When Prospective Leader Turnover Promotes Peace

Scholars typically associate leader turnover with a high risk of military conflict. This paper shows that under some conditions, a higher likelihood of leader turnover in the future fosters peace today. When states take costly peaceful measures (e.g., arming to deter adversaries), the range of settlements preferable to war shrinks and the risk of conflict rises. If peace costs are onerous, potential leader turnover in adversaries promotes peace by introducing uncertainty about the future need for and costs of deterrent measures. When locked in a costly peace with minimal chance of leader turnover in the adversary, states attack. When locked in that same costly peace but with high prospects for leader turnover, states endure an unfavorable peace today given the potential for a favorable one tomorrow. Asymmetric consequences of future shifts in peace costs ensure the relationship holds even if costs do not change in expectation and could rise. Quantitative analyses of the prospects for future leader turnover, military spending, and war onset among rivals accord with the hypothesized relationships. In theory and practice, expectations of leadership volatility make it prudent to exercise peaceful forbearance. ∗Thanks to Andrew Coe, Connor Huff, Brenton Kenkel, Jin Yeub Kim, Aseem Mahajan, Andrea Ruggeri, Anne Sartori, Duncan Snidal, Alex Weisiger, and participants at Harvard, Oxford, MPSA, and ISA for helpful discussions and feedback. †University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Email: robert.schub@unl.edu Upon entering office, President Eisenhower expressed dismay with the exorbitant costs of containing the Soviet threat. Nearly 13% of the nation’s GDP went to defense spending in 1953.1 The costs of arming were so high that he contemplated whether war might be the preferable choice, writing to his Secretary of State: if the contest to maintain this relative position should have to continue indefinitely, the cost would either drive us to war—or into some form of dictatorial government. In such circumstances, we would be forced to consider whether or not our duty to future generations did not require us to initiate war at the most propitious moment.2 Yet peace prevailed between the US and USSR during this period. Of particular importance is that the costs to maintaining the US position did not “have to continue indefinitely. ” Rather, Eisenhower recognized the possibility of cheaper containment, either through changes in the Soviet regime or through realigned strategy and new military technologies. He opted to endure a costly peace recognizing the possibility for a more favorable, cheaper one in the future. Eisenhower’s forbearance raises a broader question: how does uncertainty over the future costs of peace affect the likelihood of war? This paper’s central argument is that greater uncertainty over future peace costs can promote peace when states would otherwise go to war. It builds on the recognition that while war entails costs, so too does peace.3 Sources of peace costs include arming to maintain the power balance and contain adversaries. The requisite guns come at the expense of butter (Powell, 1993, 1999; Garfinkel and Skaperdas, 2000). Servicing debt used to finance arms acquisitions (Slantchev, 2012), implementing arms inspections, and imposing sanctions (Coe, 2018) all require costly effort and introduce economic inefficiencies. These potentially onerous burdens shrink, and may even eliminate, the range of bargains mutually preferable to war. Crucially, none of these burdens are fixed in perpetuity. Instead, they vary for a host of reasons, the most important of which is leader turnover. New leaders with potentially different priorities, risk tolerances, aims, or dispositions may require dramatically different investments to contain them. Prospects for leader turnover therefore produce uncertainty over future peace costs. Uncertainty, in turn, reintroduces the possibility of peace today when war is otherwise preferred. This holds even if peace costs do not change in expectation—that is, the new leader may be more or less hostile. An asymmetry drives the positive relationship between uncertainty and peace. If a less hostile successor will allow peace costs to decline, the containing state gets a boon from the more favorable peace of the future. If a more hostile successor will cause peace costs to rise, the containing state simply fights the war it initially put off in a similar position to its original one. Thus the 1In 1954, after the truce in Korea, defense spending remained over 11% of GDP. 2Quoted in Gaddis (1982, p. 149). 3Peace, or the absence of military conflict, is not itself costly. Rather, a variety of activities associated with peace, particularly its maintenance via arming, entail costs. I refer to these as peace costs.