes a question as to how much weight can be ascribed to material versus subjective factors. The interwoven nature of such factors, however, would make such an endeavour rather difficult.

Theoretical implications for understanding the Syrian conflict This book also has implications for the current conflict in Syria, known as the Syrian Civil War. The conflict began in 2011 with mass protests against al-Assad’s regime. However, these protests quickly grew in size and were dealt with ruthlessly by the regime. This led to many defections and the formation of several factions, including, but not limited to, the loosely coordinated Free Syrian Army, Islamic State and the majorityKurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The transformation from nonviolent protests into violent resistance began to quickly attract foreign fighters, Russian and Iranian fighters, and advisers on the side of the regime. Meanwhile, Jabhat al-Nsura and al-Qaeda quickly infiltrated the opposition (Fares, 2015: 153). The West also supported the opposition, especially its more moderate elements, in particular the Kurdish factions. Turkey and the Gulf States, however, preferred a more direct approach in support of all groups fighting al-Assad, apart from the Kurds, who have been a concern for Turkey, leading to direct Turkish intervention in the northwest of Syria. The conflict thus quickly became more internationalised, bloodier and more difficult to resolve. While on the one hand, it became a civil war, it also became a proxy war, not least between Saudi Arabia and Iran (Kinninmont, 2014: 48).

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From the perspective of the Syrian Arab Republic, specifically, the regime of Bashar al-Assad, the quick ascendance of opposition was the main threat to the regime’s plans to retain a foothold in the country (Kinninmont, 2014: 49). However, compared to the Syrian opposition, Islamic State was far more capable of winning battles in the early stages, gaining control over half of the Syrian territory in early 2015. As a result, all players had to confront Islamic State as a de facto state-like entity, until Raqqa, a desert town in northern Syria, was successfully taken by the SDF in late 2017, hastening Islamic State’s downfall. Since the beginning, the situation certainly presented itself as an acute domestic crisis facing a minor power, a country with just under 23 million people (or even less, if one accounts for the minority that supports the regime). Considering the conclusions of this book, the domestic crisis has made the Syrian regime predisposed to a belligerent attitude toward hostile major powers. However, other conditions also lead to the conclusion that Assad’s regime will remain intransigent, even if confronted by a major power. Of course, the USA is unlikely to intervene, given the immense costs and in light of its nearly decade-long efforts in Iraq. However, hypothetically, if al-Assad faced the direct threat of US intervention, the findings of this book suggest that he would remain intransigent because his regime is relatively stable and enjoys Russian foreign support. In terms of regime stability, in the early stages of the conflict former President Bill Clinton (2014: 460) had already described Assad’s regime as ‘more entrenched than Gaddafi, with more support among key segments of the population, more allies in the region, a real Army, and far more robust air defenses’. Soderberg (2014: 36) presented a similar point of view. The other condition, foreign support, was also rather explicit from the early stages. Russia had received significant attention for its direct role in supporting al-Assad (Kinninmont, 2014: 51). In fact, without Russian support, al-Assad would likely have failed to reverse military losses on the ground. Russia’s motivation was to show other countries in the region that, unlike the USA, Russia stands behind its friends. Its intervention helped strengthen al-Assad’s territorial recovery and played a hand in a future political settlement. At the very least, Russia had secured an important role in shaping Syria’s future (Schuchter, 2015). Although Iran is not a major power, its support for al-Assad is an additional element of support that has encouraged al-Assad to fight on. Thus, having had a domestic crisis, foreign support and regime stability, the case of Syria today is like that of Serbia in 1999. Following this comparison, al-Assad would very likely resist a challenge from another major power such as the USA. However, unlike in the Serbian case, in Syria, there are high risks of escalation due to multiple regional rivalries unfolding on the battlefield.

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Thus, any international approach to resolving the Syrian crisis must contend with the various conditions faced not only by al-Assad, but also by the opposition and Kurdish autonomous entities, which are equally important as state-like entities whose political aims clash with one or more major powers.

