Richard Ned Lebow

Research Group in International Security

January 1997

The reconciliation of former enemies like France and Germany, Egypt and Israel, China and the United States and the Soviet Union and the United States encourages cautious optimism about the ability of leaders and peoples to extricate themselves from deadly quarrels. This optimism must be tempered by recognition that reconciliations are not always complete or irreversible. Egypt and Israel signed a peace treaty that has endured almost twenty years, but their relations remain cool and social contacts between their peoples are limited. The Soviet Union's reconciliation with the West was brought about by a reformist regime and opposed by nationalists and traditional communists who might one day gain power in Russia. Sino-American relations, well on their way toward normalization in the early 1980s, have become more conflictual as a result of Tienanmen Square, trade disputes and differences over Taiwan.

These caveats are intended to qualify, not to deny, the fundamental nature of the transformation that has occurred in these several relationships. In the past, ideological conflict, territorial disputes, and contested spheres of influence led to arms races, hostile alliances and wars, or the expectation of war. Today, the threat of war is remote, and perhaps non-existent in the case of France and Germany, and the leaders of all these former enemies are committed to resolving by diplomacy whatever problems arise between them.

International relations scholars offer varied assessments of this phenomenon. One school of thought questions how lasting such reconciliations are likely to prove, and predicts that international relations will be as violent in the future as it was in the past. Other scholars are more optimistic about these relationships and about international relations in general, and have offered a variety of justifications for their optimism.

The burgeoning literature on accommodation distinguishes between conflicts that ended in the aftermath of a military victory that enabled one protagonist or its allies to remake the institutions of the other (e.g., France-Germany, Japan-United States), and those where political accommodation was reached without victory by regimes that had previously been committed to confrontation (e.g., Egypt-Israel, Soviet Union-United States). Research on the former has emphasized the positive role of democratic governments, trans-national institutions and norms. Research on the latter has given more importance to international and unit level structural constraints and the allegedly beneficial consequences of general deterrence.

This paper addresses only accommodations that have been brought about by political compromise. I begin by examining the claims that can be explained by structural factors, in particular, by changes in the distribution of capabilities or general deterrence success. I find these claims unconvincing. Structural factors are undeniably important but only part of the story. Political considerations, independent of structure, appear to have played the decisive role in accommodation. I develop my argument with reference to the East-West and Israeli-Arab conflicts. They are recent and dramatic examples of accommodation, and they are also cases in which the most far-reaching claims have been made for structural explanations.

Declining Capabilities

Until recently, there was very little political science literature devoted to the problem of change. Power transition theory, an important exception, sought to explain hegemonic war in terms of the rising capabilities of challengers and the declining capabilities of hegemons. ₁ Since the end of the Cold War, change has attracted the attention of theorists, and realists have tried to explain the volte-face in Soviet foreign policy under Mikhail Gorbachev in terms of that country's declining capabilities. They contend that the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the liberation of Eastern Europe and the acceptance moocowof one-sided arms treaties were all part of a rational attempt to manage decline. ₂ This explanation has several fundamental flaws.

Decline is not determining: As power transition theories predict, decline sometimes leads to war. In this century alone, Germany, Austria-Hungary and Japan went to war to stem their ongoing or expected decline. Great Britain, and the Soviet Union, realists acknowledge, attempted to manage their declines through diplomacy and disengagement. ₃ If decline provokes war and accommodation, we need intervening variables to account for these divergent outcomes.

This problem is compounded by the fact that war and accommodation are only two of the possible responses to decline. Leaders can also practice denial, try to shift the burdens of empire on to allies, or implement reforms intended to reverse decline. The Russian, Austrian, Ottoman and British empires all engaged in extensive denial. Britain, for much of the first half of the twentieth century, and the United States, from the 1960s to the end of the Cold War, sought to convince their allies to shoulder a greater defense burden. Leonid Brezhnev and Mikhail Gorbachev sought to revitalize the Soviet economy and stem decline through programs of reform.

Structural theories of war and accommodation are at the very least under specified. They need to identify all the possible responses to decline and the conditions associated with them. They also need to recognize that there is enormous variation within any of these categories of response. Brezhnev and Gorbachev both responded to decline with reforms, but they were very different in their domestic and foreign substance.

Action at a distance: Since the time of Aristotle, physics has assumed that one body can only influence another if it has some form of contact with it. This can be direct, as in the collision of two billiard balls, or indirect, as in the case of electromagnetism, whose the force is transmitted from body to another by subatomic particles.

The action at a distance problem is endemic to structural theories in the social sciences. Some structural theories try to finesse it by employing a passive construct of structure modeled on Darwin's concept of natural selection. For Darwin, structure consists of a set of constraints set by the physical environment that reward or punish certain kinds of attributes or behavior. Individuals who display these attributes or behavior are more likely to survive to the age of reproduction. Over time, therefore, individuals with these traits (or particular species) will become more numerous. Kenneth Waltz uses structure in this Darwinian sense in his Theory of international relations. ₄

The actors in Darwin's struggle for survival are oblivious to the constraints of structure. Their physical or behavioral changes are the result of random mutations, a small minority of which confer competitive advantages in their environment. Structural theories in the social sciences run into trouble when they posit structures that have a direct effect on behavior. To avoid action at a distance they require a mechanism through which structure is mediated. The mechanism is people who modify their behavior in light of their understanding of structure. Most balance of power theories, for example, predict shifts in alliance patterns in response to shifts in the relative capabilities (and motives) of actors. For the balance of power to work as specified, leaders must be sensitive to these underlying changes and free to act in response to them.

