CAS Inquire: "Bargaining for War: Explaining the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Gaza Wars"

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09/13/2024 Added

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Ross Miller gave the CAS Inquire talk on Sept. 10, 2024 for the theme "War, Peace, and Reconciliation".

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[00:00:00.000]Good evening, everyone.
[00:00:03.000]Thanks.
[00:00:04.000]It's great to see you all here tonight.
[00:00:06.000]My name is Mark Button.
[00:00:08.000]I'm the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.
[00:00:11.000]And I'd love to welcome you tonight to the fifth year of our CAS Inquire series.
[00:00:18.000]The organizing theme for the CAS Inquire series this year is War, Peace, and Reconciliation.
[00:00:25.000]Whether you're here in person, and it is wonderful to see so many students here tonight,
[00:00:30.000]or joining us online, we are really glad you're here. I think you're doing a great treat.
[00:00:36.000]And we're excited to get this year's important set of themes off to a great start.
[00:00:42.000]The theme for this year, War, Peace, and Reconciliation, is, of course, incredibly well chosen,
[00:00:48.000]given the persistent and devastating ravages of war across the world today.
[00:00:54.000]And the no less persistent, urgent, and humane calls for peace and reconciliation.
[00:01:02.000]All of these themes raise fundamental questions about the very nature of humanity.
[00:01:09.000]And it is uniquely in a college like ours, where we have the faculty, students, and staff
[00:01:17.000]who are dedicated to opening these big questions to critical examination
[00:01:23.000]and to open public exchange.
[00:01:26.000]And it's for those reasons I'm really thrilled to see the great turnout here tonight.
[00:01:30.000]I'm feeling a lot of strong political science energy in the room here tonight.
[00:01:33.000]And I think we're all excited about a certain debate happening later.
[00:01:36.000]So this is going to be a nice appetizer for all of you.
[00:01:41.000]In keeping with the college's identity, the culture within the College of Arts and Sciences,
[00:01:48.000]which is really exemplified by this lecture series,
[00:01:52.000]this theme, War, Peace, and Reconciliation, is going to be explored over the course of the year
[00:01:58.000]through a diverse range of intellectual orientations and disciplinary perspectives,
[00:02:03.000]including political science, classics and religious studies, evolutionary biology, and history.
[00:02:11.000]And for a distinctive set of intellectually curious and inquiring students we call the Inquirer Scholars,
[00:02:18.000]this lecture series also offers the chance to foster
[00:02:21.000]a meaningful academic engagement with this topic through discussions with our talented faculty
[00:02:28.000]and through their own year-long research projects.
[00:02:32.000]They're aided along the way by a peer leader.
[00:02:36.000]And so we wanted to just first recognize and ask the scholars and the peer leader to please stand.
[00:02:41.000]All the students who are part of this program this year, we know you're here.
[00:02:45.000]There you are. Thank you. Congratulations.
[00:02:50.000]I also wanted to call out Dr. June Griffin, who is the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education and is leading this program.
[00:03:06.000]This evening we have the distinct pleasure to kick off this important college conversation with a presentation by Dr. Ross Miller from the Department of Political Science.
[00:03:14.000]Dr. Miller is an associate professor of political science and he earned his Ph.D.
[00:03:19.000]from UC Davis and has been a member of the college faculty since 2007.
[00:03:24.000]His primary research includes international conflict and leaders in foreign policy.
[00:03:30.000]He is a co-author of The Foreign Norms, Institutions, and Civic Culture,
[00:03:35.000]and has several recent articles published in Foreign Policy Analysis, International Interactions, and the Journal of Conflict Resolution.
[00:03:44.000]His talk tonight, as you see here, is Bargaining for War:
[00:03:48.000]Explaining the Russian-Ukraine and Israel Cause of Wars.
[00:03:52.000]And, of course, those topics could not be more timely or important.
[00:03:56.000]After his talk, we will have time for conversation, questions from the audience.
[00:04:01.000]We ask that you please just raise your hands so we can get a microphone to you or come up to the microphone,
[00:04:06.000]because we do have folks participating, quite a few folks participating through Zoom tonight,
[00:04:10.000]and we want to make sure that they hear your questions as well.
[00:04:13.000]For those of you participating by Zoom, you can submit your questions through the chat,
[00:04:17.000]and your questions will be answered on your behalf.
[00:04:20.000]And so now, without any further ado, please join me in welcoming Dr. Ross.
[00:04:32.000]Hi. Thanks to everybody for coming.
[00:04:34.000]Thanks to Associate Dean Griffin for putting some faith in me to open up this series.
[00:04:40.000]And for the Cass Enquirer students, I think we'll meet next week for a little bit more in-depth conversation.
[00:04:46.000]So I look forward to that. Thanks to my colleagues and my graduate students who are here.
[00:04:51.000]I know many of you are here for us to credit. I appreciate that you're choosing my talk.
[00:04:57.000]I will do my part to hopefully make this engaging and interesting and also within the timeframe.
[00:05:04.000]I know we all want to get to those pre-debate tailgate parties.
[00:05:13.000]So I'm interested in international conflict.
[00:05:15.000]If this is going to work.
[00:05:29.000]Maybe not.
[00:05:33.000]You got to get rid of that stuff at the top of the screen.
[00:05:36.000]Right here.
[00:05:41.000]Thank you.
[00:05:42.000]So I'm interested in international conflict.
[00:05:44.000]I've been studying it for quite a while.
[00:05:47.000]And my approach is a little bit different than perhaps others that you've experienced.
[00:05:52.000]And that instead of trying to figure out every single reason why a particular war occurs, I'm in this area of political science where we try to identify those enduring, really powerful factors that serve as undercurrents and cause wars across the board.
[00:06:11.000]It's kind of a generalizable model.
[00:06:13.000]And what I want to introduce you today is the bargaining model of war.