Asymmetric conflict and policy implications Reflecting on the results of this book and the Syria conflict, an important implication is that international relations are undergoing two contradictory phenomena. On the one hand, there is increasing attention of major powers on non-state actors, from already familiar actors such as al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), Boko Haram, the Moro National Liberation Front and the Communist Party of India, to newer actors such as the Free Syrian Army, Jaysh al-Jihad, Donetsk People’s Republic and Houthi insurgents. Accordingly, the concept of asymmetric conflict is increasingly moving away from the realm of interstate relations. However, on the other hand, the trend of intransigent minor powers resisting challenges by major powers is equally prevalent. To explain these potentially contradictory phenomena, one has to understand that, given the growing technological and military capabilities of major powers, states are finding it increasingly advantageous to use non-state actors to deal with stronger opponents. This strategy limits the major powers’ military capabilities and tends to increase the minor powers’ likelihood of winning. At the same time, one must understand that, in recent conflicts, minor powers have suffered fewer consequences than Paraguay did in the 19th century. Serbia quickly recovered to its status quo ante, while Moldova suffered barely any destruction. Iraq also recovered relatively quickly, although the greatest damage was inflicted by the Iraq–Iran War and economic sanctions. Overall, the fact that a minor power can employ non-state actors and expect the conflicts to be limited, with a relatively easy post-war recovery, may make it more likely that minor powers will continue to challenge major powers in the future. The tentative conclusion of this book also suggests policy solutions to prevent minor powers from engaging in military conflicts against major powers. Given the importance of the combinations of conditions in influencing the minor power to choose conflict, it would be enough for a minor power to simply face different conditions, as the value of choosing war would fundamentally change. With respect to the cases analysed here, it would usually be enough to change only one condition, especially the necessary condition: domestic crisis. Minor powers that have nothing to

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gain and much to lose by fighting a major power are likely to acquiesce to the requests or demands made by major powers. However, it is difficult to resolve the internal problems of minor powers. Nevertheless, challenging minor powers at a time when their internal problems are particularly difficult might lead to conflict. Therefore, it would be easier (but not necessarily easy) to deal with the other two conditions – the window of opportunity and foreign support. The window of opportunity is somewhat easier to deal with. As long as a major power acts decisively and makes it clear that it is both capable and committed, leaving little room for misinterpretation, a minor power will be more likely to back down. In other words, a major power must show its credibility. Consider that in the cases of Moldova and Iraq, both regimes believed that the major powers were constrained and indecisive. Once Russia and the USA, respectively, showed their capability and resolve, minor powers quickly pleaded for peace. Foreign support is harder to transform into policy. However, in some cases, the threatening major power and the major power supporting the minor power may be able to come to an agreement on their own. While this often happens in reality, as it did between the USA and Russia in the early 1990s, the nature of their relations was not clear to the leaders of minor powers, such as Milošević. Articulating a clear message that relations between the major powers will not be affected by any conflict involving the minor power will reduce the minor power’s resolve. Ultimately, a clear message can also reduce the minor power’s anomalous beliefs. Still, even with this knowledge, conditions cannot be easily changed. Nonetheless, the dynamics of how minor powers are likely to respond under certain conditions may be helpful to decision-makers. This book has hopefully provoked the reader to acknowledge the great value of questioning simple explanations. Different arguments have come together, contributing to an intertheoretical dialogue. Although some might rightly prefer to find a singular ‘winner’ among different explanations, just like Abbott and Snidal (1998), I believe that each explains a significant part of the episode that any unidimensional explanation would leave incomplete. Finally, to quote Illari and Russo, the usage of more complex methods ‘can sharpen our reasoning, and so impact on our practices of inference, prediction and control’ (2014: 30). It is precisely for this reason that opening IR to more complex methods should be an encouraging step in expanding the field’s boundaries.

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Endnotes Chapter 1: Introduction 1

2

3

The concept of minor power overlaps with concepts of small power, small state, minor state and weak state. In most cases they refer to the same concept; however, as discussed later, there can be notable differences. By ‘state-like entities’, this refers to politically administered units that control territory and behave like a state, such as Republika Srpska (part of Bosnia) and Taiwan (recognised as somewhat independent from China). Moreover, states such as Afghanistan during the early 1990s, when it was not clear who controlled the state, are excluded from the analysis. Challenge should be seen as ‘accepting confrontation’ and thus it includes defensive wars. After all, a challenge requires mutual consent. A minor power that does not accept a challenge is deemed to have ‘acquiesced’.

Chapter 3: Pathways to Conflict Using Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) 1

2

3

4

5

6

Calibration is the technical term used in QCA. It can also be phrased as ‘assigning a membership’. QCA has a terminology particular to itself. Instead of the terms ‘independent variable’, ‘dependent variable’ and ‘result’ that is common in regression analysis, QCA uses the terms ‘condition’, ‘outcome’ and ‘solution formula’ or ‘solution term’. It is important to disclose the membership criteria and provide arguments for them (derived from theory and case knowledge, preferably external to the data). This helps understand assumptions and is considered good practice (Schneider and Wagemann, 2012). The criteria are elaborated in the online Appendix 2 (see https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/why-minor-powers-risk-wars-with-majorpowers). This refers to non-state actors making threats or incursions into a foreign territory. The MID data set has categorised these conflicts as interstate, although the militarised dispute never occurred between the two governments directly. US courts described Republika Srpska as ‘Karadzic’s regime controlled territory and people, and entered into agreements with other governments … therefore, the court found that actions of Karadzic’s regime were done under color of state law’ (Samborn, 1995: 30). Two other researchers sought intercoder reliability, having coded the same conditions.

