How Domestic Commitment Contribute To Our Understanding of War - Essay Example

of Lecturer] POLI SCI 142K: Politics and Warfare How Domestic Commitment Contribute To Our Understanding of War Introduction Conventionally, international politics studies have focused on the relationships among sovereign states and regions whereas comparative politics studies seem to favor the internal or domestic structures and institutions of the target states and regions (Doyle, 1997). However, recent times have recorded a surge in the number of studies exploring the validity of the discrimination across the two disciplines. In other terms, domestic factors are equally important in defining and determining international relations among sovereign states, especially democracy, peace and economic studies. Similarly, international factors affect domestic structures and processes of peace, economics, democratization, global issues and state systems or machinery. Modern political science professionals and scholars are faced with the challenge or question of why some conflicts end quickly while others last years and even decades. Consequently, their interest has been in unearthing and understanding what separates the wars or conflicts that cause deaths, suffering and displacement of millions of people from those in which the death and displacement magnitude is of lower order. Although most studies in on this topic seem to narrow on specific war or conflict mechanism, with variations in extremity or value from place to place, recent wars and conflict-related studies show that different distinct mechanisms explain the differences in the duration and consequences of war and other forms of conflict. The three main mechanisms that are used to explain this disparity among conflicts are the private information and incentives to misrepresent, domestic politics and its principal agent problems and commitment problems. The latter mechanism is often powered by shifting powers. Generally, domestic commitment problems are associated with increased war duration and increased war intensity. Thus, commitment problems offer reasons for people to believe that they are responsible for the largest wars. This paper discusses the manner in which the concept of domestic commitment has contributed to the current understanding of war. Domestic Commitment The idea or logic behind the domestic commitment problem is that big and quick shifts in power are highly likely to result in war regardless of the available information supporting a contrary scenario. The inkling of commitment problem as a mechanism of war is quite uncomplicated. For instance, if a country expects another to become stronger in the next period, expectedly, the latter country would require a bigger share of the territory tomorrow. When the expected shift is big and rapid, no concessions from the latter country can satisfy the former to avoid favoring war. Consequently, the former country favours war lest the other becomes stronger. Since one of the country considers the growth of the other a threat to its survival, expansion and power, its understanding of the impeding war gets clouded. In fact, it could end up losing more than it would have if it had avoided the war. Unfortunately, this important cause of conflict has received much less attention from scholars and professionals, especially compared to informational problem, which is considered the most important cause of conflict. Domestic commitment problems fundamentally emanate from the failure of parties to design and sign binding long-term contracts on arming and other aspects of conflicts. Domestic commitment problems may result in conflicts mainly because negotiated outcomes and conflict frequently mean diverse future strengths for the antagonists. The additional benefits of conflicts or wars, also have the potential to entice adversaries to fight instead of negotiate using the available information. It is worth noting that there are many cases in which domestic in which commitment problems are caused by power shifts that do not favour one of the parties in a potential conflict while favoring the other over a period. The side adversary likely to lose power or resources is likely to decide to engage in a war instead of holding talks. The adversary likely to lose power considers engagement in war as a strategy for delaying it’s the expected loss of power and decline. Such domestic commitments do not only affect international or inter-state conflicts but also domestic conflicts and politics. Formally, war is treated as a form or strategy for bargaining emanating from unbalanced information, commitment problems and bargaining indivisibilities, informational issues have received unfairly bigger portion of the attention compared to the other causes. Unfortunately, the informational explanations and understanding of war and other forms of conflicts are marred with numerous limitations. For instance, these explanations have poor, if any account of prolonged conflicts. In such conflicts, wars continue long after the right and balanced information has been obtained. Second, these explanations have a strange understanding and portrayal of the history of some conflicts. It is also notable that bargaining indivisibilities are just a subdivision of commitment problems. Understanding War from Domestic Commitment Perspective Domestic commitment problems have changed the understanding of war so that the influence of the level of commitment of civilian population on whether a country enters a war of not is appreciated. In addition, it is recognized that the civilian commitment to a war may determine whether a country wins or loses a war (Doyle, 1997). The level of civilian commitment to a war is often considered as an opportunity cost. Since war and other conflicts require resources, there is always an opportunity cost involved. Among the opportunities forgone when a country decides to go to war because of domestic commitment include but are not limited to military preparedness, debt incurred because of war, increased taxation, and domestic damages and risk of war (Doyle, 1997). In addition, during wars, military, government and civilian resources are shifted towards funding the wars, resulting in hefty cost of domestic commitment (Doyle, 1997). Countries that favor going to war often want to increase the minimum commitment levels of its citizens, thus increasing the minimum cost of a war per citizen. In some cases, the average domestic commitment level results in average cost of conflicts stressing the resources of a country to harmful levels. The idea of domestic commitment is quite a paradox since it entails a society’s capacity to bear