[00:06:18.000]The only citation I have in the whole caucus are Jim Fearon, who developed this model back in 1995.
[00:06:24.000]But I'm building on a lot of great scholars' works, so I'm not recognizing them in the talk, but I'm building on the shoulders of some very strong people.
[00:06:36.000]The bargaining model of war is interesting. It's a different way of approaching war, hopefully interesting to you.
[00:06:42.000]It's tied to both Russia, Ukraine, and Israel-Gaza.
[00:06:45.000]If there's any takeaway point from this talk, it's that how we choose our leaders and what those leaders need to do to stay in power has big consequences for their foreign policy.
[00:06:58.000]And I think we'll see that show up in both Russia, Ukraine, and Israel-Gaza.
[00:07:04.000]So I have a few basic assumptions here.
[00:07:07.000]The number one goal of leaders is to stay in power.
[00:07:11.000]Whether it be in Ukraine, Netanyahu in Israel, Sinai in Gaza, or Vladimir Putin from Russia, that is their dominant goal.
[00:07:18.000]They can't fulfill anything else until they make sure they stay in power.
[00:07:22.000]And in order to do that, then they're going to need to be responsive to the parties or the groups that help them get there.
[00:07:30.000]And they do that through implementing domestic and foreign policies that make those groups happy.
[00:07:36.000]The bargaining model of war is from a branch of economics and mathematics
[00:07:40.000]called game theory. Its basic idea is that leaders are weighing the costs and benefits before they decide to go to war.
[00:07:49.000]As long as war is costly, states have an incentive to reach some sort of bargain,
[00:07:57.000]some sort of agreement so that they can avoid the cost of war.
[00:08:01.000]Even if one state is much stronger than others, they have an incentive to take a little bit less so that they can avoid the cost of war.
[00:08:09.000]And war is part of this bargaining process, but it's costly.
[00:08:15.000]So we prefer to avoid it if we can. We can actually display this graphically.
[00:08:20.000]I'm told I'm not supposed to walk over there and point at this, so I'm going to try to do it this way.
[00:08:25.000]Let's say that we have state A and state B and they're bargaining over some issue, say territory.
[00:08:31.000]Over on the far left, state A gets everything, B gets nothing. Over on the right, the opposite holds.
[00:08:38.000]As we approach those ends, states have incentives to fight because they're giving up so much it's worth the cost of fighting, even if they're much weaker than the other state.
[00:08:49.000]But on most issues, there should be a bargaining range, a set of outcomes that are acceptable to those participants.
[00:08:58.000]As you might expect, as the costs of war rise, that bargaining range expands.
[00:09:05.000]So, for example, U.S. and China.
[00:09:07.000]Anticipate really high costs of war.
[00:09:11.000]That bargaining range should be quite large.
[00:09:13.000]We should be tolerant.
[00:09:16.000]Similarly, it doesn't have to be equally distributed.
[00:09:21.000]So as one state gets more powerful than the other, that range where they will fight expands because they can anticipate defeating the other state quickly.
[00:09:35.000]We're relatively weaker states.
[00:09:36.000]Over on the left, that place where they will fight shrinks.
[00:09:43.000]Okay.
[00:09:44.000]The bargaining model of war is cool because it really predicts peace.
[00:09:49.000]It's under conditions of what they say complete information, which basically means we know -- I know what you value.
[00:09:57.000]I know what you want.
[00:09:58.000]You know what I want.
[00:09:59.000]You know how much I want it.
[00:10:01.000]We have a sense of each other's capabilities.
[00:10:04.000]War cannot occur in equilibrium.
[00:10:05.000]As long as wars are constantly, they should be rare.
[00:10:08.000]And they are.
[00:10:09.000]They're really rare.
[00:10:11.000]Peace is underreported in the news.
[00:10:13.000]Only about one-third of 1% of the time are states at war.
[00:10:18.000]And you might say, well, he's cooking the books.
[00:10:21.000]He has Costa Rica in his sample.
[00:10:23.000]They don't have an army.
[00:10:24.000]That's right.
[00:10:25.000]They do.
[00:10:26.000]But I can raise the bar here.
[00:10:28.000]And I can say, let's take those situations, these bitter disputes, where one situation is at war.
[00:10:34.000]Where one state has threatened to use military force.
[00:10:37.000]They've used it in some limited way.
[00:10:40.000]Perhaps they've displayed it.
[00:10:42.000]They brought in a destroyer and parked it off their coast.
[00:10:46.000]92% of the time, those are settled short of war.
[00:10:50.000]Only 80% of the time you get war.
[00:10:52.000]So the bargaining model of war suggests we should have a relatively peaceful environment, even with selfish nations.
[00:11:01.000]Wars do occur, though.
[00:11:03.000]So how in mind do they occur?
[00:11:05.000]So I'm going to draw three factors from the bargaining model of war, and I'm going to tack in another one.
[00:11:12.000]There's actually formal work on it, but it's not part of the original.
[00:11:17.000]One of them is just uncertainty.
[00:11:20.000]We don't live in a world of complete information.
[00:11:22.000]We live in a world of incomplete information.
[00:11:24.000]There are information asymmetries where we don't always estimate another side's capabilities accurately,
[00:11:32.000]where we don't estimate the result, how committed they are.
[00:11:36.000]I think in the case of Russian leader Putin, he incorrectly estimated Ukrainian resolve.
[00:11:44.000]I'll talk about that more later.
[00:11:46.000]In the case of Israel and Gaza, I think Hamas incorrectly estimated the role that those hostages would play.
[00:11:54.000]I think they assumed by having them, they would limit Israeli attacks and escalation.
[00:12:00.000]That's incorrect.
[00:12:01.000]The second one is called the commitment problem.
[00:12:04.000]And the commitment problem just says, okay, there's a bargaining range, but what if you don't trust me to hold a bargaining?
[00:12:11.000]And if you don't trust me, even though the bargaining range exists, it's unreachable.