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7

8

9

10

11

As mentioned in Chapter  2, the winning coalition, or selectorate, is critical for a regime to stay in power. If the losses affect the group loyal to the regime (selectorate), it is deemed that the regime is unstable. If the losses affect others, then the regime can remain stable despite facing a ‘domestic crisis’. The coverage value should not be applied mechanically, and thus depends on the circumstances. However, 50 per cent is a typical measure used. QCA gives three different solution formulas with different levels of complexity. This chapter focuses on the intermediate formula. Figure 3.2 is a simple illustration of the three pathways, not an actual representation of how different sets (conditions) coalesce and overlap. However, an accurate representation would be difficult to visualise. In Table 3.7, lowercase letters indicate the absence of a condition, while capitalised letters indicate the presence of a condition. When assessing the presence of the outcome in Table 3.5, the absence of conditions does not really play much of an explanatory role.

Chapter 4: Iraq: Military Confrontation with the United States and its Thirty-Three Allies 1 2 3

4

5

By some accounts, the number of personnel is nearer 336,000. By some accounts, the number of tanks is nearer 3,475. Other countries contributed troops such as France, although in much smaller numbers. As argued in Chapter 3, it seems that ‘window of opportunity’ and ‘foreign support’ are interchangeable conditions, as they both give an advantage to the minor power. At the very least, he thought that he could buy time.

Chapter 5: Moldova: Military Confrontation with Russian Forces 1

2

The term ‘near abroad’ is used by the Russian Federation to refer to the 14 Soviet successor states other than Russia. Putschists are those who attempt to overthrow a government. In this case, it refers to hard-liners (of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union) who attempted to remove Gorbachev from power due to dissatisfaction with his reforms and the new union treaty.

Chapter 6: Serbia: Military Confrontation with NATO 1

2

3

4

5

From now on this is referred to as Serbia due to the passive role that Montenegro played in the conflict. The West, particularly the USA, had strained relations with Milošević due to his involvement in helping foment Serb secessionism in Croatia and Bosnia (Thomas, 1999: 86). Leader of the Democratic League of Kosovo, and at the time the acknowledged leader of the Kosovo Albanians. I use ‘Serbian regime’ and ‘Milošević’ interchangeably to refer to the former, simply because Milošević was very powerful and independent in making important decisions for the Serbian regime, although there were frictions with a less powerful administration at federal level (see LeBor, 2003: 201; Waters, 2013: 51). Former President Bill Clinton appointed Richard Holbrooke as his personal envoy with full powers to settle the war.

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6

7

8

9 10

11

12

13 14

15

16 17

The Republic of Serbian Krajina was a self-proclaimed Serb parastate within the territory of the Republic of Croatia. It lasted from 1991 to 1995. Former president of Montenegro (as part of the Yugoslav federation), and Prime Minister of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Momir Bulatović, former Prime Minister, personal interview (Belgrade, January 2015). Personal interview (Belgrade, December 2014). Momir Bulatović, former Prime Minister, personal interview (Belgrade, January 2015). Milica Matijević, former adviser to the Serbian government, personal interview (Belgrade, November 2014). Momir Bulatović, former Prime Minister, personal interview (Belgrade, January 2015). Boris Malagurski, personal interview (Belgrade, December 2014). Momir Bulatović, former Prime Minister, personal interview (Belgrade, January 2015). Momir Bulatović, former Prime Minister, personal interview (Belgrade, January 2015). Boris Malagurski, personal interview (Belgrade, December 2014). Milošević was indicted in May 1999 by the UN’s International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia for crimes against humanity in Kosovo. However, he was only arrested and delivered to the court by his political opponents after he was toppled.

Chapter 7: Conclusion: Dealing with Complexity, Defeat and Beliefs 1

I state that observations are only somewhat objective if they are shared by most of the political and scientific community. This is a preferred term to ‘the truth’, which is a more problematic term in epistemological and ontological debates.

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216

Index Note: Page locators in italic refer to figures or tables.