Structural theories of this latter kind invariably assume that actors make timely and accurate assessments of their environments. If so, they need not be considered. Behavior can be inferred directly from structure. Actors, like electrons, are merely a conveyer belt. Realist theories that attribute the Soviet Union's accommodation with the West to its declining capabilities thus assume that Gorbachev understood the nature and implications of that decline and acted to cut his country's losses. ₅

From the perspective of East-West relations, Gorbachev's most significant act was his willingness to allow Eastern Europe to break free of communism and Soviet control. Realist analyses treat Gorbachev's retreat from Eastern Europe as an attempt to strike the best deal possible with the West, or simply to shed an expensive and unmanageable sphere of influence. ₆ However, officials close to Gorbachev deny that he was pursuing a policy of retrenchment. His public repudiation of the use of force to maintain existing governments in Eastern Europe was intended to undermine Warsaw Pact hard-line leaders, all of whom bitterly condemned glasnost and perestroika, and to encourage their replacement by Gorbachev-like reformers. Reform-oriented communist leaders in Eastern Europe were expected to strengthen Gorbachev's position in the Politburo and to make Soviet-bloc relations more equitable and manageable. ₇

Gorbachev's policies backfired. His call for change triggered off popular revolutions that swept away communist governments and left him no choice but to accept this fait accompli and the once unthinkable absorption of East Germany by its Western nemesis. Gorbachev had failed to grasp the extent of popular and elite antagonism to communism in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and East Germany.

Gorbachev's domestic assessments were equally inaccurate. The Soviet Union's precipitous economic decline followed his reforms and was at least in part caused by them. Gorbachev unwittingly undermined communism in the Soviet Union, was blind to the growing threat of a conservative coup against him, and to the extent to which his domestic and foreign policies encouraged the centrifugal forces of nationalism that would lead to the breakup of the Soviet Union. Given Gorbachev's unquestioned commitment to socialism, it seems extremely unlikely that he would have behaved as he did, at home or abroad, if he and his advisors had understood the likely consequences of their policies. Domestic democratic reforms and the hands-off policy toward Eastern Europe were the result ofÑ and probably could not have occurred withoutÑstrikingly unrealistic expectations about those consequences.

Structural explanations for Mikhail Gorbachev's foreign policy are guilty of post hoc ergo propter hoc analysis. Knowing Gorbachev's policies and their outcomes, they posit structures and assessments that must have led to these policies and outcomes. But those outcomes were unwanted and unexpected, and the policies in question were carried out for other reasons. To explain Gorbachev's policiesÑand those of Sadat, Rabin and ArafatÑit is necessary to consider their goals, understanding of the foreign and domestic constraints and opportunities confronting them, and their assessments of the likely consequences of the various courses of action they saw open to them.

General Deterrence

The second structural explanation for accommodation is successful general deterrence. General deterrence is a long-term strategy intended to discourage a military challenge. The defender strives to maintain a favorable military balance, or at least enough military capability to convince a challenger that a resort to force will be too risky or costly. ₈

Deterrence is not entirely unrelated to the distribution of capabilities. General deterrence success depends on adequate military capabilities, and in some conflicts may require a favorable balance of military power. But successful deterrence also requires willingness to use those capabilities, and that willingness must be credibly communicated to a would-be challenger. Deterrence thus has an important psychological-political component that is related to physical capabilities but by no means synonymous with them. The deterrence and distribution of capabilities explanations overlap the most in number three below, where military competition becomes the focus and yardstick of a broader competition in capabilities.

Some scholars, and many more journalists and politicians, have credited general deterrence with winding down the Cold War and Arab-Israeli conflicts. Three kinds of claims have been made:

1. General deterrence success: The military capability and resolve of a defender deter a challenger from using force. The challenger tried and fails to reverse the military balance and weaken the defender's resolve by building up its military capability, concluding alliances with other dissatisfied states, and threatening the defender's allies. After some years, the challenger reluctantly concludes that deterrence is robust and that it is a waste of resources to continue the conflict. Gorbachev's efforts to end the Cold War have been described as the result of such a learning process. ₉

2. Repeated defeat: The same learning process leads to accommodation, but as a result of successive military defeats. Egypt, Jordan and Syria embraced diplomacy only after five unsuccessful and costly wars (1948, 1956, 1967, 1969-70, 1973) convinced their leaders that Israel could not be destroyed or defeated. To achieve key foreign policy goals, they had to work with Israel. ₁₀

3. Lost competition: In this variant, general deterrence not only restrains the challenger, but convinces it that military competition with the defender is impractical. The challenger hastens to make an accommodation before the military balance turns decisively against it with all the negative political consequences that this would entail. This is the logic of those who maintain that the Carter-Reagan arms buildup and Strategic Defense Initiative compelled the Soviet Union to end the Cold War on terms favorable to the West. ₁₁

General deterrence may contribute to the resolution of certain kinds of conflicts, but the claims made for it to date in East-West and Arab-Israeli relations remain unsubstantiated. They also encounter serious conceptual and empirical problems. ₁₂

Defining deterrence success: Repeated Arab defeats may well have been a catalyst for rethinking the relationship with Israel. However, there are no conceptual grounds for describing this process as a general deterrence success. Deterrence succeeds when the military capability and resolve of a defender convince a challenger to refrain from using force. The five Arab-Israeli interstate wars were the result of general and immediate deterrence failures. Whatever Arab learning occurred was the result of Israel's ability to defend itself, inflict costly defeats on its adversaries and occupy their territory. Military defeat should not be confused with deterrence. Attempts to do so, violate the definition of deterrence almost universally accepted in the literature, and transform the strategy into a "heads I win, tails you lose" proposition.

Determining deterrence success: Deterrence failures are readily identifiable. They result in highly visible crises or wars. Deterrence successes are more elusive. Immediate deterrence is triggered by the belief that general deterrence is failing and that a military challenge is likely or probable. This expectation may be wrong but it is almost always a response to some kind of threatening adversarial behavior. These threats may be absent in general deterrence encounters. If general deterrence succeeds over time, a challenger may never consider military action or make explicit threats. The more successful general deterrence is the fewer traces it leaves.