[00:12:17.000]I think that holds in both Russia, Ukraine, and Israel, Gaza, especially in the latter.
[00:12:23.000]These are solvable.
[00:12:25.000]That's when they send in the UN.
[00:12:27.000]The UN goes in, separates armies.
[00:12:30.000]Separates prevents folks from fighting, observes elections to make sure they're honest.
[00:12:37.000]The third one is called issue indivisibility.
[00:12:41.000]So if we're bargaining over territory, possibly we could divide it.
[00:12:46.000]What if we can't?
[00:12:48.000]And in Israel, Gaza in particular, because of the joint significance of sites for multiple religions, it can't be divided.
[00:12:59.000]And Haram al-Sharif in the Temple Mount in Jerusalem is probably the epitome of this.
[00:13:04.000]That complicates things.
[00:13:06.000]It makes it more difficult for states to reach these bargaining solutions.
[00:13:11.000]And finally, there's domestic politics.
[00:13:14.000]We can point to a lot of different factors that might be operating here, but I want to identify two.
[00:13:19.000]One is how leaders get into power.
[00:13:23.000]And I'm going to do a rough distinction between autocracies and democracies.
[00:13:28.000]Autocratic leaders like Putin and the leader of Gaza, Hamas, they are relatively insensitive to the cost of war.
[00:13:37.000]Russia's drawn 120,000 people into this war.
[00:13:42.000]And Putin does not seem to be real concerned about it.
[00:13:46.000]As long as it's not affecting his political position, he's not worried.
[00:13:52.000]That means, though, then the costs of war that should drive me to the bargaining range aren't.
[00:13:57.000]We see that in those two.
[00:14:00.000]But democracy isn't necessarily a panacea for this either.
[00:14:05.000]Because I may have domestic political groups that bind me to particular positions who I need to stay in power.
[00:14:13.000]And if I abandon my policy position, I will lose them and I will lose power.
[00:14:19.000]And I think we see that in both Ukraine and in Israel.
[00:14:26.000]Let's turn now to the substantive ones. I know I'm going fast. Am I doing okay or way too fast?
[00:14:33.000]Okay. Thank you.
[00:14:36.000]I'm going to talk briefly about the background, a little bit about the issues at stake, and then I'll apply the bargaining model.
[00:14:44.000]The history I think you'll be disappointed with, but I can only do so much. I have one slide for history, so bear with me here.
[00:14:51.000]I'm going to start out with the map of Ukraine. There's a couple of things I want to point out here.
[00:14:55.000]First of all, look to the east at this huge border it shares with Russia, and up to the north with Belarus, which was basically a puppet of Russia.
[00:15:06.000]So Ukraine has this massive security threat at its border, and Russia feels the same way about Ukraine, or at least the Ukraine that joins NATO.
[00:15:17.000]Also, I want to point out, look to the east, Donetsk and Luhansk, and down here, Crimea.
[00:15:24.000]The whole area here has relatively sizable ethnic Russian populations.
[00:15:29.000]Donetsk and Luhansk, 35-40%.
[00:15:32.000]They're Ukrainians, but they share an ethnic Russian heritage.
[00:15:37.000]Oops, back.
[00:15:39.000]Crimea, 75% ethnic Russian.
[00:15:42.000]This is what the map looks like today.
[00:15:45.000]Those areas shaded over there are all held by Russia.
[00:15:49.000]This was as of August 25th from the Institute for the Study of War.
[00:15:53.000]Those that are outlined with the thick black ones have been annexed by Russia.
[00:15:59.000]Crimea first, and then these areas, parts of Donetsk and Luhansk, have been blacked.
[00:16:05.000]So, how did we get here?
[00:16:08.000]This is the popular theory of the Russian-Ukraine war, and I'm not really challenging this.
[00:16:12.000]This is the last brave act of defiance.
[00:16:16.000]It will be my only attempt at humor for a very serious subject.
[00:16:22.000]This is a good explanation.
[00:16:25.000]Ukraine is standing up to a very, very powerful state.
[00:16:31.000]And the bargaining model of war says that's odd.
[00:16:36.000]That's not what we expect from states in these asymmetrical power relationships.
[00:16:43.000]So, how did we get here?
[00:16:45.000]I want to talk a little bit about the history.
[00:16:48.000]So, as you know, Ukraine, post-World War II, they're part of the Soviet Union.
[00:16:51.000]But the Soviet Union collapses.
[00:16:54.000]They dismantle.
[00:16:55.000]Ukraine becomes an independent state in 1991.
[00:16:58.000]Since independence, they've had a mix of leaders.
[00:17:01.000]Some leaning more towards Russia, because you do have a sizable ethnic Russian population.
[00:17:06.000]Some leaning more to the West to join the European Union or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO, the Western Alliance.
[00:17:15.000]I want to talk about one in particular.
[00:17:17.000]His name is Viktor Yanukovych.
[00:17:18.000]Comes into power in 2010.
[00:17:20.000]Traditionally, he's a pro-Russia guy.
[00:17:23.000]That's what he does.
[00:17:24.000]But in 2012, he begins leaning West.
[00:17:28.000]And he signs an association agreement with the European Union.
[00:17:32.000]The initials.
[00:17:33.000]He doesn't sign the initials.
[00:17:36.000]And you say, why is he shifting?
[00:17:38.000]Why does he go pro-Russia to pro-West?
[00:17:40.000]Domestic politics.
[00:17:42.000]Forty-five percent of the agreement supported better relations with the West, EU, NATO.
[00:17:49.000]Only 15% with Russia.
[00:17:52.000]Yanukovych wants to stay in power.
[00:17:54.000]Shifting with the wind's goals.
[00:17:56.000]Okay.
[00:17:57.000]2013, he shifts back.
[00:18:00.000]And says, no, we're not going with the EU.
[00:18:04.000]We're going with Russia.
