Using Positive Sanctions to End International
Conflicts: Iran and the Arab Gulf Countries
FRED H. LAWSON
Dept. of Government, Smith
College, Northampton, MA
Efforts by the Gulf Co-operation Council to persuade Iran to end its war with Iraq in exchange for access
to a large amount of capital during the late spring of 1982 were not only ignored by the Iranian government
but also met with greatly increased demands for reparations on the part of Iranian leaders. This event
raises at least two important questions regarding the use of positive sanctions as a way of ending international conflicts: under what conditions an offer of positive sanctions will be made and under what
conditions such an offer will be accepted or refused.
These questions can be addressed from at least two very different perspectives. In domestic political
terms, small principalities such as those on the Arab side of the Arab/Persian Gulf have a variety of
incentives to use rewards in their dealings with more powerful neighbors, particularly if they have a
reservoir of fungible resources from which to draw. In structural terms, when the distribution of capabilities
in a region such as the Gulf is changing from a bipolar to a multipolar one, countries whose situation is
improving will have several incentives to try to bring regional conflicts to an end using positive sanctions.
Thus there is little basis for choosing between these two perspectives as a better explanation for why rewards
were offered to Iran to end its war with Iraq during June 1982.
But structural features of the Gulf region provide a considerably better explanation for why this offer
was rejected than domestic political factors do. Domestic-level arguments explaining the rejection of
rewards contradict the logic according to which their having been offered in the first place is explained.
Structural aspects of the situation in the Gulf in early 1982 not only predict that smaller countries should
have tried to use rewards to settle conflict in the area but also suggest why larger combatants will not accept
such an offer. This finding indirectly supports Kenneth Waltz’s argument that conflicts in a multipolar
world will be both more likely to occur and more difficult to solve.
1. Introduction
Wars and their termination are most often
analyzed in terms of costs and punishments
to the parties involved. What literature there
is on the subject of ending wars and international crises is largely concerned with the
level of damage or hurt that one party must
receive before it will capitulate to the other.
This way of conceptualizing the resolution of
conflict among countries is shared by a wide
range of studies that make use of otherwise
quite divergent approaches and methodologies.’ As a result, students of war have been
led to devote an inordinate amount of attention to the effects that penalties can have on
the termination of wars, while virtually
ignoring the effects that rewards might have
on violent international conflicts. This bias
in the scholarly literature has no doubt been
encouraged by certain aspects of diplomatic
practice. The unfavorable connotations that
have surrounded the notion of appeasement
since the negotiations at Munich in 1928, along
with the prediliction that statespeople have to
think in terms of the ’security dilemma’ when
faced with a conflictful situation, seem to
have had a profound influence upon students
of international affairs and their writing
about war.
But as David Baldwin suggested more than
ten years ago, it may be just as important
to investigate the relationship between rewards
and conflict resolution as it is to study the
relationship between punishments and war.
For one thing, a prima facie case can be made
that actors behave differently in situations
involving positive sanctions from the way they
do when faced with negative sanctions. This
makes it unlikely that rewards and punish-
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312
merely two sides of the same coin.
In Baldwin’s words, ’When B reacts one way
to a promise of $100 if he will do X, and
another way to a threat to deprive him of
$100 if he fails to do X, the concept of opportunity costs makes it difficult to explain
ments are
why.’2 Furthermore, explaining
sanctions in international relations that avoids
the psychologistic tendencies of Baldwin’s own
conceptualization.5 This will leave the perceptual and attitudinal aspects of positive
sanctions to be explored by those more com6
petent in the psychological literature.6
international
outcomes in terms of positive and negative
sanctions does not necessarily involve equiv-
logical steps. Baldwin observes that it is
’fallacy’ to assume ’that withholding a
reward is always a punishment and withholding a punishment is always a reward.’3
But most importantly, it is only by analyzing
positive sanctions as well as negative sanctions
that one can deal adequately with ’the full
range of policy options open to A’ in her
relationship with B.4 Recent developments in
the war between Iraq and Iran highlight the
deficiencies that exist in our understanding
both of positive sanctions as a diplomatic
tool and of how they affect the probability
alent
a
that international conflict will be terminated
in any given case.
This essay will discuss an attempt that was
made in late May-early June 1982 by the
members of the Gulf Co-operation Council
(GCC) to end the on-going war between Iran
and Iraq by offering the former a sizeable
monetary payment as reparations. It will first
of all summarize the most important details
of the attempt as these are currently available.
Then it will offer two distinct explanations
for why these countries made such an unusual
offer at this time. One of these explanations
is in terms of domestic politics within the GCC
and the other is in terms of the structure of
relations among Gulf countries. These two
explanations will then be extended to see which
of them does a better job of explaining why
this offer was not accepted by the Iranian
regime, but was instead met with considerably
greater demands by that government. Finally,
it will suggest some ways in which this kind
of analysis can help make sense of a group of
more or less contradictory studies within the
more quantitative literature on war and its
termination. The thrust of the analysis will be
toward proposing a way to deal with positive
2. An account
of the GCC’s proposal
Transfers of large sums of money have played
a significant role in the Gulf war since
fighting broke out between Iran and Iraq in
mid-September of 1980. In the summer of 1982
it was estimated that Saudi Arabia, Kuwait
and the United Arab Amirates (UAA) had
advanced Iraq approximately $25 billion to
finance its war with Iran up to that time. But
talk of reparations for damages done to either
combatant first surfaced during the early
months of 1982. On 3 February, Iran’s foreign
minister told the United Nations that a return
to peace in the Gulf was contingent upon both
the withdrawal of Iraqi troops from Iranian
territory and the compensating of Iran for the
lives and property it had lost during the war.8
This proposal elicited no direct response from
Arab countries in the region, although the
foreign ministers of the six GCC countries
(Saudi Arabia, Kuwayt, ’Uman, Qatar,
Bahrayn and the UAA) held an emergency
meeting in Manama on the 6th at which they
agreed to co-operate with one another to resist
any Iranian activities
on
the southern shore
of the Gulf.9
During the last week in March, the military
situation in the area suddenly became decidedly disadvantageous for Iraq. That country’s
armed forces had occupied large areas of
Iranian territory during the first months of the
war and continued to hold these lands during
the following year and a half. But on 22 March
Iranian forces began an offensive that forced
Iraqi units around Dizful into full retreat.10
Five days later the Iraqi president, Saddam
Husayn, called for an immediate and reciprocal
cease-fire along the battle-front, but this
call was ignored by the advancing Iranians. ii
These forces continued pushing Iraq’s army
back toward its own territory during the next
two months, to the increasing consternation
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313
of the governments of neighboring Arab
countries. On 3 May Shaykh Zayyid of the
UAA proposed an urgent initiative to end the
war on the other side of the Gulf. This
proposal was approved immediately by the
UAA’s Supreme Council but its details were
not made public.12 At about the same time,
the Secretary General of the GCC, ’Abdullah
Ya’qub Bishara of Kuwayt, called on all Arab
states to consider providing an increased level
of financial support for Iraq as they prepared
themselves for the meeting of GCC foreign
ministers that was scheduled to be held in
Kuwayt in mid-May.’3 This meeting was
postponed at the last minute in order for its
participants to have time for ’further consultations’ regarding developments in the region.14
It was reconvened on 22 May to discuss
various aspects of the war. But it met just
long enough for the GCC’s Assistant Secretary
General, Ibrahim as-Subhi, to announce that
’important decisions’ concerning the conflict
would be reached at the foreign ministers’
meeting scheduled for 30 May in Riyadh.15S
A further meeting of GCC representatives
was also called for 8 June in Bahrayn at
which a draft agreement for a unified security
treaty among member countries was to be
discussed.’6
While these arrangements
were
being
made
by the GCC countries, Pakistan and Iran
stepped up their own activities in the region.
