Costly Cheap Talk? How Severity of UNSC Condemnation Impacts Crisis Behavior

• In Event: The United Nations and Global Norms

Abstract

Condemnations by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) have largely been discounted by the extant literature as cheap talk that is ineffective in preventing aggressive leaders from escalating conflicts to war. Empirical patterns and interviews with political elites, however, suggest that some condemnations are not merely cheap talk, and in fact, make it costly for leaders to escalate. I argue that not all condemnations issued by the UNSC are identical; condemnations vary in terms of severity, defined as the strength of harshness expressed through the text of resolutions. Specifically, some condemnations are drafted with severe rhetoric while others are diluted with moderate words. This variation in severity reveals information about the collective intent of the UNSC members to punish the wrongdoing of the condemned leader. That is, when members’ preferences about condemning the hostile leader diverge, a severe condemnation is less likely to be issued. When these preferences align, however, members are more likely to adopt a severe condemnation, suggesting that the degree of severity is likely to signal the strength of preference alignment among the UNSC members. As a result, a severe condemnation is likely to deter the leader from escalating as it builds an anticipation of future punishment by the UNSC. I test the theoretically driven hypothesis that severe condemnations reduce the likelihood of crisis escalation, using original data on condemnation severity for all international crises from 1946 through 2015. I find that the condemnation’s deterrent effect on escalation increases with increasing levels of severity. These findings are robust to post-matching, helping address concerns of endogeneity. I explore the causal mechanisms of my theory with interviews of political elites, including the South Korean ambassador to the UN. This article contributes to the long-standing debate on whether international organizations can effectively help manage international conflicts by identifying variation in the severity of UNSC condemnations as a type of information that signals preference alignment of the UNSC.

Author

• Hyunki Kim, University of Maryland