[00:18:05.000]He signs an agreement with Russia, a trade agreement, says we're not going to NATO, abrupt things.
[00:18:11.000]Why?
[00:18:12.000]There are several reasons, but one that he cites is reasons of national security, which basically says,
[00:18:18.000]Vladimir Putin was putting a ton of pressure on him to abandon his turn to the West.
[00:18:25.000]The problem is that the Ukrainian people did not want to do this.
[00:18:29.000]And up in the upper right hand corner, those are from the Maidan protests.
[00:18:34.000]So these massive protests erupt in Kyiv, in Ukraine, and Yanukovych up and leaves.
[00:18:43.000]He goes into exile in Moscow.
[00:18:46.000]And Vladimir Putin is just...
[00:18:47.000]Vladimir Putin is just living about this.
[00:18:50.000]And he begins causing a great deal of problems.
[00:18:53.000]He begins activating these ethnic Russian Ukrainians in Donetsk and Luhansk to get them to secede.
[00:19:02.000]To get them to make lives miserable for Ukrainian government.
[00:19:07.000]Thousands of Ukrainians die during this time.
[00:19:11.000]In 2014, Kyiv necks Crimea, the peninsula to the south.
[00:19:16.000]Putting enormous pressure.
[00:19:19.000]Ukraine doubles down on their Western.
[00:19:23.000]They pass a constitutional amendment pledging that they will join NATO and the EU.
[00:19:31.000]They are locking themselves into positions.
[00:19:34.000]2019, Zelensky comes to power.
[00:19:38.000]75% of the vote.
[00:19:41.000]We will talk about him more later.
[00:19:44.000]2021, Russia raps.
[00:19:46.000]They tell Ukraine to abandon NATO.
[00:19:51.000]They begin massing troops on the border.
[00:19:54.000]They are signaling.
[00:19:56.000]They are signaling to Ukraine this is a big deal.
[00:19:59.000]2022, they issue an ultimatum.
[00:20:02.000]Stop. Guarantee that you will join NATO or else we will invade.
[00:20:07.000]Ukraine just says no.
[00:20:10.000]In February 2022, the war begins.
[00:20:14.000]So we can grab this.
[00:20:15.000]We can take a look.
[00:20:16.000]We can look at this on the bargaining model.
[00:20:18.000]Way over on the left, extreme as Ukraine joins NATO and the EU, they have full on West.
[00:20:23.000]Over on the right, Ukraine becomes part of Russia.
[00:20:28.000]As we approach these extremes, Ukraine becomes more likely to fight on the right, Russia on the left.
[00:20:36.000]But there is a bargaining match.
[00:20:39.000]There is a range of potential outcomes that you think they shift to.
[00:20:45.000]Why not?
[00:20:46.000]The answer is they did.
[00:20:48.000]They did in 2013.
[00:20:50.000]And that was Viktor Yanukovych.
[00:20:52.000]Viktor Yanukovych took Ukrainian foreign policy from joining NATO and EU and shifted it well within the bargaining range.
[00:21:01.000]But domestic politics in Ukraine blocked it.
[00:21:05.000]And then the constitutional amendments locked them into positions way over on the left.
[00:21:12.000]So they couldn't maneuver within that.
[00:21:15.000]Zelenskyy couldn't because if he did, he knows he's going to lose power.
[00:21:19.000]And he only needs to look at Yanukovych to know that.
[00:21:24.000]So why did we get the Ukraine war according to the bargaining model of war?
[00:21:29.000]One is Ukraine's foreign policy is way outside of what's acceptable to Russia.
[00:21:34.000]They're not going to have it. They are a great power, great regional power.
[00:21:38.000]They're not going to have it.
[00:21:41.000]Of the four bargaining model mechanisms,
[00:21:44.000]so we have error, uncertainty, commitment,
[00:21:47.000]indivisibility, or domestic politics,
[00:21:50.000]three of them are operating here.
[00:21:53.000]Let's start out with error.
[00:21:55.000]I think Putin looked at Zelensky and said this guy is not going to stand up.
[00:22:00.000]Zelensky has no foreign policy experience,
[00:22:03.000]no national leader experience.
[00:22:05.000]He is an actor. He is a comedian.
[00:22:08.000]And I think Putin looked at him and said he is exploitable.
[00:22:13.000]I can make him turn. He is wrong.
[00:22:15.000]Zelensky turned out to be very different.
[00:22:17.000]But that is not observable to Putin.
[00:22:19.000]He is guessing.
[00:22:21.000]Second of all, he does not think that others will aid Ukraine.
[00:22:24.000]He is wrong.
[00:22:26.000]But if you look at the survey data from 2015,
[00:22:29.000]he is making reasonable assumptions.
[00:22:32.000]This is from Pew,
[00:22:34.000]asked West European countries,
[00:22:36.000]US and Canada too, and Poland,
[00:22:39.000]in response to the situation involving Russia.
[00:22:42.000]Do you support NATO sending arms to Ukraine?
[00:22:45.000]Not troops, just arms.
[00:22:47.000]Only in Poland
[00:22:49.000]do you have a decent support from that.
[00:22:53.000]Which makes sense.
[00:22:55.000]Poles don't like Russians too much, they have good reason.
[00:22:57.000]But look at the US.
[00:22:59.000]Canada,
[00:23:02.000]UK and France,
[00:23:04.000]59% against,
[00:23:06.000]66% for Spain, 65% Italy,
[00:23:08.000]77% against in Germany.
[00:23:11.000]Vladimir Putin is looking at this and says,
[00:23:14.000]nobody will come to their aid.
[00:23:17.000]My costs will be low.
[00:23:19.000]So he chooses that.
[00:23:22.000]We also have a commitment problem.
[00:23:24.000]Because you might look at this and say,
[00:23:26.000]why didn't Ukraine simply say,
[00:23:29.000]okay, we won't join NATO?