On 25 May a Pakistani naval flotilla consisting
of two destroyers, four submarines and other
vessels entered the Gulf. This force paid
official visits to Doha, Dubay, Abu Dhabi,
Dammam and Masqat during the last week of
the month.&dquo; On 26 May Iran’s ambassador to
the United Nations demanded $50 billion in
reparations from Iraq. That same day, while
on his way home from an OPEC meeting,
Iran’s petroleum minister told the British
Broadcasting Corporation that his country
would never negotiate with the Husayn regime,
since it was that regime which had ’inflicted
hundreds of millions of dollars’ damage upon
us’. In Iran, Prime Minister Rafsanjani
demanded the ouster of President Husayn.
These demands were repeated on 1 June, a day
after
two
It
Iraqi aircraft carried
largest oil refineries.18
was
out raids
on
Iran’s
under these circumstances that the
foreign ministers of the GCC countries
gathered in Riyadh for their meeting on
30-31 May. Just before this meeting was
convened, the Gulf Daily News reported that
the organization was prepared to set up a joint
investment fund for the region. This fund
was to have $6 billion in capital available for
immediate use. No details concerning its
administration were made public on that date
(30 May).19 But these monies no doubt formed
the basis for the GCC’s proposal to end the
Iran-Iraq war.
Exactly what the GCC’s proposal
to the
Iranian government was is far from clear.
At the end of their meeting, the ministers
released a communique that called for a
negotiated end to the war and further efforts
by the Islamic Conference Organization and
the United Nations to mediate the disputes
involved. Most observers found this statement
surprisingly conciliatory to Iran.2° On 2 and
3 June various news agencies reported that
the GCC had broadcast an offer to Iran of
between $10-25 billion in reparations if it would
institute a cease-fire on its fronts with Iraq.21
Officials at Bahrayn’s foreign ministry denied
on 2 June that any such offer had been made;
at the same time a Kuwayti spokesperson
denied that his government had proposed a
plan whereby both Iraq and Iran would join
the GCC in order to resolve the war.22
Clearly some serious proposal had been made
to Iran related to reparations, but it was only
on 2 June that an official version of the GCC’s
peace plan was released. On that date Kuwayt
Radio announced that the GCC had asked
that a cease-fire be instituted between Iraq
and Iran, that both countries’ forces withdraw
to their borders as of 1975 and that mediation
by outside parties be accepted as a way of
resolving outstanding issues. In conjunction
with these requests, the GCC proposed the
establishment of an international reconstruction and development fund for the two
countries, in which the members of the GCC
would be ’major participants’ in association
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314
with other parties. The report suggested that
OECD countries might want to consider participating in the scheme.23
Iran’s leaders did not reject this proposal
out of hand. Rather, on 4 June an assistant
to the Iranian foreign ministry, Hoseyn
Sheykh ol-Islam, told his hosts in Dubay that
his country had suffered an estimated $150
billion in damages as a result of the war. He
also said that any indemnity to his country
would have to come directly from Iraq and
not be given by outsiders as ’alms’ to the
Islamic Republic.24 That same day, at a prayer
rally in Tehran, President Ali Khamenei
repeated the figure of $1~0 billion as an
accurate assessment of the level of reparations
necessary to satisfy his country.25
Given the imprecision with which the timing
of these events can be known at this point,
some may wish to question the extent to which
the GCC’s proposal represents an instance of
using positive sanctions to resolve an international conflict. After all, it is undoubtedly
the case that ’today’s reward may lay the
groundwork for tomorrow’s threat, and
tomorrow’s threat may lay the groundwork
for a promise on the day after tomorrow.’26
In particular, it would be most useful to
know just when this proposal was received
in Tehran, so that we could try to work out
a relationship between the GCC’s offer and
the Iraqi air strike of 31 May that was directed
against Iran’s major oil installations. Still,
all in all, this episode appears to be a clear
example of the use of a positive sanction
an offer of access to a considerable fund of
money - by a third party to influence the
continuation and outcome of a serious international conflict. So the most important issues
remain worth answering: why was this offer
made? and why did it fail?
-
Explanations for using positive sanctions
Explaining why economic sanctions are used
to influence the outcomes of particular inter3.
national conflicts is no easy matter. In the
first place, one must decide what sort of
argument one will construct in order to
account for this phenomenon. Peter Wallen-
lists four general forms such arguments
might take: sender-oriented theories, receiveroriented theories, sender-receiver-relationoriented theories and environment-oriented
theories.27 On the basis of his own study of
eighteen instances of negative sanctions that
have occurred during the twentieth century,
Wallensteen finds a good deal of support for
one particular sender-oriented theory: Fredrik
Hoffmann’s hypothesis that countries experiencing serious ’internal cleavages’ will be
steen
ones to adopt economic
instruments of foreign policy.28
He also presents evidence indicating that the
general ineffectiveness of negative sanctions
during this period can be explained in terms
of 1) how fundamental the issue in conflict
was to the country against whom the negative
sanctions were directed, and 2) the ability of
the receiving regime to maintain its domestic
political position in the face of such deprivation.29 These findings suggest that a plausible
domestic political or second-level explanation
for the GCC’s offer of rewards to Iran can be
formulated. But because Wallensteen deals
exclusively with negative economic sanctions,
it is an open question whether or not his
analysis will be able to explain why the Arab
Gulf states used positive sanctions in their
attempts to bring an end to the fighting
between Iran and Iraq. Therefore it is important to reformulate the Hoffmann-Wallensteen conception of internal cleavages in a
way that makes it not only more compatible
with Baldwin’s discussion of positive sanctions but also more in line with a class
the most
likely
measures as
analytical approach
to
political analysis.
As for Wallensteen’s latter two kinds of
theories, these ways of looking at world
politics differ markedly from arguments that
explain international outcomes in terms of
the internal characteristics of the countries
concerned. Concepts such as ’the rank-relation
between the main contestants’ and presence
of high levels of interaction in the form of
diplomatic relations and trade among them
do not involve features peculiar to any one
actor in the situation under study. Rather,
these notions involve the kind of interaction
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315
on among the parties concerned
whole. Thus Wallensteen’s senderreceiver-relation-oriented theories and environment-oriented theories are ones that deal
with what J. David Singer calls the systemic
level of analysis, whose logic demands that
the domestic attributes of countries be held
constant for analytical purposes.3° Consequently, explaining the GCC’s offer of reparations to Iran in systemic or structural terms
becomes a very different operation from explaining this offer in domestic political terms.
Wallensteen emphasizes rank orderings and
economic interdependence in his third-level
analyses of negative sanctions.31 As a way of
complementing his study, I will propose a
structural explanation for the offer of reparations to Iran in June 1982 that emphasizes
changes in the distribution of power among
the countries of the Gulf region. This will
provide a second, alternative analytical view
of this particular attempt at conflict resolution.
characteristics that distinguish
from negative ones can be
sanctions
positive
directly related to domestic politics within
the member-countries of the GCC. Baldwin
calls the first three of these characteristics
’A’s burden of response’, ’after-effects and
side-effects’ and ’systemic stability’; I would
call the fourth ’institutional imperatives’.
