How Wars End Book

This book attempts to build on Fearon's famous article on warfare and commitment problems using historical case studies to focus on war-termination behavior. Reiter's fundamental argument is that war-termination behavior is better explained by the commitment problem than by the information problem. There are many situations in which battle outcomes (and their theoretical effect on the information possessed by both adversaries about capabilities and stakes) would seem to predict a rapid conclusion to conflict where empirical evidence reveals conflict continuance or even escalation. Reiter notes that awareness of commitment problems attending negotiated settlement between a set of adversaries shapes the conflict behavior prior to such a settlement. While the book adds some complexity and interesting insights, it doesn't substantively expand beyond Fearon's basic thesis. Furthermore his implicit conclusion that absolute war is often the only way of dealing with commitment problems of negotiated settlements and his categorization of "regime change" as being a form of "absolute warfare" is misleading and wrong headed. The shadow of the Bush Iraq War experience lies heavily upon this book and distorts the argument's clarity and potential influence.