[00:23:31.000]Happy?
[00:23:33.000]Can they trust it?
[00:23:35.000]Can they trust that Russia won't simply take that,
[00:23:38.000]and then a couple of years down the ladder,
[00:23:40.000]down the road,
[00:23:42.000]ante up higher expectations?
[00:23:45.000]I think they looked at that and said,
[00:23:47.000]Putin, we can't trust him.
[00:23:49.000]He's not a credible bargain.
[00:23:51.000]So we have the commitment problem operator.
[00:23:54.000]I don't think indivisibility is a factor.
[00:23:56.000]But domestic politics are.
[00:24:00.000]And I've talked about this.
[00:24:02.000]Putin is a dictator.
[00:24:04.000]And although he has been elected in relatively good elections early on,
[00:24:09.000]he has been in control.
[00:24:09.000]He has been a dictator for a long time.
[00:24:12.000]And he is very secure in his power despite --
[00:24:16.000]I've listened to over two and a half years of saying the sanctions are going to work.
[00:24:21.000]The sanctions are going to work.
[00:24:23.000]And they haven't.
[00:24:25.000]Until his political position is threatened, he's unlikely to change positions.
[00:24:32.000]Because he doesn't really care how many Russians die for his effort.
[00:24:38.000]Zelensky is also affected by domestic politics.
[00:24:44.000]He is locked in by the Ukrainian constitution and also the example of Yanukovych.
[00:24:51.000]If he shifts, he loses power.
[00:24:54.000]This may change.
[00:24:56.000]This is probably going to change soon.
[00:24:58.000]But if you're Zelensky and it's 2019 and you're just coming into power, why are you going to mess with that?
[00:25:07.000]Oh.
[00:25:08.000]I always forget this.
[00:25:10.000]And the one slice of the Ukrainian electorate that would be sympathetic to Zelensky shifting has been annexed by Russia.
[00:25:20.000]So Crimea, 75% ethnic Russia, isn't voting.
[00:25:25.000]That will not help Zelensky and Zelensky and Luhansk either.
[00:25:29.000]They're outside of it.
[00:25:32.000]So summary.
[00:25:33.000]I think we have three main factors here.
[00:25:35.000]I do see errors.
[00:25:37.000]Some commitment problem and also domestic politics.
[00:25:42.000]It's insulating Putin from the true costs of the war.
[00:25:45.000]And it really prevented Zelensky from shifting in that bargaining range.
[00:25:51.000]Okay.
[00:25:53.000]Onward.
[00:25:55.000]Israel and Gaza.
[00:25:57.000]I'll talk about the background.
[00:25:59.000]Admittedly complete.
[00:26:01.000]Every time I messed around with this slide, I kept thinking of people who would object to it.
[00:26:06.000]So I just went with what I had.
[00:26:09.000]Give me some slack on that.
[00:26:13.000]I'll talk a little bit about the setting and then I'll do the bargaining model or more applied to this.
[00:26:19.000]All four are operating.
[00:26:22.000]So, what is -- oh, this is a different set of slides.
[00:26:27.000]I want to -- I changed slides.
[00:26:29.000]I want to start here.
[00:26:31.000]Then I'll go back together.
[00:26:33.000]Israel was formed from a U.N.
[00:26:35.000]partition plan of 1947 that lays out in blue what would be the Jewish state and then in the reddish the Arab state and then Jerusalem, which they know is relatively indivisible.
[00:26:50.000]They smartly said this will be an international zone.
[00:26:54.000]This was controversial.
[00:26:56.000]It does pass.
[00:26:57.000]You have 33 voting for, 13 against, 10 abstaining, and abstaining in the U.N.
[00:27:04.000]This is a way of saying we want to vote against this, but we know it will really make you mad.
[00:27:11.000]So we're just abstaining.
[00:27:13.000]But this was incredibly controversial.
[00:27:15.000]Let me go back here.
[00:27:18.000]You do not have much consultation at all of the surrounding Middle Eastern states on this.
[00:27:25.000]This was, at least according to Palestinians, shoved through the United Nations.
[00:27:33.000]After this, war breaks out immediately, and you have Israel, the new Israeli state forming, and they are pushing Palestinians out of their territory.
[00:27:44.000]And they are going to Lebanon and to Jordan and to West Bank and to Gaza, which I'll talk about that a little bit more.
[00:27:53.000]But after 1948, Egypt grabs Gaza.
[00:28:00.000]Jordan grabs the West Bank.
[00:28:02.000]And they kick Jewish settlers out of there.
[00:28:05.000]They would control those territories until 1967 when Israel grabs them back.
[00:28:11.000]After Oslo, the key was to turn them back to Palestinian control.
[00:28:18.000]But this has been an ongoing conflict since this time.
[00:28:22.000]And you have wars, many.
[00:28:25.000]I've already talked for two and a half hours today, so I've got to be careful of my voice.
[00:28:28.000]But many wars since then.
[00:28:31.000]The conflict is both territorial and it has strong religious elements, which I think create that indivisibility.
[00:28:40.000]And I'm focusing on the Israel-Gaza, but I think some of the basic bargaining model stuff applies to the conflict generally.
[00:28:53.000]This is what we look at today.
[00:28:56.000]And for Palestinians, you have two dominant groups.
[00:29:00.000]And that's covering up one of them: Hamas and Fatah.
[00:29:04.000]Fatah is the original power broker among Palestinians.
[00:29:08.000]So if you hear PLO, that was Fatah.
[00:29:12.000]And Fatah dominated that for many years.
[00:29:15.000]But Hamas comes on the scene and they grow in popularity, in part because Fatah is failing.
[00:29:22.000]They're not getting gains for the Palestinian people.
[00:29:25.000]In 2006, this conflict between these two Palestinians,
[00:29:29.000]these two Palestinian groups comes to a head.
[00:29:32.000]There are elections held.