The member-countries of the GCC share
a
variety of particular institutional and
societal features that predispose them to take
advantage of these distinctive features of
positive sanctions. These countries are thus
more likely to make use of positive sanctions
as a way of dealing with their environment
than countries having other domestic features
would be. As a result, one can formulate a
quite acceptable explanation for the GCC’s
offering substantial reparations to Iran in June
of 1982 in terms of the character of politics
within the GCC countries themselves.
positive sanctions is that one only has to
award them if the party to whom they are
offered complies with one’s demands. In other
words, A only has to carry out her promise
if B complies or acquiesces. If B rejects A’s
demands, then A is not required to make any
further response.32 This means that positive
sanctions are especially well-suited to those
countries that have poorly developed foreign
policy-making institutions or that have difficulty carrying out sustained foreign policy
programs. This is particularly true whenever
such countries find themselves in situations
in which the probability that the target country
(B) will accept the offer is relatively low or
in which the benefits (to A) associated with
achieving their objective are very great.
Each member-country of the GCC, as well
as the overall structure of the GCC itself, is
an exemplar of such a state. These countries
have relatively small administrative apparatuses which are dominated by a small and
elite group of decision-makers. Within these
relatively limited state apparatuses, more
resources are devoted to economic planning
and domestic social regulation than to foreign
affairs. And within the latter set of departments military offices make up a larger
component of the bureaucracy than diplomatic
offices do. There is thus little that can be
carried out in the way of long-range contingency planning and international developments can for the most part be monitored
only sporadically.33 This is perhaps less true
for Saudi Arabia and Kuwayt than for other
members of the GCC. So it is especially
significant that the government of the UAA
has received credit within the GCC for
initiating the offer to Iran.34 States such as
these have a strong incentive to find ways
to carry out their interests that do not require
the adoption of complex or high-risk policies.
Offering rewards for acquiescing in one’s
demands provides a way of using a minimal
degree of state organizational resources most
efficiently in dealing with other countries.
4.1 ‘A’s burden of response’
One of the most basic characteristics of
4.2 ’After-effects and side-effects’
Baldwin suggests that positive sanctions
that is
as
going
a
4. Domestic
sanctions
Several
politics and the
use
of positive
specific
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are
316
to have spill-over effects onto other
issues besides the one directly involved in
the negotiation. In his view, ’while positive
sanctions tend to enhance B’s willingness to
cooperate with A on other issues, negative
sanctions tend to impede such cooperation.’35
Assuming that this is a necessary characteristic
of rewards, positive sanctions would be wellsuited to countries facing significant threats
of subversion or social disorder as a result of
continued warfare outside their own borders.
If there is a good chance that a nearby conflict
will shortly unsettle A’s domestic affairs but
B can influence dissidents in A so as to prevent
them from overturning the status quo, then A
has a considerable incentive to try to appease
or co-opt B in advance of such disorder. A
attempts this in the hope that the benefits
B will receive from A as it is presently constituted will outweigh the risks to B that are
involved in encouraging revolt within A.36
This sort of logic is directly relevant to several
smaller members of the GCC in their relations
with Iran.
Bahrayn and the UAA have faced repeated
attempts by forces sympathetic to the Islamic
Republic to carry out revolutionary activities
within their own borders. It would be a
mistake to see these as actual or potential
cadres under Iranian control
they are almost
who are
of
local
residents
totally composed
dissatisfied with political affairs within their
own countries and who have little desire to
come under Iranian domination. But these
forces do receive both inspiration and a limited
amount of support from the Iranian government across the Gulf. As recently as midDecember of 1981 a dissident group claiming
to have ties with the Islamic Republic attempted to launch an insurrection outside
Manama that was suppressed by Bahrayn’s
internal security forces. A month later the
shaykhdom’s prime minister was again complaining that Iran was instigating sectarian
conflict on the island.37 In mid-February Saudi
Arabia signed an internal security treaty with
the UAA and another with Qatar as a result
likely
-
of disturbances in those two principalities.3$
To the extent that the possibility of Iranian
interference in domestic affairs within GCC
countries could be foreclosed by the judicious
offering of rewards to the former, the latter
can be expected to have tried to make such
an offer.
4.3 ’Systemic stability’
Positive sanctions give the country who
receives rewards for its compliance an incentive
to continue co-operating with the giver even
after an initial agreement is reached and
implemented. Baldwin claims that this is so
because ’there is a limit of total deprivation
on the extent to which negative sanctions can
be employed.’ By the same token, ’there is no
upper limit on the amount by which A may
reward B.’39 Of course there is in fact such a
the total available resources belonging
limit
to A. But in oil-rich countries such as most
of those in the GCC, there is a very deep pool
of monetary resources for any target country
to anticipate being able to draw on as long
as it keeps its end of the deal.4° This would
make it very costly for B to renege on a bargain
with such countries once it had been agreed to.
This point is particularly vital to GCC
countries in their relations with Iran. It means
that positive sanctions have the potential to
preclude Iran from encouraging social disorder
along the Gulf coast not so much at the present
as in the near future, when rulers in these
countries may well be in a much weaker
domestic political position than they are now.
Regional arrangements such as the GCC itself
provide one institutional means whereby those
countries whose oil resources are small or
rapidly running out can be supported by those
whose resources provide them with greater
domestic capabilities. But providing positive
sanctions to Iran constitutes a further strategy
for reinforcing the long-term domestic political
position of rulers such as those of Bahrayn,
Dubay and ’Uman.
-
4.4 ’Institutional
imperatives’
incentive to plan
compliance will be
assumption
the most likely outcome of the bargaining
process. To the extent that an actot is predis-
Positive sanctions give A
on
the
an
that B’s
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317
posed to deal with co-operation rather than
with conflict as a general rule, using rewards
to achieve policy objectives will be an obvious
diplomatic maneuver. Thus institutional
arrangements designed to facilitate co-operation among countries should also be more
likely to develop plans that involve positive
sanctions. In other words, international
organizations should make more use of
reward-based foreign policy programs than
individual countries do. In this case, as in
most of his other assertions, Baldwin cautions
that this is not a ’logical necessity, just a
psychological probability.’41 But it seems also
to have a reasonable institutional basis.
It therefore seems apposite that the GCC,
and even more so that within it the government
of the UAA, should have proposed offering
positive sanctions to Iran as a way of bringing
its war with Iraq to an end. These institutions
were designed to insure that no decision that
does not have the support of all of its leading
members can be adopted as policy for the
organization as a whole. In the UAA, this
means that any legislation must be approved
by both Abu Dhabi and Dubay. In the GCC,
this means that there is an informal rule of
unanimity in policy-making. It is hard to
imagine institutions such as these issuing
there is little or no
credible threats to Iran
within
to
them
compel free-riders
machinery
to participate in negative sanctions. But with
positive sanctions, there is no reason to worry
about free-riders until one’s target has already
agreed to one’s terms. Then outside parties
may indeed be able to be cajoled into ensuring
that the reward will be forthcoming as promised.
-
4.5
Summary
Positive sanctions represent an attractive way
of pursuing one’s interests to countries having
a specific set of internal characteristics. Those
with a) minimal governmental apparatuses,
b) a significant potential for domestic political
disorder, c) a likelihood that their rulers will
be faced with a gradual reduction in their ability to remain predominant domestically as time
goes by and perhaps d) some experience with
multilateral institutional arrangements conducive to international co-operation will have
strong incentives to solve their security
problems using some sort of positive sanctions.
Whether or not they will be able to act on the
basis of these incentives is in the first place
dependent upon whether or not they have
sufficient resources to do so. Consequently,
these countries must also have e) a large
supply of fungible or transferrable goods
which they can offer to the target country.
It may therefore be the case that instances
of positive sanctions are under-reported or
under-observed in international politics.42 But
it may instead simply be that only a very small
number of countries can credibly pursue this
sort of policy, given the peculiar mix of
incentives and capabilities that are associated
with the effective offer of positive sanctions.
