戦争終結の理論

――平和の回復をめぐるジレンマ――

抄録

Termination of war is a “bridge” between war and peace. However, comparing with other research topics of the International Relations (IR) discipline, the subject of the end of war remains highly understudied in both qualitative and quantities terms. In fact “restoration” of interstate relationship presupposes “collapse” of them. War termination phenomena deserves more scholarly attentions if understanding the transition process from the collapse to restoration of interstate relations goes at the heart of the entire IR discipline.

This paper purports to answer the question of how wars end. It presents the concept of “the dilemmas between the compromised peace and the fundamental settlement of cause of conflict” and argues that costs, future risks, and relative importance of them are an independent variable that shape the equilibrium point to solve these dilemmas. These are often malleable as an outcome of interactive processes among the belligerents. In order to advance this argument, the paper takes the following steps.

First, in reviewing the existing theoretical literature on war termination, this paper categorizes them into four approaches as: power politics; rational choice; domestic politics; and cognitive psychology, and reviews them systematically.

Second, it claims that the analytical frameworks of war termination as power politics and rational choice approach offer more useful analytical leverage than domestic politics and cognitive psychology approach. As such this article focuses on the relations between compromise and fundamental elimination of cause of conflict, on the top of power. Although the winning belligerent can eliminate fundamental cause of conflict in order to eradicate the root of future trouble by imposing unconditional surrender on its hostiles, entailed costs will increase. On the other hand, if it chooses the compromised peace to avoid increasing its warfighting costs, there would be a problem that it only postpones the rise of an unavoidable battle in the future. So this article presents the following hypotheses: (1) in the case that the level of warfighting cost is high and future risk will be low for winning side, the form of war termination would tend to attain the compromised peace; (2) in the case of the level of costs is low and future risk will be high for prevailing side, the form of war termination would tend to attain the fundamental settlement of cause of conflict; (3) in the case of the level of costs and future risk in ascendant side are balanced, the form of war termination would be indeterminate and strategic interactions among the belligerents would decide the equilibrium point to overcome this dilemmas.

Third, this article provides the illustration of the above hypotheses through actual historical case studies such as termination of the Gulf War in 1991, the Iraq War in 2003, and the Pacific War in 1945.