Who Dares Wins: Confidence and Success in International Conflict Thèse présentée à la Faculté des sciences économiques et sociales de l’Université de Genève Par Dominic D. P. Johnson pour l’obtention du grade de Docteur ès sciences économiques et sociales mention: science politique Membres du jury de thèse: M. Pierre ALLAN, professeur, Université de Genève, directeur de these M. Philippe BRAILLARD, professeur, Université de Genève, president du jury M. Alexis KELLER, professeur, Université de Genève M. Hanspeter KRIESI, professeur, Université de Zürich Thèse no. 565 Genève, 2004 La Faculté des sciences économiques et sociales, sur préavis du jury, a autorisé l’impression de la présente thèse, sans entendre, par là, émettre aucune opinion sur les propositions qui s’y trouvent énoncées et qui n’engagent que la responsabilité de leur auteur. Genève, le 8 juillet 2004 Le doyen Pierre ALLAN Impression d’après le manuscrit de l’auteur ii ABSTRACT War is a puzzle because, if states were rational, they should agree on their differences in power and reach a solution that avoids the costs of fighting. However, this thesis argues that states are only as rational as the men who lead them, who are well established to suffer from psychological “positive illusions” about their abilities, their control over events, and the future. I examine the effects of positive illusions on four turning points in twentieth-century history: two that erupted into war (World War I and Vietnam); and two that did not (the Munich crisis and the Cuban Missile crisis). In the two crises, I show that positive illusions were held in check, and thus avoided war. In the two wars, by contrast, I show that positive illusions substantially influenced politics, causing leaders to overestimate themselves, underestimate their adversaries, and resort to violence to settle a conflict against unreasonable odds. iii CONTENTS INTRODUCTION I Adaptive Over-confidence 1 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK II Positive Illusions and the War Puzzle 9 III Looking for Illusions 47 CASE STUDIES IV World War I – ‘A Brisk and Merry War’ 65 V The Munich Crisis – Blind Ambition 88 VI The Cuban Missile Crisis – Resolve on the Brink 108 VII The Vietnam War – Seeing Red 124 CONCLUDING CHAPTERS VIII Vanity Dies Hard – Conclusions and Implications 165 IX Iraq 2003 – A First Cut 192 Appendices 218 Bibliography 248 iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am indebted to numerous people who have been instrumental in the development of this thesis. I am particularly grateful to the Kennedy Memorial Trust, who funded my initial period of research at Harvard University, and to Richard Wrangham, who inspired me to start this project. I also thank the Swiss Government, who generously supported my work in Geneva. Special thanks are due for the help and kindness of Pierre Allan, whose ideas and inter-disciplinary vision were crucial to this project’s fruition. He welcomed, encouraged and dramatically improved my work in Switzerland. I also received excellent advice there from Hanspeter Kriesi, Alexis Keller, Elise Lebreque, Nicholas Travaglione, Jean-Marie Kagabo and Chris Boyd. Many thanks are due for the insights and commitment of time from my dissertation committee: Pierre Allan, Hanspeter Kriesi, Alexis Keller, and the president of the jury, Philippe Braillard. I am very grateful to the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies for a second year at Harvard University, and especially the help and advice of Stephen Peter Rosen. While there I benefited immensely from the help and advice of Samuel Huntingdon, Monica Duffy Toft, Ann Townes, Deborah Lee, Cdr. Kenneth Barrett, Alexander Downes, Kelly Greenhill, Lt. Col. Robert Hopkins, Kimberly Kagan, Greg Koblenz, Erez Manela, Elizabeth Stanley-Mitchell, Michael Reynolds, Paul Schulte and especially Colin Dueck. I am also grateful to Lino and Anna Pertile for welcoming me into Eliot House. Many thanks are due to the Centre for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, where Dean Wilkening, Michael May, Chris Chyba, Lynn Eden, Scott Sagan, Barbara Platt and many others were so welcoming, encouraging, and patient with me while I finished the thesis. Many other people in these and other places have significantly contributed to my evolving thoughts and ideas, most among them Dominic Tierney, who has read more of my writing that I would wish to inflict on anyone. I am also extremely grateful to the many others who have given insightful criticism on the thesis or its ideas, including Mike Wilson, Brian Hare, Jack Hirschleifer, Richard Betts, John Garofano, Scott Gartner, Roger Johnson, Jenny Johnson, Gabriella de la Rosa, Gordon Martel, Rose McDermott, Daniel Nettle, Azeem Sutterwalla, Shelley Taylor, Stephen Walker, Luis Zaballa and many of the people already mentioned above. Finally, I thank the encouragement and