And it is also the case that whether or not
these countries will be able to carry out such
policies is from another perspective dependent
upon the structure of the international system
in which they find themselves.
5. International structure and the
use
of
positive sanctions
Structural aspects of the relations among the
countries in the Gulf region can be used to
formulate an explanation for the GCC’s
proposal that is just as plausible as the
domestic political argument outlined above.
This explanation takes its cue from Kenneth
Waltz’s writings on the political outcomes
one can expect given certain distributions of
capabilities among countries. For Waltz, the
presence of a bipolar international structure
in any given region has a particular set of
implications for the character of and potential
for conflict in the relations among the actors
who find themselves in these circumstances.
First of all, each of the stronger two powers’
attention will be focused primarily upon the
activities of the other major power; changes
or policies that concern weaker parties in the
system will be largely ignored by the two
stronger powers, since they can do little if
anything to affect the overall distribution of
power in the system. This means that the
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318
if at all - although it is important to notice
in this sort of structural arrangement should that the Soviet-Iraqi and American-Iranian
be relatively straight-forward and unam- alliances did help to consolidate the position
biguous, making conflicts in such a system of each regional partner vis-a-vis the remaining
relatively easy to attend to and solve.43 To the countries in the Gulf.
extent that leaders’ perceptions do not count
After the revolution in Iran in 1978-1979,
or are generally accurate, violent conflicts
however, this structural situation began to
should be less likely in this sort of situation change. In the first place, Iran’s armed forces
than in one in which a number of powers are were both seriously weakened and severely
involved, because there is little or no question undervalued by outside observers as a result
about the way in which capabilities are of their inability to resist revolutionary activdistributed among actors.44 But as this bipolar ities by the country’s population during this
distribution of power shifts to one in which period. This reduction in Iran’s military
three or four countries have relatively equal capabilities was not immediately rectified when
capabilities and the advantages of the two the revolution began to settle down, largely
most powerful countries become less marked because the country’s new regime had other
in relation to others’, the chances that conflict priorities besides reconstituting its armed
will break out or spread in the system become forces and re-establishing military ties with
considerably greater.45 What matters most the United States. At about the same time,
from a structural perspective is therefore not Iraq’s major ally and arms supplier became
the static distribution of power among any preoccupied in territories peripheral to the
given set of countries, but rather the way in Gulf, thus drastically reducing its ability to
whether in support of
which this distribution of power is changing act in that region
or
not.46
This
at some particular time.
Iraq
development was accomIn the area around the Gulf an essentially panied by a general decline in the Soviet
bipolar international situation was becoming Union’s political position in the Middle East
gradually but markedly more multipolar after as a whole, one which resulted in ever more
about 1979. Before that time, Iran and Iraq subdued and non-militaristic responses on the
were significantly more powerful than any
part of Soviet leaders to events associated
other country actively involved in the region’s with the Iran-Iraq war.47
These changes left the other countries in
affairs. Neither of these countries was in a
neither’s
the
Gulf in a considerably less disadvantathe
but
to
dominate
other,
position
of
the
be
could
any
geous
position relative to Iran and Iraq after
challenged by
position
other countries in the area acting either alone 1980 than the one in which they had been
or in concert with one another. Nloreover,
during the previous decade. Moreover, Saudi
each of these two regionally predominant Arabia in particular was finding itself in an
countries had explicit ties to one of the increasingly more powerful position in regional
strongest two countries outside the region, affairs in the years 1981-1982 than it had
although it was never exactly clear under occupied before. This was largely a result
what circumstances either of the two global of the United States’ equipping the kingdom’s
powers might intervene in the Gulf. And given armed forces with an ever-increasing amount
the essentially bipolar character of the arena of state-of-the-art weapons systems during
with which these two superpowers themselves this period, epitomized by the widely-pubit was largely licized sale of AWACS equipment to the Saudi
were primarily concerned,
unnecessary for them to clarify this matter. air forces in the winter of 1982. With the
From a global perspective, developments in addition of sophisticated communications and
this part of the world affected the distribution control capabilities to the already extensive
of military-strategic capabilities between the range of weapons under Saudi control (which
United States and the Soviet Union very little are indicated in Table I), this country could
priorities and interests of the larger countries
-
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319
Table I.
Military
Forces in the Gulf Countries
as
of 19811
Source: Keith A. Dunn, ’Constraints on the USSR in Southwest Asia: A
pose a serious challenge to either Iraq or Iran
in future conflicts in this part of the world.
And Saudi capabilities were augmented by
those of its smaller Arab neighbors with
virtually all of whom the kingdom had concluded military and defense agreements in
the months after the revolution in Iran.48
At the same time that Saudi capabilities
relative to the other larger countries in the
Gulf
play
growing, Pakistan began to
increasingly more active role in that
area were
an
region’s affairs. This was partly a result of
the Pakistani government’s concluding a nonaggression pact with its traditional rival, India,
which permitted its leaders to pay more attention to developments beyond the country’s
borders. But it was also a consequence
of Russian activities in Afghanistan, which
continually disrupted the security of Baluchistan and forced Pakistan to reevaluate its
relations with the Gulf states.50 Thus by early
1982 four relatively equal regional powers
Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan
were actively involved in pursuing their
own interests in this area, which had been
a virtual Iraqi-Iranian co-dominium as recently
as four years before. Under these circumstances, the continuing war between Iraq and
Iran offered the Arab countries in the Gulf
an opportunity to consolidate their long-term
position in regional affairs at the expense of
the two combatants. And using positive sanctions represented a relatively efficient way
western
-
-
Military Analysis,’ Orbis 25 (Fall 1981),
p. 626.
for these countries to carry out this objective.
As the structure of power in the Gulf
became increasingly less bipolar and more
multipolar, aspects of that system which
had been relatively inconsequential previously
became considerably more important to the
actors involved. On one hand, relatively small
differences in capabilities among the four
most powerful countries in the area became
more and more crucial, since small changes
in these differentials could affect the ability
of each of the parties involved to carry out
its own interests. Consequently, otherwise
minor or peripheral issues among these
countries began to have a potential to produce
disproportionate effects on their relations
with one another. In particular, Iranian oil
which had remained virtually
policies
constant since the end of the revolution
began to undermine the unified pricing arrangement of OPEC, in which Saudi Arabia
was the predominant power. After about 1979,
Iran stopped purchasing American products
with its oil revenues and began buying from
other western sources instead. As the value
of the dollar fell during this period, Iran
was forced to lower the price of its oil and
gas and rely on greater sales to provide the
hard currency it needed in order to pay for
its imports. This strategy was confounded by
the increasingly constricted international
market for petroleum after 1980, which left
Iran with severe balance of payments dif-
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-
320
ficulties and
a serious shortage of foreign
Iranian efforts to solve this
problem threatened by 1982 to subvert the
economic arrangements upon which OPEC
was founded and from which the GCC
countries derived the basis for their growing
political influence.
On the other hand, smaller countries in the
Gulf - whose activities were largely inconsequential to the relations between the two
regional powers of the 1970s began to play
a more pivotal role in the Gulf as the distribution of power in that region became more
multipolar after 1980. Under these newer
circumstances, the co-operation of even the
weaker GCC countries could have a disproportionate impact on the bargaining position of the larger countries relative to one
exchange. 51
-
another.
Three consequences for the behavior of the
weaker GCC countries follow from these
changes in the structure of power in the Gulf.