Assessments of general deterrence are also less reliable that those of immediate deterrence because they depend on counter factual argument. Immediate deterrence success can in theory be documented; researchers need only ascertain that a challenger intended to use force but decided against it because of the defender's display of capability and resolve. When there are no immediate preparations to use force, and possibly no considerations of such preparations, there is no behavioral evidence to indicate the success of general deterrence. Claims for success rest on the unprovable assertion that resorts to force would have been made in the absence of deterrence.

The counterfactual basis of claims of general deterrence success also makes it extraordinary difficult to distinguish between a success and a case that lies outside the scope of the theory. In immediate deterrence, this is an empirical not a theoretical problem. If the investigator is able to establish that an adversary neither considered nor planned a military challenge, the case is not an immediate deterrence encounter; the practice of deterrenceÑassuming it occurredÑwas unnecessary to forestall a use of force. In identifying cases of general deterrence, this test will not work. We would expect no active consideration of initiating hostilities in both a general deterrence success and a relationship where deterrence was unnecessary. To distinguish between these situations the investigator needs to ascertain why force was not consideredÑand leaders themselves may not know the answer to this question.

General deterrence also differs from immediate deterrence in its temporal dimension. General deterrence must be assessed over the course of an adversarial relationship. How well and how long does it have to work to be considered successful? We have no theoretical criteria for making such judgments. This gives considerable latitude to investigators and encourages arbitrary assessments. ₁₃

In the Middle East, it is easy to make the counterfactual argument that Israel would have been destroyed as a state and its Jewish inhabitants killed or expelled if they had lacked the means and will to defend themselves. Arab states went to war in 1948 with the publicly proclaimed objective of destroying Israel and remained committed to it for many years afterwards. Iraq still is. The counterfactual is compelling because of the repeated failure of general and immediate deterrence and the evidence this provided of Arab intentions.

General deterrence in the Cold War confronts all of these problems: the absence of war makes it difficult to assess the role of deterrence in keeping the peace. Lack of evidence about Soviet intentions and calculations has not prevented many scholars and journalists from hailing the success of deterrence in restraining the Soviet Union. They take it as axiomatic that the Kremlin sought military conquests and was only kept in check by Western military capabilities and resolve. This is a political not a scientific argument.

The evidence that has emerged since the end of the Cold War does not lend much support to deterrence claims. The Soviet military prepared to invade Western Europe just as the Strategic Air Command prepared to annihilate the Soviet bloc with nuclear weapons. But there is not a scintilla of evidence that leaders on either side ever considered carrying out these plans or sought a decisive military advantage for the purpose of carrying out a first strike. Rather it suggests that Soviet and American leaders alike were terrified by the prospects of nuclear war. ₁₄

General deterrence cannot be discounted. The Soviet Union never possessed nuclear and conventional military superiority and we do not know how its leaders would have behaved in that circumstance. It is also impossible to substantiate or rule out other explanations for absence of war. John Mueller has made the case for self-deterrence, and argues that memories of recent conventional warfare and its costs encouraged caution in Moscow and Washington. ₁₅ In We All Lost the Cold War, Janice Gross Stein and I advanced a political explanation for the long peace: we contend that neither superpower was ever so unhappy or so threatened by the status quo that it was prepared to risk, let alone start, nuclear war to challenge or overturn it. ₁₆

More evidence from the Soviet archives might permit more effective discrimination among these competing explanations. Judging from what has happened in other historical controversies, e.g., the origins of World War I, I suspect that more evidence will only fuel controversy.

On the basis of the evidence at hand, I offer several observations about the role of general deterrence in facilitating conflict resolution in general and in the cases under discussion.

Deterrence is insufficient: For purposes of general deterrence, the Cold War and Middle East must be regarded as fundamentally different kinds of conflict. If neither superpower ever wanted or intended to initiate hostilities against the other, general deterrence was irrelevant, redundant or provocative. In conflicts like the Middle East, where at least one of the protagonists would go to war if it thought it could win or otherwise gain from hostilities, general deterrence was relevant and may sometimes have succeed in preventing war.

Even in the second kind of conflict, deterrence is at best a necessary but insufficient condition for accommodation. The fact that a challenger recognizes it cannot win a war does not mean its leaders are prepared to end that conflict and extend the olive branch to their adversary. Frustration does not necessarily lead to enlightenment; there is ample evidence that it often does the reverse. Leaders can continue the struggle by other means (e.g., economic boycotts, terrorism, subversion) or wait for more favorable circumstances, as Egypt and Syria did between 1949 and 1967, and between 1967 and 1973.

Soviet-American relations provides the most dramatic evidence against the proposition that accommodation follows upon the recognition that an adversary cannot be overcome by military means. Leaders of both superpowers recognized the impossibility of a meaningful military victory from the outset of the Cold War. That conflict nevertheless endured for almost a half-century. Surely, investigators need to look elsewhere to explain its demise.

Role conceptions: General deterrence distinguishes between a challenger, who is prepared to resort to force to alter the status quo, and a defender, who practices deterrence to discourage the use of force and defend the status quo. Conflict arises because of the challenger's goals and willingness to use force to advance them. As long as the defender remains committed to the status quo, it follows that relations between the protagonists can only improve when the challenger accepts the status quo or agrees to try to change it by peaceful means.

The role conceptions of general deterrence are politically naive. The responsibility for international conflict is rarely one-sided, nor is its origin necessarily the result of a challenge to the status quo. In both the Middle East and East-West conflicts, all the parties involved saw themselves as defenders and their adversaries as challengers. They often envisaged the policies that their adversaries judged to be provocative as justifiable efforts to defend or restore the status quo. These attributions cannot have been entirely self-serving because scholarly opinion is also deeply divided about the causes of these conflicts, the relative responsibility of the protagonists, and the nature of the roles they played over the years.