inspiration of a remarkable collection of people whose company was invaluable while writing this thesis: Dennis and Kiyomi Briscoe, Nick Brown, Gavin King, Duncan and Elizabeth McCombie, Mark Molesky, Juliette Talbot, Dominic Tierney and, especially, Gabriella de la Rosa. v In what branch of human activity should boldness have a right of citizenship if not in war? Carl von Clausewitz vi Chapter I Adaptive Over-Confidence O God of battles! Steel my soldier’s hearts; Possess them not with fear: take from them now The sense of reckoning, if th’opposed numbers Pluck their hearts from them! Henry V 1 This thesis proposes a new theory for why we so easily end up at war. The last century was aptly named our bloodiest century. This one has not started much better. In contrast to traditional approaches that focus on how leaders rationally calculate the odds and spoils of war, I argue that systematic over-confidence is a widespread human trait that was adaptive in our evolutionary past and continues to propel us into the wars of today. In November 2003, the New York Times posed the 25 ‘most provocative questions facing science.’ Number 2 on the list was ‘Is war our biological destiny?’ Amidst the mayhem in post- war Iraq, this question came ahead of such enigmas as ‘How does the brain work?’ at number 4, and ‘How did life begin’ at number 19.2 In my opinion, war is in no way our ‘biological destiny’ – the notion that we are somehow condemned to it is ludicrous. However, that this question is posed attests to our continuing curiosity and ignorance about war. While hardly our inevitable destiny, conflict is very much our evolutionary past as well as our present and we ignore the growing biological insights at our own peril. Before starting, I want to lay out exactly what I will and will not do. First, I do not suggest that over-confidence is the single cause of war. There are numerous reasons and incentives for war, which undoubtedly contribute to some or all of them. Second, I do not suggest 1 William Shakespeare, Henry V, Act IV, scene I. 2 New York Times, 10 November 2003, http://www.nytimes.com/indexes/2003/11/10/science/index.html. 1 Adaptive Over-confidence that over-confidence is the ultimate cause of war. Rather, other underlying causes such as concerns for security and power lay the kindling for war, while over-confidence is a proximate cause that helps to spark them. Third, I do not suggest that over-confidence among individual people miraculously explains the complex phenomenon of war among nations. Rather, the ripple effects of over-confidence through a nation’s leaders, decision-making groups, organisations, armed services and wider society increase the probability of escalation and war. Fourth, I do not suggest that over-confidence is a fixed trait that inflates the chance of war equally at all times (this would fail to explain variation in war and peace). On the contrary, I show that both the sources and consequences of over-confidence are sensitive to context: At times circumstances conspire to let them run rampant and encourage war, while at other times they are suppressed and foster peace. The central puzzle is what Lawrence LeShan called ‘the enthusiasm with which we greet the onset of war.’3 Not all of us are enthusiastic about war of course, but some always have been throughout history, and it only takes a few key enthusiasts to start one. Human nature is an ingredient of war that we can no longer afford to ignore: ‘It is easy enough when examining the history of each war to find the exact series of circumstances that led to it: the angers, the fears, the complaints, the clashing interests, the broken treaties. However, as Thucydides warned us long ago, we must look beyond the specific events if we are to understand the real causes of even one war … We must not ask, “What events led to the outbreak of this war or that one?”, but rather, “What is there in man that makes him so ready to go to war, in almost all cultures or economic conditions?” The question we are dealing with here concerns the readiness, the receptivity, the seed-bed on which specific events fall and which, when nourished by it, flower into armed intergroup conflict.’4 Although we may like to think that the world is gradually becoming more peaceful, the most recent analysis of the ‘Correlates of War’ database at the University of Michigan reveals that, since detailed records begin in 1816, there has been a ‘disquieting constancy in warfare.’5 There have been over 2 million battle deaths in nearly every decade since World War II, and the 1990s was ‘one of the worst decades in modern history’ with 31 new outbreaks of war – and the data weren’t all in by the time of the study. As the authors noted, war ‘may not be going away as fast as we would wish or might have thought.’6 We should, therefore, be exploring any promising avenues that might help to break the trend.