First, these countries as third parties to
conflicts and interaction among the larger
powers of the region can be expected to begin
carrying out foreign policy initiatives of their
own as a way of taking the best possible
advantage of their growing influence in local
affairs. In other words, they will most likely
start to become more active participants in
Gulf politics, rather than remaining passive
on-lookers. Second, these countries can be
initiate programs of a particular
kind: ones that are relatively innocuous. They
are still in no position to risk alienating the
more powerful Gulf countries, despite their
improved position in regional affairs. Finally,
these countries can be expected to design their
initiatives in such a way as to maximize the
long-term political returns that they receive
from them. Finding themselves in an influential position at the present time, the GCC
countries must pay as much attention as they
can to future periods when the degree of
leverage they can take advantage of on the
basis of structural factors alone may be considerably diminished. That the smaller Arab
states in the Gulf should have proposed an
offer of rewards to Iran for ending its war
expected
to
with Iraq during the early summer of 1982
is therefore not very surprising from a structural perspective. Such an offer was not only
a sufficiently innocuous foreign policy initiative for these countries to undertake, but it
if accepted
would also
have created ties
to the target country that could have been
manipulated to their own advantage at a later
-
-
date.52
So it is clear that the structure of power
in the Gulf during mid-1982 gave the smaller
members of the GCC strong incentives to
offer positive sanctions to Iran. It remains
to suggest why this attempt to use monetary
rewards to settle the war between Iran and
Iraq was unsuccessful. Rather than resulting
in a reduction or cessation of violence between
these two combatants, this proposal was
followed not only by a major military offensive against Iraqi positions by Iranian
forces but also by increasingly greater demands
for indemnification by the Iranian regime.53
That this initiative failed is especially puzzling
in light of the series of proposals by Iranian
officials during the spring of 1982 that called
for closer economic and financial relations
between the Islamic Republic and the smaller
Arab countries along the Gulf coast. 54
6. Explanations
sanctions
for
the
failure of positive
Explaining why positive sanctions failed
to
end the war between Iran and Iraq in June
1982 raises even more conceptual difficulties
than does explaining why these rewards were
offered. Following Wallensteen and Galtung,
one can construct a plausible receiver-oriented
theory that
says
why
the Iranian
regime
refused to accept reparations, given the
domestic political circumstances in which
it found itself at the time the GCC’s offer
was made. Such an argument is developed
immediately below. But to an even greater
degree than in the case of why rewards were
offered, why reparations were refused may
in the end involve the ways in which the actors
in this situation were interacting with one
another during this period. Thus several
caveats regarding the adequacy of domestic
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321
political explanations for this aspect of this
incident need to be made. These caveats make
a structural perspective on why this offer of
reparations failed seem preferable to even the
most coherent receiver-oriented argument.
7. Domestic politics and the failure oaf positive
sanctions
There are three different ways in which one
could show how domestic circumstances within
Iran precluded that country’s government
from accepting positive sanctions in exchange
for ending its war with Iraq. One might argue
that pursuing war-related policies was reinforcing or sustaining a particular distribution
of power among political forces within the
target country. Under these circumstances,
those who were benefitting from the continuation of armed conflict would probably
not want to risk any major change in their
country’s foreign relations that did not entail
a clear military outcome to the war, since
this might jeopardize their own political
position relative to their domestic opponents. 55
Alternatively, one might argue that the
domestic political costs involved in accepting
positive sanctions were on the whole greater
than the benefits to be had from gaining
access to these resources. This would require
a discussion of the uses to which the rewards
involved might be put, as well as a comparison
between the potential political effects of the
target country’s stopping the war and using
these funds on the one hand and the situation
that one could expect to arise if the war were
to continue on the other. From yet a different
perspective, one might argue that the sort of
positive sanctions that were offered in this
particular case were not of any use to the
target regime. This would require a discussion
of the most pressing difficulties facing the
rulers of the target country, as well as a
demonstration that access to the specific
rewards involved could do little to help them
solve these problems. As a preliminary step
towards a domestic political explanation for
Iran’s rejecting the GCC’s offer of reparations, I will offer an argument of the first
kind.
By late May of 1982, political conditions
within Iran had settled into a relatively clearcut struggle for control over the country’s
state apparatus between two rather disparate
political coalitions. One of these, which has
been called ’the Islamic revolutionaries’ or
Imam’s Line, included not only the Islamic
Republican Party and other close supporters
of the Ayatollah Khumayni but also the
country’s indigenous communist party and
a majority faction of the Fedayin-i Khalq.56
On the whole, this grouping advocated a
greater degree of social revolution in Iran,
a larger role for the state in domestic economic
affairs, the nationalization of foreign trade,
closer ties with the Soviet Union and the
exportation of revolutionary violence into
adjacent territories. These forces have therefore generally favored an active if not expansionary foreign policy in the Gulf. The
other major political coalition, which has
been called ’the Hujjatieh’, grew out of two
contradictory developments among those
who made up the broad movement that carried
out the Islamic revolution. On one hand, the
Fedayi Islam led by the Ayatollah Khalkhali
and the Mujahidin-i Islam of Behzad Nabavi
began by late 1981 to pressure the regime both
to broaden the country’s revolutionary policies
along more strictly Islamic lines and to drop
its alliances with secular leftist organizations. 57
On the other hand, many prominent clergy
had by this time become heavily involved in
lucrative business activities, ’both legal and
black market’.58 As a result of these two
trends, there emerged by early 1982 a large
and influential group of political actors in
the country who had as their first priority
solving Iran’s domestic economic problems in
a pragmatic fashion, both by making use of
the country’s western-educated technocrats
(no matter what their ideological leanings)
and by maintaining existing land-holding and
commercial arrangements and other forms of
private property. These forces were predisposed to question not only the regime’s
revolutionary activities in the Gulf area but
also its structure as a highly centralized
organization in which the Ayatollah Khumayni
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322
primary decision-maker.
Moreover,
competition between the
Islamic revolutionaries and the Hujjatieh was
complicated by the active program of
assassination and sabotage being carried out
by the Mujahidin-i Khalq and minority
Fedayin-i Khalq. This program disrupted
both economic and political life in the country
constituted
the
this
with
Iraq would almost certainly have
intensified the level of pressure on the
Iranian regime to loosen its hold on the
country’s economic affairs and permit the
importation of cheap foreign-made consumer
goods. This would not only have benefitted
the government’s opponents disproportionately but would also have increased the degree
of competition facing the country’s smallas a whole and in Tehran in particular.59
this
admittedly over-simplified scale manufacturers, who have been consistent
Taking
sketch of Iran’s internal political situation, supporters of the Ayatollah Khumayni and
his allies.61 These circumstances indicate that
there is at least one good domestic political
explanation for Iran’s refusing to end its war
with Iraq in exchange for substantial positive
sanctions around the first of June 1982.
Two caveats need to be made about this
kind of domestic-level argument - besides
a strong one regarding the accuracy of its
information on Iran’s domestic affairs. First,
a measure of relief for its poor balance-ofpayments situation. As a result, Iran’s larger there is a potential contradiction involved
merchants and industrialists were able to con- in any domestic political explanation for an
tinue resisting the regime’s efforts to nation- attempt to use positive sanctions that fails:
alize their operations, both by opposing this contradiction must be avoided if the
measures in the parliament intended to carry
explanation is to be coherent.62 It appears
out such a policy and by controlling the if one’s domestic-level argument makes the
implementation of those measures which offer of positive sanctions an intended or
conscious effort on the part of the offering
were adopted in spite of their opposition.
