The Two-War Standard: Crisis Bargaining and Opportunistic Third Parties

• In Event: Advances in Understanding Bargaining and Conflict

Abstract

Since early in the Cold War, the central basis for US military force sizing has been the capacity to fight two near-simultaneous major theater wars, in order to deter and if necessary confront opportunistic behavior by a third party while the US is already at war. Other great powers have strived for similar capabilities. I provide rationalist foundations for such "two-war standards" by using a 3-actor crisis-bargaining model to identify the bargaining vulnerabilities that are incurred by a country with multiple rivals that does not have two-war capabilities. Some novel results emerge under incomplete information, including: (1) uncertainty across disputes can be just as war-causing as uncertainty within disputes, (2) a third-party opportunist has incentives to create informational asymmetries that will trigger war between his rival and his rival's rival, and (3) in doing so, the opportunist may choose to reveal his private information to his rival (but not to his rival's rival), contrary to the usual incentive to misrepresent one's private information for bargaining leverage.

Author

• Ahmer Tarar, Texas A&M University