Even conflicts that begin as deliberate challenges to an unambiguous status quo are likely over time to evolve into something more complex. A defender may respond to a challenge by mobilizing its citizenry and allies, redirecting and expanding its military capability, forging alliances with its adversaries and trying to exploit its challenger's vulnerabilities. These actions can trigger conflict spiral can develop that sustains confrontation long after its initial causes have disappeared. The Cold War may be a case in point. It began as a struggle for influence in Central Europe and endured three decades after de facto accommodation had been reached about the political-territorial status quo in Central Europe and almost two decades after the superpowers and their allies had formally recognized that status quo in the Final Act of the Helsinki Accords.

Resolution of most international conflict requires reorientation in thinking and policy by both sides. This can be very difficult to accomplish. Important political and economic groups within the protagonists may have developed vested interests in conflict and make it difficult for conciliatory leaders to gain power or implement their foreign policy agenda. Leaders who express interest in accommodation may not be taken seriously by their adversary. They also risk being rebuffed by public opinion, important allies or exploited by their adversary. The East-West and Middle East conflicts provide ample illustrations of all of these problems and indicate that a leader's commitment to reduce conflict is only the first and by no means sufficient step toward accommodation. Attempts to explain the transformation of the East-West and Middle East conflictsÑor any enduring international rivalryÑneed to explain shifts in goals of both side and the emergence of the domestic and foreign conditions that encourage or facilitate accommodation.

Two Pathways to Accommodation

I hypothesize that leaders will consider conciliatory foreign policies when (1) they expect improved relations with adversaries to confer important domestic and international benefits, or prevent important domestic and international losses; (2) they have reason to believe that their adversaries will respond positively to their conciliatory overtures; (3) they consider it feasible to mobilize enough domestic support to sustain and implement a policy of accommodation.

The first condition is the most important because it addresses the incentives for accommodation. The second and third conditions pertain to feasibility. Leaders who expect to profit or stave off loss through accommodation are not likely to attempt such a policy unless they judge it to have a reasonable chance of success. Success will depend on the response of the adversary; both sides must cooperate to wind down or resolve a conflict. Leaders must also have the authority or support to carry out and sustain a policy that almost certainly represents a sharp break from accepted practice.

The three conditions tell us nothing of substance about the conditions in which leaders see accommodation as conducive to the attainment of their broader political objectives. Case studies of accommodation are helpful in this connection and suggest two distinct "pathways" to accommodation.

In the first pathway, the principal catalyst for accommodation is the commitment by leaders of one of the protagonists to domestic reforms and restructuring. I have described this pathway elsewhere and documented the links between domestic reform and conciliatory foreign policies in the Anglo-French, Egyptian-Israeli and East-West conflicts. ₁₇ Here I provide a brief overview of the argument in the latter two cases.

In the early 1970's Egypt's economy was in a shambles. President Anwar el-Sadat concluded that socialism from above had failed and that Egypt had to liberalize its economy. Sadat was also convinced that such a domestic transformation required some resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. When the 1973 war failed to achieve this end by military means, Sadat searched actively for a diplomatic solution which would create the stable climate necessary to attract foreign investment and aid from the West. ₁₈

President Sadat expected that a peace agreement with Israel brokered by the United States would create the conditions for the successful liberalization of the Egyptian economy. The United States would provide extensive economic aid and technical assistance to jump start the Egyptian economy. In a more secure and stable environment, foreign investment from the capitalist countries would flow into Egypt, accelerating economic growth. Only if the Egyptian economy grew could Egypt begin to address the fundamental infrastructural and social problems that it faced. Peace with Israel was important not only because of the direct benefits that it would bringÑthe return of the Sinai oil fields and an end to humiliationÑbut because of the opportunity it provided to open Egypt to the West and particularly to the United States. ₁₉

Mikhail Gorbachev's efforts to transform East-West relations were also motivated in large part by his commitment to domestic restructuring. Perestroika required an accommodation with the West; this would permit resources to be shifted from military to civilian investment and production, and attract credits, investment, and technology from the West. According to Foreign Minister Shevardnadze, the chief objective of Soviet foreign policy became "to create the maximum favorable external conditions needed in order to conduct internal reform." ₂₀

For Gorbachev and his closest advisors there was another important link between foreign and domestic policy. In the view of perestroichiks, the conflict with the West had been kept alive and exploited by the communist party to justify its monopoly on power and suppression of dissent. ₂₁ "New thinking" in foreign would break the hold of the party old-guard and the influence of the military-industrial complex with which it was allied. ₂₂

For committed democrats like Shevardnadze, perestroika and glasnost also had an ideological component. For the Soviet Union to join the Western family of nations, it had to become a democratic society with a demonstrable respect for the individual and collective rights of its citizens and allies. Granting independence to the countries of Eastern Europe was the international analog to emptying the Gulags, ending censorship in the media, and choosing members of the Supreme Soviet through free elections. Perestroika, Shevardnadze explained, "was understood to be universally applicable and could not be guided by a double standard. If you start democratizing your own country, you no longer have the right to thwart that same process in other countries." ₂₃

The second mediating condition of a conciliatory response is the understanding leaders have of the consequences of confrontation. Leaders are more likely to pursue conciliatory foreign policies when they believe confrontation has failed. In all three cases, leaders recognized that confrontation had failed, had been extraordinarily costly, and was unlikely to be succeed in the future.