These forces would have particularly opposed country’s regime to formulate a policy that
any agreement to end the fighting with Iraq will best serve its interests, given political
that involved substantial transfers of funds conditions within the offering country. The
to Iran’s central government. Were such contradiction runs something like this: in order
for positive sanctions to be offered to a target
resources made available to the Islamic
revolutionaries in the late’ spring of 1982, country, that country must have some notable
these groups would have been able to reassert weaknesses or vulnerabilities toward which
their own interests with regard to Iran’s the rewards can be directed. This allows us
economy. This program consisted of dis- to suggest that positive sanctions represent
mantling the country’s large-scale industry an efficient or innocuous policy for certain
and strictly limiting the right of private sorts of countries to pursue. But if it turns
property.60 Both of these objectives con- out that the target country rejects the offer,
stituted major threats to the economic position which implies that it could afford to refuse
of the Hujjatieh. Consequently, the latter used the reward after all, then there were no real
their growing political influence both inside grounds for making the offer in the first place.
This difficulty can be removed if one
and outside the parliament to block the
government from responding favorably to the assumes that one or both of the parties
GCC’s offer of reparations. At the same involved has misperceived its interests
time, the Islamic revolutionaries had no although this leaves us with a fundamentally
clear and overarching interest in accepting perceptual or psychological argument.63 Or
the GCC’s proposal either. Ending the war it can be removed if one assumes that the
one can
argue that the
war
with Iraq
was
struggles between these
two coalitions of domestic forces during
the spring of 1982. In April, the Hujjatieh
were able successfully to implement a program
of lowering the price of Iranian oil on world
markets. This program increased the country’s
oil sales significantly and thereby provided
closely related
to
-
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323
process of making an offer of positive sanctions has no relation to the target country
at
countries of the Gulf is
less bipolar one to
or
the offering
political imperatives
which
demands
itself
a
perspective
country
a
perhaps unrealistically distinct break
between domestic and foreign considerations
in national policy-making.64 This contradiction
can even be removed if one assumes that one
country’s offering a reward to another is
solely an unintended consequence of domestic
political factors in the former, since there
is no reason to expect unintended consequences to be amenable to any sort of
rational reconstruction related to national
goals. But as proponents of the bureaucratic
-
politics approach
to
explaining foreign policy
have discovered, this sort of argument is
probably the hardest of all explanations to
formulate.65 Consequently, domestic politics
level explanations for the failure of positive
sanctions seem less satisfactory than one
might wish.
Second, this logical difficulty is compounded
by a basic characteristic of domestic political
explanations for the failure of an offer of
positive sanctions. When this sort of argument
is compared with structural explanations for
the same international outcome, it appears to
be rather disjointed. This is because domestic
political arguments involve two distinct and
separable steps: one that says why such sanctions were offered in the case at hand and
one that says why they were rejected. These
questions can perhaps be dealt with seriatum,
but there is a sense in which these two steps in
the argument are in the end only contingently
related to each other, while the dynamics of
offering and rejecting rewards constitute one
aspect of states’ interactions with one another.
To the extent that this is the case, structural
arguments may be able to provide a more
coherent account of the use of positive sanctions in international relations than domestic
political arguments can
8. International structure and the
failure of
positive sanctions
Because the distribution of power among the
a more or
a more
less multi-
only expect initiatives
to be carried out
sanctions
involving positive
whose position
the
in
those
countries
region
by
is becoming increasingly more powerful, but
also expect that these rewards will fail to be
accepted by either of the countries whose copredominance is being challenged. Both of
these conclusions follow from the transitional
character of the structure of international
relations in the Gulf during the late spring of
all, but is solely determined by domestic polar one,
within
changing from
we can not
1982.
To the extent that the situation in the Gulf
retains aspects of bipolarity, positive sanctions
can be largely ignored by Iran’s leaders. As
long as Iraq remains that country’s primary
contender for regional predominance, adding
$25 billion in reparations to Iran’s resources
will not give it sufficient capabilities that the
structural relationship between these two
countries will be appreciably altered. This
amount certainly does not represent great
enough compensation that it would persuade
Iran to allow Iraq to remain a serious military
or strategic threat to Iranian security. And
such a reward is even more insignificant considering Iran’s most probable security concerns
in the immediate future, when Soviet forces in
central Asia are no longer preoccupied with
fighting in Afghanistan. Since it was the
revolution in Iran that made the distribution
of capabilities in the Gulf so ambiguous, it
can only be by resolving this structural ambiguity that the Gulf war can be brought to
an end. This may involve an Iranian military
victory which would serve to reconstitute or
reaffirm that country’s predominant position
in the region. Or it may involve a protracted
conflict during the course of which the position
of the combatants relative to other regional
actors would become increasingly more unequal. But this structural ambiguity cannot be
resolved by a simple transfer of funds, no
matter how large.
To the extent that the situation in the Gulf
continues to become more multipolar, positive
sanctions will be firmly rejected by Iran’s
leaders. If that country’s position in regional
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324
affairs is in fact declining over time, it will
avoid involving itself in financial ties with the
GCC countries that might be manipulated to
Iran’s detriment at a later date. From this
point of view, Iran’s response to the GCC
countries’ offer
viz:, constantly raising its
demands for reparations
represents a way
for that country to continue carrying out
military operations without precluding entirely
the possibility that it might be offered substantially greater rewards in the future. Later
offers might be sufficient to affect the
structural situation in an increasingly multipolar Gulf, should a continuation of the war
further undercut Iran’s position in regional
affairs.
These two observations imply that if the
gap between Iran and Iraq on the one hand
and the other countries of the Gulf on the
other was significantly greater than it is at
the present time, then the probability that a
positive sanctions-based settlement of the Gulf
war could be achieved would be greatly increased. Under such circumstances, there
would be little chance that the resources
involved could be manipulated to Iran’s disadvantage. And there would also be no need
for the Iranians to prolong their war- with
Iraq, since they could not hope to eliminate
the latter as a regional power and would consequently find the costs of occupying or
-
-
annexing Iraqi territory quite rapidly outweighing the benefits they would derive from
such operations.67 This could be expected
to lead the Iranian regime to take advantage
of an opportunity such as the GCC’s offer of
reparations as a way of facilitating an end
to the fighting.
Thus it is partly an unintended consequence
of American policy in the Gulf that the GCC’s
offer of positive sanctions to Iran was unsuccessful in this case. By working to improve
the capabilities of Saudi Arabia’s armed
forces, United States policy-makers have
helped to alter the distribution of power in
the Gulf in such a way that it has become
impossible for Iran to terminate its conflict
with Iraq in exchange for reparations. Whether
or not this outcome is off-set from an Amer-
ican point of view by other consequences of
creating a large and well-equipped military
command in Saudi Arabia lies beyond the
scope of this essay. But it is hard to see how
the United States might benefit from a continuation or extension of the fighting between
Iran and
Iraq.
9. Conclusion
Three important findings emerge from this
study of the GCC’s use of positive sanctions
in its relations with Iran. The first of these
is that rewards are most likely to be used as
an instrument of foreign policy by countries
having a very peculiar mix of domestic political
characteristics. Specifically, positive sanctions
are most closely associated with countries
whose governmental structure is relatively
small and undifferentiated, whose potential
for domestic disorder is relatively pronounced,
whose rulers face an uncertain political future
and whose history includes a good deal of
experience with multinational institutions. This
combination of features is relatively rare in
the current international system. As a result,
the use of positive sanctions will most likely
continue to be a scarce feature of relations
among countries. This is particularly un-
fortunate from an analytical perspective, since
it makes it virtually impossible for us to use
statistical methods to study the sources and
outcomes of positive sanctions in world affairs.
Second, this paper shows that rewards are
most likely to be used in situations in which
a predominantly bipolar international arena is
becoming increasingly multipolar. Under these
circumstances, weaker countries find themselves in an increasingly more influential
position relative to stronger ones and are
therefore led to participate more actively in
determining international outcomes. But at the
same time, weaker countries have an incentive
to avoid pursuing policies that might put them
in direct conflict with neighbors that remain
substantially more powerful than themselves.