A

Aburish, S.K. 30, 75, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 95, 96, 97, 98, 100, 101, 184 acquiescence, choice of 2, 10, 11, 52, 59–61, 60, 61–4 Afghanistan 27, 50, 53, 57, 58 Albania 138–9 Albanian separatism in Kosovo 143–8, 151, 153, 155, 156, 158, 159, 164, 166 Albright, M. 152, 156, 165 Algeria 23, 27 Allen, M.A. 2, 3, 4, 8, 12, 13, 21, 23, 24, 39, 50, 177, 181 Allison, W.T. 42, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 79, 80, 83, 84, 89, 93 anomalous beliefs 8, 9, 37–8, 59, 62, 179–83 changing condition of 187 concentrated in authoritarian regimes 11, 176, 180 consistency and coverage scores 57, 60 domestic crisis and pathway to conflict 18, 57, 58, 171 an INUS condition 57 in Iraq 83–96, 98, 99–102, 180–1, 182 materialism and 181 measuring 54–5 of Milošević 156 and pathway to non-conflict 60 wrong information and 182–3

Antonić, S. 142, 146, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 159, 162, 164, 167, 173 Argentina 6, 7, 9, 31, 35, 53 Arreguín-Toft, I. 2, 5, 22, 26, 32, 171 Art, R.J. 49 al-Assad, Bashar 184–6 asymmetric causal relations 8, 45 authoritarian regimes 11, 30, 54, 176, 180 Aziz, T. 72–3, 75, 76

B

Baker, J. 72 balance of capabilities 20–1 of power 25, 36 balancing 26–7 Balkan Wars 144 bandwagoning 27 bargaining and war 3, 19, 24, 95, 139–40, 142 Bas, M. 21, 35, 37 Battersby, P. 2, 13 Bell, S.R. 4, 24 Berejikian, J.D. 4, 5, 8, 12, 25–6, 34, 39, 40, 44, 54, 55, 61, 62, 143, 176, 180–1 Bessarabia 108–9 binding 26 Blainey, G. 20, 37, 98, 155 ‘body count’ sensitivity 22, 24, 30 Bosnia 149–50, 151, 153, 155, 157, 159, 162 Brands, H. 76, 81, 84, 85, 86, 87, 90, 94, 95, 100 Braumoeller, B.F. 46, 64 Brezhnev, L. 37 Brown, C.S. 174, 177

217

WHY MINOR POWERS RISK WARS WITH MAJOR POWERS

Brunei 27 Bueno de Mesquita, B. 4, 21, 39, 54, 98, 124, 176 Bulatović, M. 142, 153, 155, 157, 160, 162, 177–8 Bulgaria 38, 144 Bush, G.W. 71, 72, 73, 88, 93, 97, 98, 141

C

case studies approach 64–7 casualties, sensitivity to 22, 24, 30 causal asymmetry 8, 45 complexity 46, 63, 64 heterogeneity 65–6 simplicity 46 Chan, S. 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 25, 34, 35, 36 Chechnya 31, 38 Cherkasova, A. 1, 6, 25, 44, 62, 63 China 34, 93, 161 Clay, K.C. 4, 24 Clinton, B. 185 Cold War 7, 11, 34, 35, 159 Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) 106, 123, 131 Composite Index of National Capability (CINC) scores 49–50, 51, 141 conditions for asymmetric war 8–9, 10–11, 17–19, 33–40 see also anomalous beliefs; domestic crisis; foreign support; regime stability; window of opportunity configurational comparative methods (CCMs) 42 conflict, choice of 56–9, 61–4, 170–3 conjunctural causation 8, 17–18, 44–5, 62 consistency measure 55–6, 57, 60 constructivism 38, 83–4, 86, 101, 183–4 Correlates of War (COW) database 9, 48, 49, 50 counter-factual analysis 181 Iraq 96–9, 101–2 Moldova 129–32 Serbia 161–5 coup-proofing 174–5 coverage measure 56, 57, 60 Croatia 138, 146, 148–9, 149–50, 151, 153, 162