President Sadat's peace initiative took place in the aftermath of military failure, a costly war in which Egypt was frustrated in its battlefield goals. Egyptian officials recognized that military conditions in 1973 had been optimalÑEgyptian and Syrian armies were armed with the latest weapons, mounted a joint attack, and achieved surpriseÑyet the war ended with Egyptian armies on the verge of a catastrophic military defeat. It was clear to Sadat and his generals that even under the best possible conditions, Egypt could not hope to defeat Israel. President Sadat accordingly began to search for a diplomatic solution that would return the Suez Canal to Egypt. He sought to involve the United States as a mediator, broker, and guarantor of a peace settlement.

Mikhail Gorbachev's search for accommodation was also a reaction to the failure and costs of confrontation. Under Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet Union had steadily built up its conventional and nuclear arsenals in a bid for military superiority. Brezhnev and many of his colleagues, and the Soviet military establishment, were convinced that a shift in the correlation of forces in favor of the socialist camp would compel the West to treat the Soviet Union as an equal superpower. Nixon and Kissinger's interest in dŽtente, which came at a time when the Soviet Union was drawing abreast of the United States in strategic nuclear capability, confirmed their view of the political value of military forces. ₂₄

Soviet leaders reasoned that additional forces would further improve their position vis-ˆ-vis the West and continued their buildup into the 1980s. Their policy had the opposite effect. Moscow's seeming pursuit of strategic superiority coupled with its more assertive policy in the Third World handed American militants a powerful weapon to use against dŽtente. The Carter administration was forced to begin its own strategic buildup and then to withdraw the proposed SALT II Treaty from the Senate. The apparent upsurge in Soviet aggressiveness and Carter's seeming inability to confront it, contributed to Reagan's electoral landslide and support for his more extensive military East-buildup and anti-Soviet foreign policy.

Soviet foreign policy analysts in the institutes were sensitive to the ways in which Brezhnev's crude military and foreign policy had provoked a pernicious American reaction. Their critiques of Soviet policy that circulated widely among the Soviet elite. These analyses were especially critical of the increasingly costly intervention in Afghanistan. They also took Brezhnev and the military to task for their deployment of SS-20s in Eastern Europe and the Western military districts of the Soviet Union. They maintained that NATO's commitment to deploy Pershing IIs and ground launched cruise missiles (GLCMs), which Moscow found so threatening, was a predictable response to Moscow's provocative and unnecessary deployment of highly accurate short- and intermediate range nuclear systems. ₂₅

The overarching theme of these analyses was that the Brezhnev buildup had provoked the same kind of pernicious over-reaction in the United States that the Kennedy-McNamara buildup of the 1960s had in the Soviet Union. Soviet attempts to intimidate China with a massive buildup along its border were said to have had the same effect. A different and more cooperative approach to security was necessary.

Soviet failures in Afghanistan and in managing relations with the United States and Western Europe, prompted a fundamental reassessment of foreign policy on the part of intellectuals and politicians not associated with these policies. Gorbachev and Shevardnadze maintain that their foreign policy views were formed in reaction to Brezhnev's failures and were significantly shaped by the analyses of Soviet critics in the foreign ministry and institutes. Both men had long conversations with analysts and foreign ministry critics of Brezhnev's policies before they decided to withdraw from Afghanistan. Such individuals were also instrumental in Gorbachev's and the Politburo's decision to accept on-site inspection, which helped to break the logjam in arms control. ₂₆

The Gorbachev revolution in foreign policy is reminiscent of the French experience in a second important way. The humiliation of Fashoda was the catalyst for a major shift of power within France that facilitated the emergence of a new foreign policy line. Soviet officials agree that economic stagnation and the running sore of Afghanistan paved the way to power for a reform-oriented leader. Once in the Kremlin, Gorbachev exploited Afghanistan and NATO's deployment of Pershing IIs and GLCMs in Western Europe to discredit the militants and gain the political freedom to pursue a more conciliatory policy toward the West. ₂₇

The third condition facilitating accommodation is the expectation of reciprocity. Leaders will be more likely to initiate conciliatory policies when they believe that their adversary is more likely to reply in kind than to exploit their overtures for its unilateral advantage. In many, if not most adversarial relationships, leaders fear that any interest they express in accommodation, or any concessions they make, will communicate weakness to their adversary and prompt a more aggressive policy rather than concessions in kind. Given the serious foreign and domestic costs of failed attempts at accommodation, leaders are only likely to pursue conciliatory policies when they expect them to be reciprocated.

Anwar el-Sadat had reason to suppose that Israel might respond positively to an offer of a peace treaty. He made extensive private inquiries about Prime Minister Menachem Begin. He asked Nicolae Ceausescu of Romania, who had met Begin several times, whether the prime minister was sincere in his interest in peace and if he could fulfill any commitment that he made. Reassured by the Rumanian leader, Sadat sent his deputy premier, Hassan Tuhami, to meet secretly in Morocco with Israeli foreign minister Moshe Dayan to explore the outlines of an agreement. Dayan assured Tuhami that Israel would consider returning the Sinai to Egypt in exchange for a full peace. Only when his expectations of reciprocity were confirmed did President Sadat undertake his public and dramatic visit to Jerusalem.

For the Soviet Union, the importance of the expectation of reciprocity is best illustrated by the different policies of Nikita Khrushchev and Mikhail Gorbachev, the two Soviet leaders most interested in accommodation with the West. Gorbachev was able to pursueÑand to persevere withÑhis search for accommodation because of the positive evolution of superpower relations since the height of the Cold War in the early 1960's.