[00:29:34.000]Hamas surprises everybody and wins them.
[00:29:38.000]Fatah refused to turn over control.
[00:29:42.000]Hamas and Fatah fight in Gaza.
[00:29:45.000]Hamas pushes Fatah out of Gaza.
[00:29:48.000]Fatah is now mainly in the West Bank.
[00:29:52.000]And you have some in that West Bank area.
[00:29:55.000]You have some Palestinian control.
[00:29:58.000]Some Israeli control.
[00:29:59.000]Some mixed.
[00:30:01.000]But this is part of the conflict.
[00:30:05.000]Even though Hamas controls Gaza, it's important -- and Israel has cleared settlements out of there or cleared before the war.
[00:30:14.000]It's important to note that there is -- Israel and Egypt control everything that goes in and out as best they can.
[00:30:23.000]So for Gazans, it's a really tough existence.
[00:30:27.000]This is from before the war, so typical day in Gaza.
[00:30:33.380]you have no power for half the day.
[00:30:34.860]90% to 7% of the water in the homes is unfit to drink.
[00:30:39.620]70% were dependent on aid.
[00:30:42.640]And you have a 45% unemployment rate.
[00:30:45.060]So it is really quite miserable for Gazans in Gaza,
[00:30:51.120]for Palestinians in Gaza.
[00:30:52.580]As you might expect, this is Israel and Palestine conflict deaths since 1987,
[00:31:01.400]because that's when Hamas comes on the scene.
[00:31:03.460]But you could extend this easily back farther,
[00:31:06.320]but you see regular punctuated intervals of conflict,
[00:31:10.500]some more severe than others.
[00:31:12.200]The 1990s was one kind of hopeful period.
[00:31:16.260]And you see reference to the Oslo Accords,
[00:31:19.020]that you would get this two-state solution.
[00:31:21.400]It did not come to be.
[00:31:23.840]In many respects, the Hamas attack of October 27, 2023,
[00:31:31.300]it's just a continuation of this conflict.
[00:31:33.380]But I do want to highlight a couple of things here,
[00:31:36.520]because they're going to come up in my talk in a bit.
[00:31:38.380]One is it occurs on the 50th anniversary of Yom Kippur,
[00:31:42.920]the 1973 war.
[00:31:44.720]By the way, that is the first year
[00:31:48.520]in the Middle East conflict
[00:31:49.680]where the United States showed its hand.
[00:31:51.360]If you look at U.S. aid to Israel,
[00:31:55.220]it is really pretty flat until 1973,
[00:31:58.340]because that is the first war that looks
[00:32:01.200]like Israel is going to lose,
[00:32:02.920]and the U.S. shows its hand.
[00:32:05.060]In that attack, 1139 Israelis killed
[00:32:11.060]and 251 taken hostage.
[00:32:12.820]This is different from what Hamas has done in the past.
[00:32:17.460]It is a continuation of the conflict,
[00:32:20.860]but it differs in the number of civilians killed.
[00:32:24.560]That is not their pattern.
[00:32:27.140]This is much greater,
[00:32:28.540]and also the number of hostages taken.
[00:32:31.100]So why do we get October 7th?
[00:32:34.760]I think we have all four of these,
[00:32:36.860]and I want to highlight one other,
[00:32:38.780]which is the normalization of relations negotiations
[00:32:42.320]that were going on between Israel and the United Arab Emirates,
[00:32:46.860]and Israel and Saudi Arabia.
[00:32:49.280]Since 1948, there are only two countries that I know of
[00:32:53.160]who have signed a peace agreement with Israel.
[00:32:56.120]That's Jordan and Egypt.
[00:32:58.120]Nobody else has.
[00:33:00.160]But beginning under the Trump administration
[00:33:03.200]and continuing under the Biden administration,
[00:33:05.840]Israel has been normalizing relations.
[00:33:09.500]They concluded that with the United Arab Emirates,
[00:33:12.200]and they were undergoing negotiations with Saudi Arabia.
[00:33:15.580]Saudi Arabia is huge.
[00:33:17.580]They are one of the three top powers in the Middle East:
[00:33:20.440]Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Israel.
[00:33:22.780]And Haas looked at that and said,
[00:33:25.220]"If we do this, if this goes through, this is locking in the status quo."
[00:33:30.160]So that quote above from, I'm sorry, I'm not going to pronounce the name correct, but Khalil al-Hayah,
[00:33:37.200]it was necessary to change the equation and not just have a clash.
[00:33:41.160]That we were going big on this because they felt it's only going to get worse for Palestinians.
[00:33:50.500]So why did we get the war?
[00:33:52.980]I want to talk about all four of these briefly.
[00:33:56.520]We can plot this on the,
[00:34:00.020]bargaining model over on the left.
[00:34:02.500]Israel is eliminated as a state.
[00:34:04.780]That is the Gazan government Hamas.
[00:34:08.020]Their position has been that Israel has no place.
[00:34:11.740]They want a one state solution with Palestinians in control.
[00:34:15.820]You do get moderate voices from them sometime from time to time,
[00:34:20.340]but they have adopted an extreme position.
[00:34:23.560]And in Israel, you have political parties to espouse the opposite.
[00:34:28.200]A one party solution,
[00:34:29.880]but with only Israel in control.
[00:34:32.740]We should expect a bargaining reach.
[00:34:34.840]There should be something there,
[00:34:37.040]given the costliness of these wars.
[00:34:39.300]But it has been unreachable for decades.
[00:34:43.060]So how come?
[00:34:45.660]I think for the October 7th, we do
[00:34:47.740]have some uncertainty or error.
[00:34:50.140]I don't think that applies to the general Israel-Palestine
[00:34:54.320]conflict.
[00:34:55.860]I think Hamas overestimated the value of the hostages.
[00:34:59.740]I think they assumed that they could
[00:35:01.860]control Israeli escalation.