‘cultural judgements’ framework 23, 38, 180 Czechoslovakia 27

D

deaths, battle 2 democracies 39, 42, 45, 54, 176 Moldova 122, 123, 124–5 sensitivity to casualties 22, 24, 30 desperation theory 34, 61, 78, 117 deterrence 27 deviant cases 67 Diehl, P.F. 48, 50 diplomacy 27, 28, 178 diversionary theory 34, 61, 81, 158, 175–6 domestic crisis 9, 11, 33–5, 59 anomalous beliefs and pathway to conflict 18, 57, 58, 171 changing condition of 186–7 consistency and coverage scores 56–7, 57, 60 diverting attention away from 175–6 external threat linked to 176–7 foreign threat and loss-loss situation 173 in Iraq 74–83, 95–6, 96–8, 99–102 measuring 53–4 in Moldova 107–20, 132, 133 necessary condition 56–7, 58, 61–2, 63, 65 regime stability, foreign support and pathway to conflict 19, 58, 58, 172–3 regime stability, window of opportunity and pathway to conflict 19, 58, 58, 172 relationship with regime stability 174–6 in Serbia 142–51, 164, 166, 174 in Syria 185 Druc, M. 111, 112, 124, 131 Đukanović, M. 163 Dutter, L.E. 37, 82, 90, 91, 93, 100, 180

E

economic factors in Iraq 76–82, 100 in Moldova 118–20 in Serbia 150–1 Edinstvo 113, 114, 116, 117

218

INDEX

anomalous beliefs 83–96, 98, 99–102, 180–1, 182 about USA 93–6, 100–1 Hobbesian worldview 84–5 narcissism 90–1, 101 psychological problems 91–2 utility of violence 85–9 backs down in Iran–Iraq war 96–7 declines second chance to withdraw from Kuwait 97–8 domestic crisis 74–83 faltering image 82 fighting strategy 29–30 heeds warning from Moscow over Kurds 98 logic behind invasion of Kuwait 79–80, 100 objectives 179 political survival and war 179 window of opportunity 93, 95, 96–7, 101, 171

Edwards, S. 4, 31, 38, 39 Egypt 35, 73, 74, 78, 86, 90 emotion 37, 182 equifinality 8, 18, 45 ethno-chauvinism 38

F

Falklands War 7, 9, 31, 53 Fearon, J.D. 3, 5, 20, 24, 37, 181, 182 Fey, M. 21, 37 fighting war strategies of minor powers 29–33 Findley, M.G. 4, 31, 38, 39 First World War 37 Fischerkeller, M.P. 4, 23, 38, 62, 125, 180 Fordham, B.O. 2, 3, 4, 8, 12, 21, 23, 24, 39, 50, 177, 181 foreign support 25, 27, 35–6, 62 changing condition of 187 consistency and coverage scores 57, 60 domestic crisis, regime stability and pathway to conflict 19, 58, 58, 172–3 an INUS condition 58 measuring 52 and pathway to non-conflict 60, 62 for Serbia 159–61, 166, 173 for Syria 185

I

G

Gaddafi, M. 47 Gagauz Khalky (GK) 113–14 Gagauzia 112–15 game theory 19–20, 25 Geller, D.S. 3, 10, 25 Georgia 1, 2, 6, 23, 25, 58, 58, 176 Glad, B. 84, 90, 91, 92, 101, 180, 182 Gorbachev, M. 110, 121, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130–1, 132 Gow, J. 140, 142, 162 guardianship dilemma 175

H

hiding strategy 28 Hobbesian worldview 84–5 Horowitz, D.L. 30, 109, 110, 114, 115, 120, 122, 123, 124, 128, 132 Hussein, S. 27, 171 ‘all or nothing’ approach 81

Ibrahim, R. 89 identity 183–4 crisis in Moldova 108–12, 184 Serbian 151, 153, 166, 184 ‘interest asymmetry’ 32 intrastate conflict 5 INUS conditions 57, 58–9, 69 in Iraq 83–96 in Moldova 120–9 in Serbia 151–61 Iran–Iraq war 70, 75–6, 85, 92, 96–7 economic crisis following 76–82 Kurds and 82–3 violence in Iraq during 88 Iraq 69–102 anomalous beliefs 83–96, 100, 180–1, 182 about USA 93–6, 100–1 domestic crisis and choice of conflict 99–102 Hobbesian worldview 84–5 narcissism 90–1, 101 psychological concerns 91–2 utility of violence 85–9 asymmetry of Gulf War conflict 73–4 conventional interpretation of crisis 70–4 counter-factual analysis 96–9, 101–2 coup-proofing 174–5

219

WHY MINOR POWERS RISK WARS WITH MAJOR POWERS

defence expenditure 77 domestic crisis 74–83 anomalous beliefs and choice of conflict 99–102 economic problems 76–82, 100 faltering image of Saddam 82 Kurdistan 82–3, 87–8 war with Iran 75–6 fighting strategy 29–30 internal control and repression 31 military forces 73–4 mutual optimism of Kuwait and 21 objectives 179 opportunities to end crisis in Kuwait 72, 73, 97, 98 pathway to conflict 57, 58, 58, 171 regional rivals 4 sanctions on 71, 78, 80 war casualties 30 window of opportunity 93, 95, 96–7, 101, 171 irrational behaviour 3, 12, 19, 28, 179, 180 Islamic State 185 Israel 72, 76, 78, 94

