Theorizing conflict opponent noncompliance from ceasefire monitoring

This article presents theory for how third-party ceasefire monitoring may contribute to, and even motivate, ceasefire noncompliance. That credible ceasefire monitoring may help produce new violence, even if inadvertently, challenges prevailing positive understandings of third-party observation and monitoring, in which ceasefire monitoring is often seen as a form of intervention that helps conflict parties comply with ceasefire commitments. Four mechanisms by which noncompliance may occur when ceasefire monitoring is present are identified. These are, first, that monitoring provides conflict parties with new signaling options in which violence has a potential communicative function; second, that conflict actors’ noncompliance can seek to influence how monitors operate; third, that conflict actors’ noncompliance can help test monitors’ detection capacities; and, fourth, that noncompliance allows conflict parties to check for audience costs. In outlining these mechanisms, this article suggests that there are multiple means by which ceasefire monitoring, like other interventions, can have unintended consequences.