Talking to Fight

This chapter examines how wartime negotiations can reshape the battlefield. This tests the claim that insincere negotiations not only fail to end hostilities but can be exploited to help reshape the subsequent trajectory of conflict. The chapter substantiates two implications of the theory. First, periods of negotiation are associated with lower levels of active hostilities on the battlefield. These moments of relative quiet on the battlefield are natural for belligerents who want to sincerely stop fighting, but they are also necessary for belligerents that merely want to abuse negotiations to improve their political and military position. Second, negotiations that do not result in peace are followed by battlefield trends that systematically favor war targets and that are more consistent with prewar expectations. The chapter uses a qualitative approach to show the deep military and political impacts of negotiation in two distinct wars: the War of the Roman Republic in 1849 and the Cenepa Valley War of 1995. The former is a valuable example of how insincere negotiations can occur in the absence of explicit external pressures. The latter, a South American conflict, is the most recent war for which there is adequately accessible documentation of public and private diplomatic activity.