J

James, P. 4, 5, 7, 8, 13, 23, 36, 53 Japan 7, 34

K

Karsh, E. 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 84, 85, 87, 92, 93, 94, 95, 97, 98, 100 Katagiri, N. 5, 9, 29, 31, 38–9, 175 Kaufman, J.P. 123, 138, 140 Kaufman, S.J. 105, 110, 111, 115, 116, 118, 119, 122, 123, 127, 128, 130, 131, 132, 134 Kosovo 1974 constitution and 145–6 Albanian boycott of elections 154–5 Albanian separatism 143–8, 151, 153, 155, 156, 158, 159, 164, 166 annexed to Serbia 145 compared to Croatia and Bosnia 148–50, 151 conventional interpretation of crisis 138–42 economic downturn 150

as foundation of Milošević’s domestic popularity 152–9, 163–5, 166 independence referendum 146–7, 152 repression of internal dissent 158 Serbs 143, 149, 152, 153, 154, 163–4 UNSC Resolution 1203 155 Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) 138, 139, 140, 143, 147, 148, 152 accepts Rambouillet Agreement 140, 155 rooting out of 139 Kurdistan 82–3, 87–8 al-Anfal campaign 83, 88 Saddam heeds Soviet Union on 98 Kuwait coalition forces in 73 events prior to invasion of 70–1, 76, 78, 78–9, 79 Iraqi withdrawal from 73, 98 logic of invasion of 79–80, 100 mutual optimism of Iraq and 21 opportunities to end crisis 72, 73, 97, 98 removal of available assets from 97 Saddam’s ‘all or nothing’ approach to 81 tacit support for war with Iran 75 US support for 35, 71–3, 81 violence as a tool in invasion of 88–9

L

large-N techniques 24, 46, 64 Li, Y. 41, 42, 45 Libya 57, 58, 71 limited aims/fait accompli strategy 6, 24, 80, 178 literature review 3–6 ‘loss domain’ 34, 143

M

Mack, A. 5, 22, 23, 32 McMahon, B.R. 175, 177 Metzler, J.J. 74, 156 militarised interstate disputes (MIDs) 48–9, 50 military capability 27, 49, 186 hardware 32

220

INDEX

Milošević, S. 173 anomalous beliefs 156 Bosnian and Croatian Serbs and 149–50 domestic popularity 152–9, 163–5, 166 examples of compromise by 162–3 ignoring of foreign powers 156, 166 miscalculation of 155–6 objectives 178 political survival and war 179 rejection of Rambouillet Agreement 140, 142, 165 US view of 155, 156, 157 view of US 156 Yeltsin on 160 miscalculation 20, 37, 84, 97–8, 155–6, 169 Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (MASSR) 109–10 Moldova 6, 19, 103–35 anomalous beliefs 182 asymmetrical dispute 105 conventional interpretation of crisis 104–7 counter-factual analysis 129–32 declaration of sovereignty 112, 126, 128, 131 Democratic Movement in Support of Restructuring 110, 121 a democratic state 122, 123, 124–5 domestic crisis 107–20, 132, 133 economic factors 118–20 Gagauzia 112–15 historical identity crisis 108–12, 184 Transnistria 104–7, 115–18, 119, 123 language 110, 111, 113, 114, 116, 117, 121 objectives 178–9 pathway to conflict 58, 58, 172 Popular Front 110–11, 112, 113, 114, 121, 122–3, 124, 129–30 presidency 122 regime stability 120–5, 129–30, 134 Union Treaty 127, 130–1 window of opportunity 125–9, 131–2, 134 Moldovan Democratic Republic of Bessarabia 108–9 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact 109, 112

Montenegro 144, 149, 157, 163 Most, B.A. 7, 13 Mubarak, H. 92 Mueller, J. 4, 22 multilateral organisations, joining 26, 27 multiple conjunctural causality 8, 44–5