[00:35:03.880]And you only need look at 2011, where Israel
[00:35:07.240]traded 1,000 prisoners, including
[00:35:10.120]Sinmar, who is Hamas's current leader, Gaza's current leader.
[00:35:16.020]1,000 prisoners for one Israeli soldier.
[00:35:20.020]So if you grab 251 hostages, it should give you
[00:35:23.880]greater leverage.
[00:35:26.040]It did not work.
[00:35:29.600]Israel also has a massive intelligence failure.
[00:35:34.440]This operation was at least 14 months in the planning and Israel misses it.
[00:35:43.520]That's not supposed to happen between adversaries who know each other well.
[00:35:49.220]That should have been figured out and closed off.
[00:35:52.260]Because if you're offering an adversary a low-cost way to cheat gains, they might grab
[00:35:58.460]it.
[00:35:59.460]It's their job to prevent that, and they messed up.
[00:36:03.480]You do have severe commitment problems.
[00:36:07.460]One solution to this conflict is what they call a two-state solution.
[00:36:11.060]This has been very much in the news.
[00:36:13.680]The idea is that you will give up control of the West Bank or parts of it and Gaza.
[00:36:21.160]Palestinians will have a state, which they were supposed to have based on the UN partition
[00:36:24.760]plan of 1947, and it never came about.
[00:36:29.320]These are tricky.
[00:36:31.080]Because if you're Hamas, Israel has pledged land before and then slowly built settlements
[00:36:39.700]encroaching on territory.
[00:36:42.300]So there's not the trust there.
[00:36:44.360]For Israel, if Hamas says, okay, deal, we'll have peace.
[00:36:51.800]What prevents five years down from the road, the same leader with that new territory in
[00:36:58.380]place and locked up?
[00:36:59.180]Locked down, saying we want more.
[00:37:00.940]You have to believe that the other side will honor it and honor it in perpetuity.
[00:37:07.920]There is a role for the UN here.
[00:37:10.180]There is a role for perhaps the Arab League.
[00:37:12.620]But this is a tricky one.
[00:37:14.700]Also complicating this is invisibility.
[00:37:18.040]It's not just a territorial conflict.
[00:37:20.640]It's also a religious conflict.
[00:37:23.120]And so you have religions that share the same side.
[00:37:29.040]The Temple Mount or Haram al-Sharif, I think, is the epitome of that.
[00:37:32.980]You're going to have to allow people access,
[00:37:36.300]which means you're going to have to have sharing arrangements.
[00:37:39.700]And that means you have a commitment problem.
[00:37:42.700]You have to trust that the other side will abide by the rules.
[00:37:46.300]And that complicates it.
[00:37:47.880]And finally, we have domestic politics.
[00:37:51.580]Two ways.
[00:37:53.160]One, Hamas is out of credit.
[00:37:54.960]They won the elections in 2006.
[00:37:56.900]There's not been an election.
[00:37:58.900]There's not been an election in Gaza since.
[00:38:00.660]Those leaders can estimate that they can withstand more casualties and still stay in power.
[00:38:12.800]And I think that's going on here.
[00:38:16.660]You also see it in Israel.
[00:38:19.700]Very strong.
[00:38:20.740]And I'm going to talk about these two briefly.
[00:38:23.220]Hamas.
[00:38:25.940]Hamas comes on the scene in 1987.
[00:38:28.760]They're actually a really, really interesting group.
[00:38:31.380]And one of my graduate students, Michaela Wendland, has helped me a lot on them.
[00:38:34.620]But they come onto the scene and they provide social services.
[00:38:38.300]So they are providing services to Palestinians and they are winning hearts and minds.
[00:38:44.180]But they are also operating as a terrorist group, carrying out attacks against Israel.
[00:38:50.940]Their stated goal is the elimination of Israel as a state.
[00:38:55.820]Bata has...
[00:38:58.620]Bata has a lower approval rating than even the U.S. Congress.
[00:39:02.020]Among Palestinians.
[00:39:05.180]And that they're perceived as corrupt.
[00:39:09.580]They're perceived as people who are more interested in just staying in power, not in solving the problem.
[00:39:16.040]So Moss comes on the scene and says, we're going to do something about that.
[00:39:19.460]U.S. has identified Moss as a terrorist group for decades.
[00:39:24.520]In the 1990s, I mentioned there was hope.
[00:39:28.480]Moss would carry out attacks against Israel.
[00:39:30.740]Because if they carry out attacks, then support for Oslo in Israel dies.
[00:39:40.340]Because after all, if Fatah, if Arafat, the leader, can't deliver peace,
[00:39:46.940]then why have negotiations if he can't deliver on it?
[00:39:51.840]And Moss was very successful at undercutting that.
[00:39:54.660]2007, he took president there and sold control.
[00:39:58.340]Autocratic, as I mentioned.
[00:40:01.820]Putin is what you would call a socialist dictator.
[00:40:04.640]Hamas is more of an oligarchy.
[00:40:07.600]So you have a group, and out of that group, they select their leaders.
[00:40:11.700]The leader does have some accountability to the group, but not to the Palestinian people.
[00:40:18.420]So the people who are bearing the brunt of the costs don't have a role in selecting the leadership.
[00:40:28.200]Israel is a democracy.
[00:40:30.200]Yay, but they have significant problems.
[00:40:32.860]They have a union-cameral legislature, just like Nebraska.
[00:40:36.880]Knesset has 120 seats.
[00:40:39.720]They are a parliamentary system, a little bit different than ours.
[00:40:43.660]You need a majority to make government worse.
[00:40:46.360]They have a little bit different electoral system than we do.
[00:40:49.340]In the U.S., for our Congress, we have one member per district.
[00:40:58.060]That's nice.
[00:40:58.900]It will tend to encourage large parties, powerful parties.
[00:41:03.020]Small parties don't have a chance.
[00:41:05.440]Israel needs proportional representation.
