The Balance of Restraint: An Analysis of Warfighting Norms and Patterns in Global Conflict

Abstract

What are the origins of contemporary “forever wars”? Using novel data on military capabilities and international conflict, I provide evidence that wars between militarily unequal adversaries dramatically increased in duration after 1918, whereas wars between similarly capable adversaries did not. I argue that this transformation in global conflict patterns relates to the evolving nature of the balance of battlefield restraint. Changes in norms around warfighting, arising as an unintended consequence of great power behavior at the turn of the twentieth century, reshaped this balance by weakening nineteenth-century norms against guerrilla warfare. Whereas the balance of battlefield restraint once decisively favored stronger actors, it evolved to empower weaker ones. The emergent balance of restraint enabled weaker actors to survive longer when facing more powerful adversaries, thus drawing out their wars. My dissertation presents my argument and evidence in two stages. First, I establish the empirical puzzle and develop my theoretical foundations. In Chapter 1, I introduce my dataset, Global Wars, 1800-2022, and explore patterns in conflict outcomes. After identifying the shift in global conflict patterns, I turn to possible explanations for the war duration puzzle in Chapter 2 and put forth my own argument grounded in a social theory of military strategy in Chapter 3. Second, I provide historical and statistical evidence for my argument. Chapter 4 mobilizes case evidence, ranging from the Iberian Peninsula to Southeast Asia, to demonstrate the social process of warfighting norms. Chapter 5 uses a variety of statistical techniques, including matching, survival analysis, and machine learning, to examine the connection between wartime restraint and asymmetric war duration. Finally, in Chapter 6, I apply my theory of social military strategy to the case of indiscriminate violence, arguing that strong powers responded to the twentieth-century norm against brutality through tactical substitution. Together, these chapters produce several major findings in the study of war: first, that asymmetric wars have experienced substantially longer wars since 1918, whereas symmetric wars have not; second, that battlefield restraint has evolved over time; third, that mutually restrained warfare decreases conflict duration, while mutually unrestrained warfare increases it; and fourth, that norms against brutality have encouraged powerful states, especially liberal ones, to diversify their approaches to indiscriminate violence.