N

narcissism 90–1, 101 NATO 139–40, 140–1, 142, 150, 155, 159, 160, 161, 165 necessary condition 43–4, 44 cases selection and 65, 66–7 for choice of conflict 56–7, 57, 61–2, 65 for choice of non-conflict 59–60, 60 consistency and coverage measures 55–6, 57, 60 domestic crisis 56–7, 58, 61–2, 63, 65 in Iraq 74–83 in Moldova 107–20 in Serbia 142–51 neoclassical realist (NCR) framework 5, 25–6, 180–1 neutrality 27 non-conflict, choice of 2, 10, 11, 52, 59–61, 60, 61–4 non-rationalist assumptions of asymmetric conflict 24 non-state actors 5, 32, 53, 186 North Korea 28, 80 nuclear weapons 29, 34, 49 Null Hypothesis Permutation Test 64

O

objectives of minor powers in asymmetrical conflict 177–8 October Agreement 139 oil prices 70, 76, 79, 80 OPEC 70, 76, 80 operationalisation of asymmetric conflict 47–55 assigning membership scores 55, 56 conditions 52–5 outcomes 50–2 universe of cases 48–50, 51 optimism 20, 21, 98 Ørvik, N. 30 OSTK 114, 116, 117

221

WHY MINOR POWERS RISK WARS WITH MAJOR POWERS

P

Pakistan 4, 38 Palkki, D. 81, 86, 94, 95, 100 Panama 57, 58 Panić, M. 156 Paraguay 1, 2 Paret, P. 49 Park, S.H. 6, 7, 8, 9, 12, 25, 34, 35, 36, 38, 40, 61, 176 Paul, T. 2, 6, 7, 8, 9, 12, 23–4, 25, 32, 34, 35, 39, 53, 54, 62, 80, 129–30, 130, 176, 178 policy implications and asymmetric conflict 186–7 Powell, R. 20, 34, 37, 76, 181 power transition theory 25, 36 private information 20, 21, 37 problem-driven pragmatism 9, 12, 18, 170, 183 prospect theory 9, 25, 34, 40, 61, 81, 82, 103, 133, 143, 147, 174, 176 psychological problems 91–2

Q

Qatar 28 qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) 7–9, 10, 41–67 assessing configurations of conditions 42–4 asymmetric causal relations 45 case selection 65–7 choice of conflict pathway 56–9, 61–4 choice of non-conflict pathway 59–61, 61–4 consistency and coverage 55–6, 57, 60 crisp-set approach 45–6, 47, 48, 63 equifinality 45 fuzzy-set approach 46 limitations 46–7, 63, 67 multiple conjunctural causation 44–5 operationalisation of asymmetric conflict 47–55 assigning membership scores 55, 56 conditions 52–5 outcomes 50–2 universe of cases 48–50, 51 use for two different purposes 45

R

Ragin, C. 41, 42, 43, 46, 56, 57, 59, 64 Rambouillet Agreement 140, 141, 142, 152, 155, 159, 165 Ramsay, K.W. 21 rationalist account of asymmetric conflict 20, 24 rationality of war 19–22 Rautsi, I. 76, 77, 78, 79, 85, 92 Reagan, R. 75, 76, 93, 94 regime stability 9, 22, 38–40, 59, 62 consistency and coverage scores 57, 60 domestic crisis, foreign support and pathway to conflict 19, 58, 58, 172–3 domestic crisis, window of opportunity and pathway to conflict 19, 58, 58, 172 fighting capability and 175 an INUS condition 58–9 measuring 54 in Moldova 120–5, 129–30, 134 and pathway to non-conflict 60–1, 62 relationship with domestic crisis 174–6 in Serbia 152–9, 163–5, 166 in Syria 185 regional rivals 4, 24–5 regression analysis 45, 46 Republika Srpska 58, 58, 149 resources, loss of 21–2, 35 risk-acceptance 4, 5, 9, 11, 25–6, 34, 39, 44 Rohlfing, I. 8, 64, 65, 66, 67 Romania 104, 107, 108–9, 110, 111, 112, 115, 120, 121, 122, 130, 133 Russia annexing of Moldovan area 108 Gagauz crisis and 113, 114, 115 support for Serbia 159–61, 166, 173 support for Syria 52, 185 support for Transnistria 104, 105, 106, 118, 127, 129, 130–1 Union Treaty 127, 130–1 war with Afghanistan 50, 53 window of opportunity for Moldova in crises of USSR/Russia 125–9, 131–2, 134 Russo–Georgian war 1, 6, 23, 25

