Saroka 1 Steven Saroka Dr.

Douglas Lemke PL SC 14U Section 1 31 March 2014 The Syrian Civil War: A Bargaining Perspective The Syrian civil war has been raging, and seemingly increasing in severity, for approximately three years. It began when the Syrian government, headed by President Bashar alAssad, attempted to violently suppress protesters during the Arab Spring in 2011, leading to the formation of a rebel opposition in reaction to that repression (Kaphle). While the violence and trauma resulting from this war may appear to be beyond any rational explanation, in this paper I will use bargaining theory to analyze and explain the interactions between the various actors in the Syrian situationthe Syrian regime, the rebel factions, the rebel leadership, and outside actors such as the United States and Russiato show how the challenges inherent in every crisis bargaining interaction have led to frequent reversion outcomes for all sides, expanding and perpetuating the tragic scope of this conflict. The bargaining perspective states that actors may interact through bargaining: a zero-sum interaction where, in any deal struck, either sides gain is the others loss. This is in sharp contrast to a cooperative interaction, which is a positive sum interaction: both sides are capable of making gains beyond the initial situation, with at least one side better off and none worse off. In a bargaining interaction, however, each side attempts to extract greater concessions from the other by using its power (economic, military, or otherwise) to threaten some kind of costs in the bargains reversion outcome: the outcome if a successful bargain is not reached. Each concession a side gains moves it closer to its ideal point: the bargain it would strike if the other actor was

Saroka 2 completely powerless to resist, and which would be entirely in the dominant sides favor. A crisis bargaining situation is one in which that reversion outcome involves the use of force by at least one side. As any reversion outcome, such as a war, has utility costs for both sides that must be subtracted from the benefits of any material gains, this means that there is always a bargaining range of possible bargains that both sides will prefer over the reversion outcome, as this range will have equal or higher utility gains than the reversion outcome and so be more beneficial (Frieden, Lake, and Schultz). Despite the fact that there is always a range of mutually beneficial bargains that both sides would prefer to a reversion outcome of war, these are sometimes not seen or reached. There are three categories of general reasons why. The first is the category of credibility problems, as both sides have private information about their own capabilities and resolve, and thus incomplete information about those of the other side, along with incentives to misrepresent that to the other actor(s) in an attempt to extract greater concessions from them by making them think their reversion outcomes will be more costly. This may lead to mutual mistrust of each others statements, leaving both sides unable to identify a bargain. The second is the category of commitment problems, as both sides may be able to identify a bargain but may not trust each other to keep it. This could be due to bargaining over a good that gives its possessor future bargaining power, an actors rising power giving them the future power to revise any bargain struck (giving the other side a preventive war incentive to attack before they grow more powerful), or first-strike advantages giving greater benefits than any possible bargain to the first attacker for one or more sides. In all cases in this second category, one or more sides cannot credibly commit to keep a bargain. The third category is that of indivisibility issues, and states that no bargain may be possible if the good being bargained over is seen as indivisible: unable to

Saroka 3 be split without losing or diminishing in value. In this case, there may be no overlapping bargaining ranges, as each side desires all of the good (Frieden, Lake, and Schultz). At the center of the Syrian civil war is a bargaining failure between the Syrian regime (which will here be treated as a unitary actor with a single set of preferences and goals) and the protesting opposition, which grew out of peaceful anti-government protests in March 2011 during the broader Arab Spring movement (Kaphle). This was the beginning of a zero-sum bargaining interaction: any demands for reforms that the Assad regime met would necessarily have meant a decrease in its own dictatorial control over the institutions of government. At the start of these protests, demands for concessions such as the release of political prisoners (Kaphle) showed that there did exist a bargaining range of possible bargains both the regime and protesters would have likely preferred to civil war, such as release of those political prisoners and perhaps some limited reforms on the part of the regime. This bargaining interaction became a crisis bargaining interaction as the Syrian government deployed tanks into several centers of protest in May 2011 (Kaphle), in a move apparently meant to be agenda-setting: the excessive use of force signaled both the regimes unwillingness to settle for anything less than its ideal point, which seemed to be a cessation of protests, while simultaneously attempting to shrink the oppositions bargaining range closer to the regimes ideal point through the imposition of excessive costs on protesters. That attempt at deterrence failed, causing the protesters to coalesce into a rebel opposition that was fighting regime forces by early 2012 (Syria: The Story of the Conflict). At this point, the reversion outcome of the crisis bargaining between the Syrian regime and the newly formed rebellion was virtually ensured by a host of credibility, commitment, and indivisibility problems on both sides of the conflict. While the regimes early and repeated use of

