Peace Agreements and Civil Wars in Africa: Insurgent Motivations, ...

According to this view, a party in a conflict situation may seek negotiations with the adversary without an expectation of reaching an agreement. Rather, a party may use peace talks to encourage a number of specific advantages—which may arise either by accident or by design, and which may be sought by one party or by all the parties involved.

Belligerents may therefore seek negotiations for advantages other than attaining an agreement. First, as Iklé has observed, parties may initiate negotiations as a way of maintaining contact with the opponent on the issues the parties consider important. Second, negotiation can be initiated as a substitute for violent action. For this rule to hold, Iklé points out that two conditions must apply: (1) The party so restrained must deem it likely that if it took the action, the opponent would break off the negotiations; and (2) the party so restrained must value the avoidance of a break in negotiations—even when there is no agreement in sight—more highly than the action from which it desists. The third advantage of initiating negotiations—other than for agreement—is to use the opportunity to gather intelligence information from an opponent, such as the opponent’s strategies and resistance point. Negotiation may also help to expose differences between the opponent and its allies.

An adversary can also seek negotiations to deceive the opponent. A party can use deception as a technique to gain time, to prepare one’s use of force, to resupply arms, to reinforce, or to allow for the deployment of troops to a new front. The final advantage is that a government or rebel group can use negotiation for propaganda objectives. Iklé points out three ways in which propaganda can be used by parties engaged in negotiations: negotiating to have a sounding board, negotiating to gain prestige (publicity), and negotiating to show rectitude. Because of these side effects of negotiations, parties in a civil war are likely to have multiple motives in negotiation that are not related to attaining an agreement. Iklé sums up the view that parties negotiate to win public approval like the Pharisee values prayer: “It is not the thoughts behind the prayer that matter, or the purpose pursued, or the deeds—before and after—what counts is that the ceremony be performed with the proper gestures.”⁵³