222

INDEX

S

Saakashvili, M. 1 Saudi Arabia 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 79, 80 Schelling, T.C. 2, 3, 19, 20, 28, 29 Schneider, B.R. 8, 18, 44, 46, 47 Schneider, C.Q. 1, 2, 12, 27, 30, 31, 38, 42, 45, 56, 60, 64, 65, 66, 67, 82, 85, 91, 93, 94, 174 Schub, R. 21, 35, 37 security strategies of minor powers 26–9 selectorate theory 21–2, 98, 152, 155, 176 Seliktar, S. 37, 82, 90, 91, 93, 180 Serbia 137–67 asymmetrical conflict 141–2 conventional interpretation of crisis 138–42 counter-factual analysis 161–5 domestic crisis 142–51, 174 ‘Albanian threat’ 143–8, 164, 166 economic downturn 150–1 Kosovo compared to Croatia and Bosnia 148–50, 151 fighting war strategy 30 foreign support 159–61, 166, 173 international efforts to stabilise situation with Kosovo 139–41 Kumanovo Agreement 167 military forces 141 objectives 178 October Agreement 139 pathway to conflict 19, 58, 58, 142, 151, 172–3 ‘patriotic coalition’ 157, 158 regime stability 152–9, 163–5, 166 rejects Rambouillet Agreement 140, 142, 152, 155, 159, 165 repression of internal dissent 158 sanctions on 157–8 war with NATO 140–1, 159, 161 window of opportunity 141 Simić, P. 143, 144, 147, 148, 150, 151, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 163, 164, 174 Singer, J.D. 48, 49, 50, 141 Slantchev, B.L. 21, 37, 182 small-N techniques 64 Smirnov, I. 104, 105, 117, 118 Snegur, M. 111, 112, 120, 122, 123–5, 129–30, 133–5, 172 objectives 178–9

perceived window of opportunity 125–9, 131–2, 134 political survival and war 179 response to Transnistria separatism 105–6, 115–16, 118, 123, 130–1 wrong information and anomalous beliefs 182 social institutions 31 soft power 28 Soviet Union dissolution of 108, 112, 114, 119, 127–9 window of opportunity for Moldova in crises in 125–9, 131–2, 134 Stalin, J. 87, 109 Starr, H. 7, 13 Stoessinger, J.G. 72, 79, 80, 87, 89, 92, 94, 101 Stout, M.E. 19, 90, 95 sufficient conditions 43, 44 case selection based on 65 for choice of conflict 57, 58 for choice of non-conflict 60–1, 61 consistency and coverage measures 55–6, 57, 60 SUIN categories 173 Sullivan, T. 2, 22, 178 Switzerland 27 Syria 52, 184–6

T

Tarar, A. 21, 37, 182 technology 32 terrorism 12, 31–2 Thatcher, M. 72, 79 theories of asymmetric conflict 22–6 Tito, J. 145, 146 Topal, S. 114, 115 Transnistria 104–7, 115–18, 119, 123, 124, 130 Russian support for 104, 105, 106, 118, 127, 129, 130–1 Treaty of Bucharest 108

U

Union Treaty 127, 130–1 United Arab Emirates (UAE) 70, 78, 79 United Nations resolutions 50, 71, 72, 73, 98, 102 Security Council 14, 139, 155, 160 United States of America 7

223

WHY MINOR POWERS RISK WARS WITH MAJOR POWERS

attitude to Iran–Iraq war 75, 76 deteriorating relations with Saddam 76, 85, 94 Milošević’s view of 156 policy on Syria 52, 185 Saddam’s beliefs about 93–6, 100–1 sale of arms to Iran 76, 94 sanctions on Iraq 78, 88 special status of Yugoslavia 155–6 support for Kuwait 35, 71–3, 81 Vietnam Syndrome 93, 96 Vietnam War 22–3 view of Milošević 155, 156, 157 warning to Serbia 141

V

victory, minor powers’ defining of 179 Vietnam War 22–3, 27 violence, Saddam’s reliance on 85–9 Vital, D. 26, 35, 36 Vllasi, A. 164

W

Wagemann, C. 42, 45, 56, 60 window of opportunity 9, 23, 36–7, 59, 62 anomalous beliefs and 181 changing condition of 187 consistency and coverage scores 57, 60 measuring 53 for Moldova 125–9, 131–2, 134 pathway to conflict 19, 58, 58, 59, 62, 172 pathway to non-conflict 60 Saddam’s belief in a 93, 95, 96–7, 101, 171 for Serbia 141 winning coalitions 19, 21–2, 30, 39, 54, 176 in Iraq 98 in Kosovo 152, 153, 155, 162, 173 in Serbia 120–1, 123, 124–5 Woods, K. 19, 90, 95, 100

Y

Yeltsin, B. 106, 125, 126, 127, 128–9, 132, 160–1

224