Saroka 4 lethal force had helped to decrease private information about its resolve and capabilities, it ultimately became an exercise in failed brinksmanship: violently repressive regime action intended to demonstrate its resolve, and unnerve the protesters into backing down, had only provoked them into armed defiance. Both sides also faced commitment problems at this stage, as neither side could trust any kind of peace agreement: after Assads failed deterrence attempt the rebels would not trust him not to repress them if they began to disarm, and the Assad regime could not trust angry rebels to disarm even if there were an agreement. Additionally, Assads regime had preventive war incentives, as crushing the rebellion in the aftermath of a disarmament deal would have been relatively easy, and entirely expected due to Assads response to the initial protests. Finally, as the conflict escalated, it seems that both sides saw themselves as fighting over the legitimacy of their respective causes, and thus their survival truly indivisible goods that served to finalize the reversion outcome of civil war. Unfortunately, rebel opposition is a misleadingly homogenous term for a truly fractured side of the conflict. The rebel troops fighting in Syria are a mix of secular, moderate Islamist, and radical Islamist troops, including some al-Qaeda affiliated elements such as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, abbreviated as ISIS (The Jihadists). Radical Islamic elements enjoyed predominance amongst the rebel forces for a time, as Western hesitation over arming secular rebel groups due to fears of extremism ironically resulted in those same moderates losing influence to the radicals (Muir). However, secular and moderate rebel elements have been observed fighting ISIS in violent intra-rebellion clashes during the last few months, demonstrating that the secular and moderate rebels still have military power enough to violently assert their influence (The Jihadists). This is evidence of an implicit crisis bargaining failure, concerning the role of radical Islam in the rebellion, within the ranks of the rebellion itself.

Saroka 5 This bargaining interaction sees secular and moderate rebels on one side, and radical Islamist elements like ISIS on the other. In this case, the reversion outcome of intra-rebellion conflict is primarily due to an indivisibility problem, as the radicals appear to see their views of Islam as worth killing their erstwhile allies overthere is simply no overlapping bargaining range for such extremists. This all-or-nothing approach leaves little room for a bargain to be struck, and the commitment problem of prevention is present for both sides as well. Both sides have incentives to violently assert their ideological dominance over the rebellion before the other grows stronger, and so there is also a commitment problem in the form of preventive and preemptive war incentives between these rebel factions. The sheer number of different rebel factions also means that they are less likely to all have overlapping bargaining ranges, and are more likely to be unable to settle on a bargain that benefits all sides, especially in the face of extremism. However, the co-ordinated attacks on ISIS by both Western-backed and [moderate] Islamist rebel groups (Syria Conflict) show that both the secular and moderate rebel groups have very similar bargaining ranges in this interaction, as they coordinated their attacks on ISIS. Despite this similarity between some sections of the rebel opposition, the indivisibility problem outlined above makes it unsurprising that the reversion outcome of conflict has occurred amongst these rebel groups. Western governments have been generally reluctant to provide weapons to the opposition, due in large part to the spread of extremist elements (Arab Uprising), a concern not shared by the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, who actively seek Assads removal (Khan). At least one member of the Gulf Cooperation Council, Qatar, has supported this commitment by providing heavy weaponry to the rebels (Mazzetti et al.). Meanwhile, Assad has received military support from both Hezbollah fighters and Iran-supported troops (Muir). These

Saroka 6 elements of outside support may have created moral hazards for both sides, as it is possible that both regime and opposition are made more reckless by it, and thus are more willing to use it in an attempt to forcibly achieve outcomes closer to their ideal points. If so, this outside interference decreases the likelihood of successful bargaining even more, as this foreign help is possibly shifting the bargaining ranges of each side further out of alignment by exacerbating the rebel-regime bargaining troubles described above. Meanwhile, the opposition outside of Syria is composed of two competing bodies: the Syrian National Council, formed in 2011, and the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, formed in 2012 as the Syrian National Council faded from prominence due to infighting and tenuous connections to rebel fighters within the country (Syria Crisis). The presence of two outside groups of rebel leadership would make any bargaining interaction more complicated, and thus more likely to fail, for several reasons: the possibility of misaligned bargaining ranges between the rebel leaderships, incomplete information on each groups actual control and resolve, and incentives for both to misrepresent their influence in an attempt to get more concessions from the Syrian regime. Despite this, the UN-sponsored Geneva II peace talks (Syrian Peace Talks Open), which began this past January between the National Coalition and the Syrian government (What is the Geneva II conference?), seemed to hold out some hope for a renewal of bargaining between the rebels and the opposition. However, this bargaining interaction was plagued with as many credibility and commitment problems as those that came before it, and in retrospect its reversion outcome of the status quo of civil war was inevitable. The National Coalition possessed private information about the effective control it had over rebel forces actually fighting in Syria, and public disagreements amongst its splintered leadership (What is the Geneva II conference?) only meant that it had clear incentives to