Gorbachev was much less fearful than Khrushchev that the United States and its allies would exploit any Soviet concession. Khrushchev's intense fear of the West had severely constrained his search for accommodation. He was unprepared to gamble, as Gorbachev did, that conciliatory words and deeds would generate sufficient public pressure on Western governments to reciprocate. Khrushchev did make some unilateral concessions; he reduced the size of the armed forces and proclaimed a short-lived moratorium on nuclear testing. When his actions were not reciprocated, he felt the need to demonstrate firmness to buttress his position at home and abroad. His inflammatory rhetoric further strengthened the hand of militants in the West who all along opposed to accommodation with the Soviet Union. ₂₈

Gorbachev succeeded in transforming East-West relations and ending the Cold War because the West became his willing partner. Unlike Khrushchev, whose quest for a German peace treaty frightened France and West Germany, Gorbachev's attempt to end the division of Europe met a receptive audience, especially in Germany and Western Europe. Disenchantment with the Cold War, opposition to the deployment of new weapons systems, and a widespread desire to end the division of Europe, created a groundswell of support for exploring the possibilities of accommodation with the Soviet Union. Western public opinion, given voice by well-organized peace movements, was a critical factor in encouraging Gorbachev and his colleagues in their attempts at conciliation.

Gorbachev was intent on liberalizing the domestic political process at home and improving relations with the West. Within a month of assuming office, he made his first unilateral concessionÑa temporary freeze on the deployment of Soviet intermediate range missiles in Europe. This was followed by a unilateral moratorium on nuclear tests and acceptance of the Western "double zero" proposal for reducing intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) in Europe. In subsequent speeches and proposals, he tried to demonstrate his support for sweeping arms control and a fundamental restructuring of superpower relations. President Reagan continued to speak of the Soviet Union as an "evil empire" and remained committed to his quest for a near-perfect ballistic missile defense.

To break this impasse, Gorbachev pursued a two-pronged strategy. In successive summits he tried and finally convinced Reagan of his genuine interest in ending the arms race and restructuring East-West relations on a collaborative basis. When Reagan changed his opinion of Gorbachev, he also modified his view of the Soviet Union and quickly became the leading dove of his administration. Gorbachev worked hard to convince Western publics that his policies represented a radical departure from past Soviet policies. The Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, freeing of political prisoners, and liberalization of the Soviet political system, evoked widespread sympathy and support in the West and generated strong public pressures on NATO governments to respond in kind to Gorbachev's initiatives.

Gorbachev's political persistence succeeded in breaching Reagan's wall of mistrust. At their Reykjavik summit in October 1986, the two leaders talked seriously about eliminating all of their ballistic missiles within ten years and making deep cutes in their nuclear arsenals. No agreement was reached because Reagan was unwilling to accept any restraints on his Strategic Defense Initiative. The Reykjavik summit, as Gorbachev had hoped, nevertheless began a process of mutual reciprocation, reassurance and accommodation between the superpowers. That process continued after an initially hesitant George Bush became Gorbachev's full-fledged partner in ending the vestiges of forty years of Cold War.

A second, different pathway to accommodation is through vulnerabilities that leaders believe can only be addressed through collaboration with their adversaries. This was probably the fundamental cause of the ongoing rapprochement in the Middle East between Israel and the Palestinians and Israel and Jordan.

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, an experienced military officer, was convinced by Iraqi SCUD attacks during the Gulf War that Israel faced an increasing threat of biological and chemical attacks from its determined enemies. The civilian population would be increasingly at risk as there was no adequate defense against such weapons. Although Israel could retaliate, it could not adequately deter in Rabin's judgment. It was accordingly in Israel's interest to try to reach an accommodation with the Palestinians and Syria.

The other driving factor was Rabin's preoccupation with the United States. The US-Israeli relationship had always been a preoccupation for Rabin. The Bush administration had put tremendous pressure on Israel over loan guarantees, tying them to a freezing of settlements on the West Bank. The two issuesÑthe threat of unconventional attacks, and the need to repair the rift in US-Israeli relationsÑcombined to stimulate interest in accommodation.

The pressures on Yasir Arafat were greater. The PLO was at its lowest point in its history. Following the Gulf War, Arafat and the PLO had lost the financial support of the Gulf countries and was unable to pay the salaries of his large staff in the West Bank and Gaza. In both territories, the Intifada had been captured by indigenous Palestinian leaders who operated with growing autonomy. Hamas, vocally antagonistic to the PLO, was growing stronger. Arafat was also pushed toward accommodation by the disappearance of the Soviet Union and the loss of its support.

The two pathways have several features in common that in turn have important implications for the study of accommodation.

Domestic politics: Sadat and Gorbachev were intensely focussed on their domestic agendas, and adopted foreign policies they thought would advance those agendas. Domestic considerations were also critical for Rabin and Arafat. For at least three of the four leaders the link between domestic and foreign policy was the reverse of that posited by most theories of foreign policy. By ignoring domestic politics, existing theories fail to capture some of the most important motives for foreign policy change.

Biased assessment: Risk assessments can be significantly influenced by what is at stake. Studies of immediate deterrence failures document numerous instances of leaders who committed themselves to aggressive challenges of adversarial commitments to cope with pressing strategic and domestic problems. ₂₉ Because they believed that these problems could only be overcome through successful challenges they convinced themselves, sometimes in the face of strong disconfirming evidence, that their challenged would succeed. Gorbachev's behavior indicates that a commitment to accommodation can encourage the same kind of motivated bias in information processing. In the absence of any real evidence and against the advice of prominent advisors, he convinced himself that he could change Ronald Reagan's view of arms control and of the Soviet Union and achieve the kind of breakthrough essential for a wider political accommodation. Gorbachev's success suggests the corollary that expectations of reciprocity can sometimes be made self-fulfilling, just like expectations of conflict.

Gorbachev's other miscalculations had less satisfactory results from his perspective. His public call for reform in Eastern Europe set in motion a chain of events that led to the overthrow of seven communist governments, demise of the Warsaw Pact and the reunification of Germany under Western auspices. Gorbachev's domestic economic and political reforms accelerated the decline of the Soviet economy and were the proximate causes of communism's collapse and the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Sadat also made serious miscalculations. Above all, he miscalculated the short-term consequences of accommodation with Israel. He expected the process to move quickly, so that Arab opposition to it would not have a chance to coalesce and organize. He further expected the Gulf states to support, at least tacitly, any accommodation that was backed by the United States. Finally, he expected that accommodation would result in a flood of foreign investment in Egypt. All these calculations were wrong and put Sadat into a difficult political position. His political isolation at home and abroad and the failure of the peace process to address or assist the Palestinians were contributing causes to his assassination.