[00:41:07.980]So the entire country of Israel is one gigantic electoral district.
[00:41:12.780]And if your party gets 5% of the vote, they get 5% of the seats.
[00:41:18.140]5% of the votes in the U.S. gets you nothing.
[00:41:20.900]You're not going anywhere.
[00:41:23.560]But in Israel, you can.
[00:41:25.000]So you can have a small party.
[00:41:27.920]And you get representation.
[00:41:29.000]PR is great.
[00:41:31.460]You get a lot of political parties.
[00:41:33.200]You get parties that are close to my ideological stances.
[00:41:37.060]But it can be bad for stability.
[00:41:39.480]And that's what we see in Israel.
[00:41:42.100]As far as I can tell, you've never had an election where one party has won a majority.
[00:41:48.520]And that means you have to form coalitions.
[00:41:51.860]And that means if I'm going to give you my votes,
[00:41:57.780]you're going to have to do something that I want.
[00:42:00.020]And that can drag foreign policy over to the extremes.
[00:42:04.260]Let's take a look at the distribution in Israel in 2024.
[00:42:10.960]This is from the 2020, so 2022 elections in Israel.
[00:42:15.920]Netanyahu, who's the current prime minister, is over here.
[00:42:18.880]Likud comes out with 32 seats.
[00:42:21.040]Well, you need 61 to govern.
[00:42:22.640]So he puts together a coalition of five other parties.
[00:42:27.640]National Unity joined this after the war started, but then they withdrew.
[00:42:34.160]But they have these five different political parties, all pledging to vote with them so that he can govern.
[00:42:42.400]But three of these parties, Religious Zionists, Aswa Yehudit, and NOM, are the most extreme parties on the Israel landscape.
[00:42:52.840]Down below this, those are the opposition parties.
[00:42:57.500]So you have at least a dozen parties in Israel, which is great, but not always so good for stability.
[00:43:04.340]This is a depiction, a ring, Israeli parties from left to right on the spectrum.
[00:43:14.340]So far left on the top, these are parties that will support a two-state solution.
[00:43:19.500]These are parties that support Palestinian statehood.
[00:43:23.120]And then you go down here, and these parties here actually tack on.
[00:43:27.460]So you have at least a dozen parties in Israel, which is great, but not always so good for stability.
[00:43:27.480]So you have at least a dozen parties in Israel, which is great, but not always so good for stability.
[00:43:57.460]So you have at least a dozen parties in Israel, which is great, but not always so good for stability.
[00:44:27.440]So you have at least a dozen parties in Israel, which is great, but not always so good for stability.
[00:44:57.420]So you have at least a dozen parties in Israel, which is great, but not always so good for stability.
[00:45:27.400]So you have at least a dozen parties in Israel, which is great, but not always so good for stability.
[00:45:57.380]So you have at least a dozen parties in Israel, which is great, but not always so good for stability.
[00:46:27.360]So you have at least a dozen parties in Israel, which is great, but not always so good for stability.
[00:46:57.340]So you have at least a dozen parties in Israel, which is great, but not always so good for stability.
[00:47:27.320]So you have at least a dozen parties in Israel, which is great, but not always so good for stability.
[00:47:57.300]So you have at least a dozen parties in Israel, which is great, but not always so good for stability.
[00:48:27.280]So you have at least a dozen parties in Israel, which is great, but not always so good for stability.
[00:48:57.260]So you have at least a dozen parties in Israel, which is great, but not always so good for stability.
[00:49:27.240]So you have at least a dozen parties in Israel, which is great, but not always so good for stability.
[00:49:57.220]So you have at least a dozen parties in Israel, which is great, but not always so good for stability.
[00:50:27.200]So you have at least a dozen parties in Israel, which is great, but not always so good for stability.
[00:50:57.180]So you have at least a dozen parties in Israel, which is great, but not always so good for stability.
[00:51:27.160]So you have at least a dozen parties in Israel, which is great, but not always so good for stability.
[00:51:57.140]So you have at least a dozen parties in Israel, which is great, but not always so good for stability.
[00:52:27.120]So you have at least a dozen parties in Israel, which is great, but not always so good for stability.
[00:52:57.100]So you have at least a dozen parties in Israel, which is great, but not always so good for stability.
[00:53:27.080]So you have at least a dozen parties in Israel, which is great, but not always so good for stability.
[00:53:57.060]So you have at least a dozen parties in Israel, which is great, but not always so good for stability.
[00:54:27.040]So you have at least a dozen parties in Israel, which is great, but not always so good for stability.
[00:54:57.020]So you have at least a dozen parties in Israel, which is great, but not always so good for stability.
[00:55:27.000]So you have at least a dozen parties in Israel, which is great, but not always so good for stability.
[00:55:56.980]So you have at least a dozen parties in Israel, which is great, but not always so good for stability.
[00:56:26.960]So you have at least a dozen parties in Israel, which is great, but not always so good for stability.
[00:56:56.940]So you have at least a dozen parties in Israel, which is great, but not always so good for stability.
[00:57:26.920]So you have at least a dozen parties in Israel, which is great, but not always so good for stability.
[00:57:56.900]So you have at least a dozen parties in Israel, which is great, but not always so good for stability.
[00:58:26.880]So you have at least a dozen parties in Israel, which is great, but not always so good for stability.
[00:58:56.860]So you have at least a dozen parties in Israel, which is great, but not always so good for stability.
[00:59:26.840]So you have at least a dozen parties in Israel, which is great, but not always so good for stability.
[00:59:56.820]So you have at least a dozen parties in Israel, which is great, but not always so good for stability.
[01:00:26.800]So you have at least a dozen parties in Israel, which is great, but not always so good for stability.
[01:00:56.780]So you have at least a dozen parties in Israel, which is great, but not always so good for stability.

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CAS Inquire: "Bargaining for War: Explaining the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Gaza Wars"

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