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

A party may also have other objectives that it expects to gain by calling for negotiations. For example, a country at war with another state may seek negotiations to undermine the adversary’s domestic and international image while bolstering one’s own.⁵⁴ Peace negotiations can thus be used as an extension of the war by other means. Seeking negotiations also helps the party taking the initiative because appearing to work for peace is politically popular in the contemporary world.⁵⁵ The willingness to enter negotiations is sometimes expressed only to appear reasonable and peace loving, or for the sake of initiating and maintaining good relations with mediators and with other outside parties. Furthermore, one or both sides in a war may initiate negotiations as a way of avoiding sanctions from the international community, or to continue receiving foreign assistance. This would convince domestic groups that the party could be a better alternative to the regime in power.

An adversary seeking negotiations may also do so to help tilt the balance of power in its favor, or as a way of encouraging a specific event, such as drawing an ally into the war.⁵⁶ As already pointed out, the reason may be to undermine the enemy’s international image while bolstering one’s own. Peace negotiations thus serve as an adjunct to combat and are used as a nonviolent way of bringing about some of the same effects of combat, such as the attrition of the enemy’s strength and the sapping of its morale. The use of negotiations for purposes other than reaching a peace agreement was aptly illustrated by a Vietnamese Army general, who described negotiations during the Vietnam War, saying, “Fighting while negotiating is aimed at opening another front, at making the puppet army more disinterested, at stimulating and developing the enemy’s contradictions and thereby depriving him of propaganda weapons, isolating him further.”⁵⁷

Negotiations initiated mainly for these reasons are unlikely to lead to stable peace agreements, no matter the timing of negotiations, or the nature, tactics, and skill of the third party. Concerns that a party in a war may be negotiating for side effects can discourage the enemy from accepting peace feelers from the adversary.