These miscalculations had many causes, but perhaps the most fundamental one was the contradictory nature of the goals these leaders sought. Gorbachev wanted to make the Soviet Union a freer, more productive country with more equitable relations with its Warsaw Pact allies and the West. He also wanted to preserve the core of political communism and its command economy. He deluded himself into believing that these objectives were not only compatible, but reinforcing, when in reality the former could only be achieved at the expense of the latter. ₃₀ Sadat was also involved a fundamental contradiction between his desire for rapid economic growth and his commitment to autocratic and corrupt government. He also deluded himself into believing that he could have peace with Israel and continue to receive much needed financial aid from the Gulf states.

Our cases give rise to a disturbing speculation. Would Sadat and Gorbachev have pursued their respective accommodations if they had a better understanding of their consequences? Did accommodation depend on gross wishful thinking by the leaders responsible for initiating it? If so, what theoretical implications does this have for scholars attempting to explain and predict such accommodationsÑand, more importantly, for leaders contemplating them? Would theyÑand their countriesÑhave been better off eschewing accommodation? This is, of course, the contention of embittered Russian communists and uncompromising Arab nationalists.

Structural explanations assume that leaders are more or less interchangeable; rational leaders who confront the same combination of constraints and opportunities will respond in similar ways. Our cases indicate enormous variation. Brezhnev and Gorbachev both recognized the need to reinvigorate the Soviet economy, but implemented strikingly different reform programs and related foreign policies, just as Rabin and Shamir adopted different policies to safeguard Israel's security. These differences cannot be attributed to changing circumstances. Opponents of Sadat, Gorbachev, Rabin and Arafat would not have pursued accommodation. And they were not powerless because of their opposition to accommodation; the choice of leader in all cases was determined by other issues and considerations.

Approaches that focus on the decisive and independent role of leaders confront a difficult challenge. They ultimately need to explain why different leaders adopt different policies. We have taken a step in this direction by identifying some of political visions, pressures and learning experiences that appear to promote accommodation. Our propositions need to be tested in other cases and in other period of the East-West and Middle East conflicts. Were these conditions present in other cases and at other times, and were they associated with attempts at accommodation? Other cases also need to be examined to identify other possible pathways to accommodation. If our findings prove valid, they will have some explanatory and predictive value. But they take us only part way to our goal. They tell us nothing about the reasons why leaders develop the particular visions, goals and lessons that prompt them to seek accommodation.

The challenge posed by this question is most evident in the case of Sadat. He was almost unique among the Egyptian political elite in his belief that accommodation with Israel was advisable and feasible. His commitment to economic restructuring was controversial but more widely shared.

The beliefs and goals of leaders are also difficult to explain when they are more widely shared. An important segment of the Soviet elite also favored economic reform, liberalization of the political system, withdrawal from Afghanistan and improved relations with the West. Gorbachev was a relative latecomer to foreign policy and appears to have adopted many of his foreign policy goals from his most liberal advisors. Why did Gorbachev assimilate these views and not those of the more conservative officials with whom he worked? A number of explanations have been proposed (e.g., generational learning, domestic politics, coalition building), and they all encounter problems. ₃₁

Caveats

My propositions represent the first step toward a more comprehensive theoretical explanation of accommodation. They need to be tested and incorporated into a broader theory that more fully specifies the domestic and other conditions that prompt policy makers to extend the olive branch to their adversaries.

The first step in testing my propositions would be to search my three cases for other times in which any of the three conditions was present. Evidence that other attempts at conciliation were made under similar conditions would strengthen their claim to validity. The finding that my three conditions were present on one or more occasions and no attempt at conciliation was made would indicate that they are insufficient. It would trigger a search for additional conditions and evidence that they were also present in the three attempts at conciliation investigated in this chapter. The finding that additional attempts at conciliation were made under different conditions would point to the existence of different pathways to accommodation.

My propositions also need to be tested in other cases. To do this I need to construct an appropriate data set. Ideally, it should include the universe of twentieth century cases of attempted conciliation. This would allow the testing of propositions about the conditions under which conciliation is attempted and the conditions under which it succeeds. Once again, the next step would be to see if the conditions associated with conciliation were present on occasions when conciliation was not attempted.

This chapter examined only one pathway to accommodation. In all three cases, leaders sought to resolve long-standing international conflicts because they regarded it as essential or extremely beneficial to the success of their domestic reforms. I fully expect that a search of other cases would reveal additional incentives and pathways to accommodation. One alternative incentive is mutual fear of a third party. It played a role in Anglo-French relations in the years between 1905 and 1914, and was probably central to the Sino-American rapprochement of the 1970s. Economic incentives may have been critical in the partial accommodations between the two Germanies during the era of Ostpolitik and the two Chinas today.

There is also the important question of how leaders respond to conciliatory initiatives. Successful accommodation requires reciprocity. My first pathway describes how a leader adopts a more conciliatory foreign policy to facilitate domestic restructuring. The other side must respond positively, reassure the initiator of its interest in accommodation, and both sides must work together to resolve outstanding differences and institutionalize their new relationship.