Saroka 7 misrepresent its unity and control to the Syrian government in an attempt to extract greater policy concessions. This initial credibility issue overshadowed the talks and combined with an unwillingness on both sides to grant any serious concessions, to the point that the Syrian government and the National Council could not even agree on agendas for their meetings in the closing stages of the talks (Kendall). This was most likely due to the credibility problems outlined above and the indivisibility problem of the lack of common bargaining ranges, as shown by the lack of any serious concessions from either sideneither side seriously felt it could bargain with the other. The commitment problem of preventive war incentives, as both sides have strong incentives to renege on any peace deal in an attempt to gain a conclusive victory, was also present. The role of the National Coalition in this attempt at bargaining, which ultimately reached its reversion outcome of continued conflict, implicitly highlighted another major commitment issue in any bargaining solution to the Syrian civil war: the highly factionalized nature of both the Syrian rebel leadership and the splintered rebel fighter groups as described above. As both leadership and fighters have significant differences within their own ranks, this means that locating mutually overlapping bargaining ranges for all opposition groups are likely to be much more difficult, thus making any negotiations that much more likely to fail as some necessary actors refuse to support their outcomes (Cunningham). Additionally, both shifting alliances between opposition groups, as demonstrated by the ISIS-triggered infighting, and private information with incentives to misrepresent it due to the mistrust such fighting fosters, are presumably present among the rebel fighters participating in intra-rebellion fighting (Cunningham). These changing alliance and hidden bargaining ranges would only exacerbate the challenge of finding a bargain beneficial to all sides by further obscuring possible ranges.

Saroka 8 Finally, both fighter and leadership factions have incentives to hold out to get the best deal as the last signer in order to extract additional benefits for themselves from any peace deal (Cunningham), meaning that even identification of a bargaining range beneficial to all sides is no guarantee of a successful bargain. These commitment problems also make the Assad regime very wary of any proposed deal, since hidden information about the true bargaining ranges of the rebels means that it cannot be sure that any bargain offered will truly be honored by all rebel factions. On the larger international stage, the United States and Russia have had opposing interests in the situation, with Russia seeking to support its regional ally Assad (Rohde), while the US has verbally sought Assads removal since the beginning of the civil war (Myers). The UN has primarily condemned the violence for the duration of the civil war (UN: Syria Death Toll Rises), but from a bargaining perspective its most interesting role was in facilitating a chemical weapons disarmament deal brokered by the US and Russia through the UN and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (Security Council) after Assads usage of said weapons against civilians last fall (Singer). Given their opposing interests, this cooperative interaction between the US and Russia seemed surprising. However, it was actually well within the range of desirable outcomes for both sides. Russia was able to gain the political benefits of supporting a disarmament deal, while at the same time shielding its ally from the serious consequences threatened in the immediate aftermath of the chemical attacks, prolonging the Syrian regimes survival. America was also able to gain the political benefits of seeming to take decisive action on the crisis, while in reality sparing itself the diplomatic and military costs of an actual military intervention in Syria by

Saroka 9 withdrawing its threats of punitive military force in return for Russian cooperation (Gordon and Barnard Talks Over Syria). At its end, this was a positive-sum interaction for both actors. However, such cooperation has been and remains a rare occurrence in this situation. The primary issue here is that the interests of numerous actorsthe Syrian government, the rebel fighter factions and leadership, and even international actors like the US and Russiaappear to have slim to non-overlapping bargaining ranges. This has led to numerous bargaining interactions that have regressed to their reversion outcomes: continued war and conflict. Assads initial coercive use of force against protesters failed to force them to back down, instead convincing them that he was not interested in listening to their demands and that armed conflict was inevitable. This effectively shrunk the bargaining range at the outset, entailing several credibility and commitment problems that helped to lead to the reversion outcome of civil war. This has led to a civil war prolonged by the fact that both sides feel that they are fighting over an indivisible good: their survival and legitimacy. This means that negotiations between the two sides are also stalled, as their bargaining ranges are effectively non-overlapping, as demonstrated by the deadlock over the role or lack thereof of Assad in any transitional government (Gordon and Barnard Syrian Peace Talks Open With Vitriol). Within the rebel fighter groups some overlapping interests, such as the fall of Assad, have given way to failures of bargaining regarding the role of radical Islam in the revolution, leading to the observed recent intra-rebel conflicts. Furthermore, the fractured nature of the rebel leadership, combined with the splintered nature of the rebel fighter groups, entails a host of commitment problems as it effectively insures that the opposition will have considerable difficulty locating a bargaining range acceptable for all sides (Cunningham). This is a problem exacerbated by changing alliances, hidden information, and incentives for all rebel sides to

Saroka 10 refrain from agreeing to any peace deal to try to extract more concessions from their allies (Cunningham). This considerable difficulty combined with the preventive incentives of war for both the Syrian regime and the rebels to undermine the negotiations of the Geneva II peace talks. Given the lack of overlapping credible bargaining ranges in the vast majority of bargaining interactions between actors in this situation, including those intra-opposition bargains necessary for any successful peace talks, it is unlikely that the Syrian civil war will be resolved peaceably or quickly, as these bargaining commitment problems only serve to prolong the war by making any potential peace deals that much harder to locate (Cunningham). Without a major international peace enforcement effort, rendered extremely unlikely by Russias veto power on the United Nations Security Council, this situation could easily and perhaps already has become a war of attrition. The side with the greatest capabilities and strongest resolve to use them could eventually extract a bargain very close to its ideal point when the other side is largely powerless to resistand such a winner would probably be Syrias brutal regime, given its military advantages and the lack of effective international intervention. Such a point could only be reached after an unknown period of further, costly conflict; given the history of bargaining described here, this seems the most likely outcome.

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