Offering rewards as a way of encouraging
other countries to comply with their interests
represents
an
especially appropriate strategy
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325
for these states. This sort of initiative allows
them to do something to express their own
preferences regarding regional
or
global
but minimizes the risk that
they will alienate more powerful actors in
doing so. Whether or not these structural
dynamics provide a better explanation for a
country’s using positive sanctions to carry out
its foreign policy goals than do the domestic
political attributes listed above remains an
area for further research.
Finally, with regard to the matter of why
the GCC’s offer of reparations failed to end
the fighting between Iran and Iraq, this study
indicates that both domestic political dynamics
within Iran and the structural situation in
which that country found itself in June 1982
forced the Iranian regime to refuse to accept
the GCC’s proposal. Those Iranians who had
an interest in limiting the scope of state
activities within the country’s economy would
have been seriously hurt by the infusion of
a substantial sum of money into the government’s hands. Consequently, these forces used
their growing strength within Iranian society
to block the regime from agreeing to the
GCC’s terms. At the same time, those forces
that constituted the regime faced a serious
divergence of interests among themselves on
the matter of ending the country’s state of
war with Iraq. This conflict of interest prevented the government from countering the
Hujjatieh effectively and thereby insured that
the GCC’s offer would be turned down. On
the other hand, changes in the distribution
of power around the Gulf also militated
against Iran’s accepting reparations from its
smaller Arab neighbors. Both that country’s
residual co-predominance in the Gulf area
and its continuously declining position vis-avis other regional actors provided Iran with
incentives to refuse to stop fighting with Iraq
in exchange for even a very large monetary
reward. Thus both the GCC’s proposing to
indemnify Iran and Iran’s rejection of that
proposal can be explained in a more or less
integral fashion in terms of the peculiarities
of Iran’s strategic circumstances during the
late spring of 1982. To the extent that this
developments,68
is the case, the structural argument formulated
here may provide a more satisfactory way of
conceptualizing the entire process of offering
and accepting/rejecting positive sanctions than
do the domestic political arguments. It is
therefore worth indicating some ways in which
this study contributes to existing debates
among those who analyze international conflict and wars from a structural or systemic
perspective.
10. Implications for further research
This analysis throws a good deal of light on
two important issues that have been areas
of serious controversy within the literature
on international relations in general. One of
these concerns the degree to which bipolar
international structures can be seen as more
stable arrangements than multipolar structures. The other concerns the relationship
between particular distributions of power
among countries and the duration or destructiveness of wars under those circumstances.
Regarding the first issue, there has been a
great debate among students of international
relations about whether or not bipolar international structures are more likely to be stable
than multipolar structures. Waltz argues that
they are, on the grounds that less uncertainty
and fewer miscalculations are likely to occur
in a world composed of two predominant
powers than they are in a world made up of
several contending powers.69 David Singer and
Karl Deutsch have suggested the opposite, on
the grounds that conflicts will be less likely
to spread or escalate in a situation in which
there are many possibilities for cross-pressures
among actors Bruce Bueno de Mesquita has
recently shown that such arguments depend
greatly on the sort of assumptions that one
makes about the degree to which leaders in
these two situations are willing to take risks. 71
It has also been proposed that one should
distinguish between bipolar international
structures and the bipolarization of blocs
within a multipolar structure, since the latter
is more likely to lead to war and instability
than is the former.’2
For the most part, this study of the Iran-
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326
Iraq war supports Waltz’s position. Instability
in the Gulf has grown substantially as more
and more countries have become important in
determining regional affairs. As long as Iran
and Iraq remained the leading powers in this
part of the world, conflicts among Gulf
countries were kept limited in scope and
largely non-violent in character
despite
the significant differences in ideological orientation that existed between the regimes of the
two most powerful Gulf countries. But as
Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have become more
active and consequential in Gulf politics, it
has become much more difficult to settle
regional disputes without recourse to prolonged war. Whether this war will be instrumental in changing the distribution of power
in the area or is simply indicative of a structural change that has already occurred, the
inability of third parties to bring it to a stop
suggests that a period of relative instability
in regional affairs is immanent.
Moreover, this analysis can help to reconcile
an apparent discrepancy between Waltz’s
arguments about the relative stability of
bipolar structures and other, more quantitatively oriented scholars’ conclusions about the
seriousness and costliness of wars that occur in
bipolar situations. These scholars have shown,
using a wide range of evidence, that the most
devastating major wars have been carried out
by countries having relatively equivalent
capabilities. As David Garnham has concluded
on the basis of Latin American data: ’For
the period 1969-1973, power parity was positively related to the probability of lethal conflict between contiguous nation-states. Rather
than increasing the likelihood of peace, equal
power increased the probability of lethal
violence. ’73 From the perspective of this
present study, one would not only expect this
sort of conclusion to hold but would also see
how it can be fit into Waltz’s position on the
inherent stability of bipolar structures.
As long as a bipolar international structure
is clearly in place in a given part of the world,
conflicts will be kept limited and wars that
do break out will be relatively minor and
short. But as a bipolar arrangement begins
-
change into a more multipolar one, both
the probability and the severity of conflict
among the countries involved are likely to
to
increase dramatically. Whenever significant
challenges are being made to the position of
the two powers that had previously been predominant in a region, wars will become more
violent and protracted than they would have
been before. And they will also become
markedly less amenable to solutions that are
proposed by third-party mediators or that are
based on positive sanctions and reparations.
NOTES AND REFERENCES
1. As indicators of the
pervasiveness of punishmentoriented studies of conflict termination, see Glenn
H. Snyder and Paul Diesing, Conflict among
Nations (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1977), pp. 208 and 244; S. Rosen, ’War Power
and the Willingness to suffer’, in Bruce Russett,
ed. Peace, War and Numbers (Beverly Hills: Sage,
1972); Bernard Brodie, War and Politics (New
York: Macmillan, 1975), pp. 21-28; Robert R.
Randle, Origins of Peace (New York: Free Press,
1973), chapter two; Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of
International Politics (Reading, Mass.: AddisonWesley, 1979), pp. 113-114; Donald Wittman, ’How
a War Ends’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 23
(December 1979). For a parallel observation concerning the disproportionate amount of attention
paid to deprivation in the study of economic sanctions and their use, see Johan Galtung, ’On the
Effects of International Economic Sanctions,’
World Politics 19 (April 1967), pp. 380-381.
2. David A. Baldwin, ’The Power of Positive Sanctions’, World Politics 24 (October 1971), p. 37.
Ibid., p. 26.
Ibid., p. 38; cf. Peter Wallensteen, ’Characteristics
of Economic Sanctions’, Journal of Peace Research
(1968), p. 265.
5. This aspect of Baldwin’s conceptualization is
perhaps most evident in his discussions of perceptions on p. 23.
6. For example, Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1976).
7. The Wall Street Journal, 15 July 1982.
3.
4.
8. United
States
Foreign Broadcast
Information
Service, Middle East Survey (hereinafter FBIS),
3 February 1982.
9. FBIS, 6 February 1982; Washington Post, 8
February 1982.
10. Washington Post, 23 March 1982 and 30 March
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327
1982; New York Times, 24 March 1982.
11. New York Times, 28 March 1982.
12. FBIS, 4 May 1982.
13. Arab News, 16 May 1982.
14. Ibid.
15. FBIS, 24 May 1982.
16. FBIS, 26 may 1982.
17. Ibid.
18. The Wall Street Journal, 27 May 1982; Arab News,
27 May 1982; New York Times, 29 May 1982;
The Christian Science Monitor, 28 May 1982;
New York Times, 1 June 1982.