Prior to 1986 there were four unsuccessful attempts to transform Soviet-American relations: by the post-Stalin troika in 1953-55, Nikita Khrushchev in 1959-60, Leonid Brezhnev and Richard Nixon from 1969 to 1973, and Jimmy Carter from 1976-1979. The Khrushchev and Carter experiences illustrate the dangers of unsuccessful attempts at accommodation. Both leaders were subjected to blistering criticism from hard liners at home and sought to protect themselves by intensifying confrontation with their adversary. ₃₂

Reciprocity is essential but by no means inevitable, as Soviet-American relations illustrate. We need to study successful and unsuccessful attempts at accommodation and develop propositions that explain divergent responses. The explanations for reciprocity may prove quite different from those of initiation. This is not a problem in the second pathway two that delineates how similar kinds of incentives move both sides simultaneously toward accommodation.

Conclusions

Research on accommodation has focused almost entirely on independent variables; researchers have advanced a series of competing propositions to explain accommodation in general and the East-West and Arab-Israeli accommodations in particular. We also need to focus attention on the dependent variable. Just what do we mean by accommodation? Is it a sharp decline in the probability of war (e.g., Israel-Egypt)? Must relations improve to the point where war becomes almost unthinkable (e.g., UK-France, U.S.-UK, France-Germany)? Or is it something in between (e.g., Russia-United States)?

A decline in the probability of war leads to, or reflects, an improved relationship. But reconciliation requires more than removal of the threat of war. If the Anglo-French and Franco-German experiences can be taken as guides, it requires resolution of important outstanding issues, the building of close economic and social ties and a fundamental compatibility in political institutions and values.

There are different degrees of accommodation, and researchers need to specify the kind of accommodation they mean. Toward this end it would be helpful to identify the stages relationships can pass through from outright hostility to full reconciliation. This would allow for more appropriate case comparisons. If, as we suspect, conflicts move (or fail to move) from one stage to another for different reasons, it would also break down the dependent variable into more analytically meaningful categories. ₃₃

For scholars interested in peace, the probability of war will initially remain the critical dependent variable. However, peace ultimately depends on the quality of the broader relationship. Conflicts in which the probability of war has been sharply reduced but otherwise remain frozen (e.g., Israel-Egypt, Greece-Turkey) can readily heat up in response to regime changes or other threatening developments. This can also happen in relationships where accommodation has gone further. There is growing concern at the moment about the future of Chinese-Taiwan relations, and this in spite of growing levels of investment and social intercourse. ₃₄

Broader relationships are important in a second sense. Accommodation is not a stochastic process; it is more likely to occur under some circumstances than others. The pathways we have described require domestic or strategic incentives, the expectation of reciprocity and the ability to mobilize adequate domestic support behind the peace process, any agreement and whatever implementation it requires. These conditions are more likely to develop after a conflict has been ongoing for some time. They may also reflect accumulated frustration and costs on both sides.

The East-West conflict provides the best illustration of this proposition. Most analyses of the end of that conflict understandably focus on the policies of Mikhail Gorbachev. But major improvements in East-West relations took place long before Gorbachev came to power in 1985. By 1985, that conflict was characterized by a fundamental stability. Twenty-three years had elapsed since the last war-threatening crisis. The superpowers took each other's commitment to avoid war for granted and had entered into a series of arms control and "rules of the road" agreements that regulated their strategic competition and interaction. These accords weathered the shocks of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and Reagan's commitment to Star Wars. Gorbachev's initiatives were built on this pre-existing foundation. ₃₅

Gorbachev's policies initiated the final phase of a reconciliation that had been proceeding fitfully since the death of Stalin. Gorbachev would never have contemplated, or have been allowed to carry out, his domestic reforms, asymmetrical arms control agreements, and encouragement of reform in Eastern Europe, if the majority of the Central Committee had expected a hostile West to respond aggressively to a visibly weaker Soviet Union. The willingness of Gorbachev and his key associates to make unilateral concessions without apparent fear of their foreign policy consequences indicates that for them the Cold War had already receded into the past. They were doing away with its atavistic institutional remnants to facilitate cooperation with their former adversaries and reap its expected benefits.

All three of our accommodations illustrate the important role of ideas. The fundamental, underlying cause of the resolution of the East-West conflict was a dramatic shift in the Soviet conception of security. The rejection of confrontation in favor of "common security" paved the way for the series of unilateral gestures that broke the logjam of East-West conflict. This conceptual revolution was preceded by an earlier and equally important conceptual breakthrough: the recognition by superpower leaders that they both feared nuclear war and were committed to its prevention. This recognition was responsible for the stability that characterized East-West relations from the mid-1960s. Both changes in conception were largely independent of capabilities. Analysts need to look elsewhere, to learning and how elite conceptions are shaped through personal and national political experiences, and reading and personal contacts with one another, advisors, intellectuals and diplomats, scientists and journalists who can function as conveyer belts of ideas and information between adversaries. ₃₆

Arab-Israeli accommodation also involved learning, but of a different kind. Arab leaders recognized that they could not win a war. Once that recognition set in, the advantages of accommodation should have been obvious: territory regained, occupation ended, an improved relationship with the United States, and greater economic opportunities in the region and through the vehicle of American aid. While defeat drove home these lessons to Sadat, it did not to most of his contemporaries. More recently, Palestinians and Israelis alike are deeply divided on the issue of peace. Proponents and opponents alike draw diametrically opposed policy lessons from the shared historical experiences.

Our analysis indicates that structural explanations of accommodation are inadequate. At best, declining capabilities and deterrence success represent necessary but insufficient condition for accommodation. The visions of leaders, the concrete goals and their understanding of the constraints and opportunities they confront provide a more compelling explanation of accommodation. These consideration cannot be accounted for with reference to any of the so-called structures that figure prominently in the foreign policy and international relations literature. This is not to say that political visionsÑfor example, the increasingly preference of elites for democratic governments and market economiesÑare not themselves a reflection of certain underlying conditions. Ultimately, the explanation for accommodation must be sought in an understanding of the complex interplay of structure and politics.