the risks and share the costs of warfare by a society. However, the capacity of societies to commit to warfare varies across times, states or regions. The concept of domestic commitment also explains scenarios in which apparently weaker powers win wars while stronger powers lose. This concept explains the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 and the American Revolution. Besides domestic commitment by US citizens, good leadership and technological advances also contributed to the success of the US (Doyle, 1997). Clearly, the British were advantaged over the natives of the USA, if resources power and population are considered minus domestic commitment (Doyle, 1997). Domestic commitment also explains Napoleon’s success in the war with Spain in 1809-1813, Russia in 1812 and Leipzig in 1813. Notably, the anti-French forces had superior technology and leadership. Napoleon had the advantage of high level domestic commitment. Domestic commitment has also enabled the understanding of the relationship among war, democracy and autocracy. Notably, unified societies have consensus and higher level commitment to fight and win wars. On the other hand, divided societies, characterized by polarized citizens lack the needed commitment from population to specific wars, resulting in losses (Doyle, 1997). In democracies, with electorally accountable and responsible governments, domestic commitment is likely to be higher than in autocracies that are not electorally accountable to their citizens. From the high level domestic commitment, united democracies or autocracies are most likely to win compared to divided democracies and autocracies (Doyle, 1997). Thus, unity is quite important for high level domestic commitment, which is necessary for participating and winning wars. From the discussed explanations of various historical war successes, it is clear that bargaining indivisibilities and weapon or technological superpowers are not the only ingredients to success in war (Doyle, 1997). As a matter of fact, some scholars opine that bargaining indivisibilities are actually forms of commitment problems. Thus, a universal mechanism seems to function in the important types of domestic commitment problems, namely in preventive war, preemptive attacks resulting from first-strike or offensive advantages, and in conflicts resulting from bargaining over issues that affect future bargaining power (Doyle, 1997). Domestic Commitment in Plural Societies The idea of domestic problem has also influenced the understanding of war and conflicts in general, in plural societies, especially those with multiple ethnic or racial groups. A mystery about wars is that they are generally costly, even to the winning side, which might consider itself to have gained something from the war (Doyle, 1997). In fact, even the side that wins always incurs costs in wars. Unfortunately, the allies, states and ethnic groups involved in wars are often unable to reach an understanding or deal to help avoid the high price of conflicts. Even if adversaries cannot settle on non-violent means to solve the issues between them and they have the technology, weapon and leadership to give them advantage over their enemies, citizens should still be influential or incentive enough to help states avoid the high costs of war. In other words, citizens’ inability to make credible domestic commitments under anarchy has the potential of making it impossible for disputing nations or groups to reach a bargain or deal that may help them avoid costly wars (Doyle, 1997). Citizens can thus act the third party to provide the much needed commitment to force the adversaries to seek agreements between them. Domestic Commitment as War Motivator Domestic commitment has been used by many states to motivate and justify war. In modern times, political and government leaders provide good reasons for or against war to obtain domestic commitment for their war agendas. This motivation and justification role of leadership is to justify military action for an international and a domestic audience. In other terms, through justification and motivation, domestic commitment is obtained to legitimize wars, an idea known as the "Just War Doctrine." To increase level of domestic commitment, leaders motivate citizen dedication to fight, die, and sacrifice to win the war. In this motivation process, leaders allocate all their allegorical resources to stimulate support for military action. The Sphere of Domestic Commitment Motivation There are three main realms of motivating domestic commitment to support war, namely personal, national and day-to-day motivation. In the personal realm of domestic commitment, individuals are prompted to make supreme sacrifices, forfeiting themselves for communal or national good. In fact, people are encouraged to sacrifice their sons and daughters, spouses and parents for war, entirely changing their livelihoods (Doyle, 1997). Liberty, solidarity, and freedom are among the calls for which citizens are encouraged to commit to war in modern times. Regarding national realm of domestic commitment, leaders motivate national commitment through mass communication channels, preaching patriotism and the greater cause, for big wars that distort societies for many years. After motivating the individual and national commitment, it is necessary to sustain the commitment through the continuation of the processes and activities of the war towards its success (Doyle, 1997). Continued and altered language that thwarts criticism and public debates on the war is a common strategy for sustained domestic commitment. The language has talks of the importance of sacrifice so that citizens consider the war victims as heroes, further motivating the sacrifice of others. Domestic commitment is sustained by a war opening with a declaration of war then a propaganda campaign maintains the commitment. Then, a day-to-day rhetoric of war is used to coordinate the state’s war effort. In modern society, domestic commitment is motivated and sustained through characteristic ideographs on subjects such as rights, freedom and liberty, and democracy. Second, presidents and prime minister build narratives of crises for their ideals, which portray their opponents as violators of the principles of the ideals of liberty, democracy, human rights and liberty among other ideals. Character assassination is the other strategy used to elicit and sustain domestic commitment to wars in modern society. The other common strategy is a constructed sequence of events, which leads to war, as the final resort. Work Cited Doyle, M. W. “Ways of War and Peace: Realism, Liberalism and Socialism.1997. W.W. Norton. Read More