19. FBIS, 2 June 1982.
20. Arab News, 1 June 1982; FBIS, 1 June 1982;
Washington Post, 31 May 1982.
21. Los Angeles Times, 2 June 1982; The Times
(London), 2 June 1982; Neue Zurcher Zeitung,
3 June 1982; International Iran Times, 4 June
1982.
22. FBIS, 2 June 1982.
23. FBIS, 4 June 1982.
24. FBIS, 7 June 1982.
25. Mansour Farhang, ’Khomeini and Saddam Hussein:
One Must Go,’ The Nation, 3 July 1982.
26. Baldwin, ’Power of Positive Sanctions,’ p. 24.
27. Wallensteen, ’Characteristics of Economic Sanctions,’ p. 252.
28. Hoffmann, ’The Functions of Economic Sanctions : A Comparative Analysis,’ Journal of Peace
Research, (1967); Wallensteen, ’Characteristics of
Economic Sanctions’, pp. 253-254.
29. Wallensteen, ’Characteristics of Economic Sanctions,’ pp. 256-258; Galtung, ’Effects of International Economic Sanctions,’ passim.
30. Singer, ’The Level-of-Analysis Problem in International Relations,’ World Politics 14 (October
1961 ); Jervis, Perception and Misperception, chapter
41. Baldwin, ’Power of Positive Sanctions,’ p. 28; cf.
Wallensteen, ’Characteristics of Economic Sanctions,’ p. 261.
42. Ibid., pp. 30-31.
43. Waltz, ’The Stability of a Bipolar World,’ Daedelus
93 (Summer 1964).
44. Geoffrey Blainey, The Causes of War (New York:
Free Press, 1973).
45. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, ’Systemic Polarization and the Occurrence and Duration of War,’
Journal of Conflict Resolution 22 (June 1978).
46. Joshua M. Epstein, ’Soviet Vulnerabilities in Iran
and the RDF Deterrent,’ International Security 6
(Fall 1981): cf. Waltz, ’A Strategy for the Rapid
Deployment Force,’ Ibid. 5 (Spring 1981).
47. Robert O. Freedman, ’Soviet Policy Towards the
Middle East Since the Invasion of Afghanistan’
and Karen Dawisha, ’Moscow’s Moves in the
Direction of the Gulf — So Near and Yet so Far,’
Journal of International Affairs 34 (Fall/Winter
1980/81).
importance of AWACS,
48. On the
see Robert Lacey,
’Saudi Arabia: a more visible role in the Middle
East,’ The World Today (January 1982); on Saudi
alliances in the Gulf, see Shirin Tahir-Kheli and
William O. Staudenmaier, ’The Saudi-Pakistan
Military Relationship: Implications for US Policy,’
Orbis 26
49. Pakistan
Westview Press, 1979).
50. Ibid. 35 (1 May 1982).
51. Patrick Clawson, ’Iran’s
and Collapse,’ MERIP
1982) and (1 January
Economy: Between Crisis
Reports 98 (July-August
1981).
52.
53.
54.
55.
34. Arab News, 27 May 1982.
35. Baldwin, ’Power of Positive Sanctions,’ pp. 32-33.
36. Similarly, Hoffmann argues that countries facing
serious internal political dissention will be more
likely than others to adopt all sorts of economic
sanctions as instruments of foreign policy. See his
’Functions of Economic Sanctions,’ pp. 253-255.
37. Los Angeles Times, 17-18 December 1971; FBIS,
28 January 1982.
38. Arab News, 22 February 1982.
39. Baldwin, ’Power of Positive Sanctions,’ p. 35.
40. There is, however, some evidence that Saudi Arabia
and the UAA were somewhat over-extended financially during the spring of 1982, as a result of
costly development projects and low prices for
petroleum on world markets.
June
1982).
one.
31. Wallensteen, ’Characteristics of Economic Sanctions,’ pp. 259-262.
32. Baldwin, ’Power of Positive Sanctions,’ p. 28.
33. See Ali Mohammed Khalifa, The United Arab
Emirates: Unity in Fragmentation (Boulder, Colo.:
(Spring 1982).
Affairs 35 (1
56.
57.
58.
59.
Baldwin, ’Foreign Aid, Intervention, and Influence’,
World Politics 21 (April 1969); Abraham F. Lowenthal, ’Foreign Aid as a Political Instrument,’
Public Policy 14 (1965).
Los Angeles Times, 14 July 1982; Arab News,
5 June 1982; FBIS, 7 June 1982.
Chronology entry for 13 September 1981 in The
Middle East Journal 36 (Winter 1982), p. 85;
Middle East Economic Digest, 23 April 1982.
A congruent domestic political dynamic is noted
for the case of countries facing negative sanctions
by Wallensteen in his ’Characteristics of Economic
Sanctions,’ pp. 257-258 and 260.
Fred Halliday, ’Year Three of the Iranian Revolution,’ MERIP Reports 104 (March-April 1982).
Halliday’s essays on political developments in postrevolutionary Iran should be read-in the context of
his larger study of the country’s recent economic
and social history: Iran: Dictatorship and Development (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979).
Ibid., p. 4.
Halliday, ’Year IV of the Islamic Republic,’ MERIP
Reports 113 (March-April 1983), p. 7.
Ibid., pp. 6-7; cf. Emad Ferdows, ’The Reconstruction Crusade and Class Conflict in Iran’, MERIP
Reports 113 (March-April 1983).
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328
60.
Halliday, ’Year Three;’ Assef Bayat, ’Workers’
Control after the Revolution,’ MERIP Reports 113
the
(March-April 1983).
61. Halliday, ’Year Three,’ p. 5.
62. A similar conceptual difficulty is discussed briefly
by Hoffmann in his ’Functions of Economic
Sanctions,’ pp. 154-155.
63. On this issue, see Jervis, Perception and Mis-
perception, chapter
one.
64. See Peter A. Gourevitch, ’The Second Image
Reversed,’ International Organization 32 (Autumn
1978); Eckart Kehr, Economic Interest, Militarism,
and Foreign Policy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977).
65. Thus the most prominent studies of bureaucratic
politics and foreign policy have abandoned the
notion that policies should be seen as unintended
consequences of conflicts among governmental
agencies and have focused instead of the question
of which agencies’ interests are served by particular
foreign policy outcomes. As an example of the
former method of argumentation, see Warner R.
Schilling, ’The H-Bomb Decision: How to Decide
without Actually Deciding,’ Political Science
Quarterly 76 (March 1961); as a recent example of
66.
67.
68.
69.
70.
latter, see I.M. Destler, ’United States food
policy, 1972-1976: Reconciling domestic and international objectives,’ International Organization 32
(Summer 1978).
This position is the burden of Waltz, Theory of
International Politics; cf. Benjamin A. Most and
Harvey Starr, ’Conceptualizing ’War’,’ Journal of
Conflict Resolution 27 (March 1983).
See Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World
Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press,
1981), chapter three.
Galtung, ’Effects of International Economic Sanctions,’ pp. 411-412.
Waltz, ’Stability of a Bipolar World.’
Deutsch and Singer, ’Multipolar Power Systems and
International Stability,’ World Politics 16 (April
1964).
71. Bueno de Mesquita, ’Systemic Polarization.’
72. Bueno
de
Mesquita, ’Measuring Systemic
Polarity,’ Journal of Conflict Resolution 19 (June
1975); Waltz, Theory of International Politics,
pp. 168-169.
73. David Garnham, ’Power Polarity and Lethal International Violence, 1969-1973,’ Journal of Conflict
Resolution 20 (September 1976), p. 391.
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