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How Wars End
Why do some countries choose to end wars short of total victory while others fight on, sometimes in the face of appalling odds? How Wars End argues that two central factors shape war-termination decision information about the balance of power and the resolve of one's enemy, and fears that the other side's commitment to abide by a war-ending peace settlement may not be credible.
Dan Reiter explains how information about combat outcomes and other factors may persuade a warring nation to demand more or less in peace negotiations, and why a country might refuse to negotiate limited terms and instead tenaciously pursue absolute victory if it fears that its enemy might renege on a peace deal. He fully lays out the theory and then tests it on more than twenty cases of war-termination behavior, including decisions during the American Civil War, the two world wars, and the Korean War. Reiter helps solve some of the most enduring puzzles in military history, such as why Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, why Germany in 1918 renewed its attack in the West after securing peace with Russia in the East, and why Britain refused to seek peace terms with Germany after France fell in 1940.
How Wars End concludes with a timely discussion of twentieth-century American foreign policy, framing the Bush Doctrine's emphasis on preventive war in the context of the theory.
Dan Reiter explains how information about combat outcomes and other factors may persuade a warring nation to demand more or less in peace negotiations, and why a country might refuse to negotiate limited terms and instead tenaciously pursue absolute victory if it fears that its enemy might renege on a peace deal. He fully lays out the theory and then tests it on more than twenty cases of war-termination behavior, including decisions during the American Civil War, the two world wars, and the Korean War. Reiter helps solve some of the most enduring puzzles in military history, such as why Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, why Germany in 1918 renewed its attack in the West after securing peace with Russia in the East, and why Britain refused to seek peace terms with Germany after France fell in 1940.
How Wars End concludes with a timely discussion of twentieth-century American foreign policy, framing the Bush Doctrine's emphasis on preventive war in the context of the theory.
320 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
March 21, 2024
THESIS: Two main factors lead to the end of wars: information and treaty credibility. Wars happen because states are uncertain of each other’s capabilities, fighting can give them more information, and when states realize that either defeat is most likely or victory is not necessary, they will move to end fighting (fits with Schelling bargaining theory). More importantly, Reiter shows that the second factor is crucial because if one state thinks that the other’s commitment to stop fighting is not credible (because you can’t enforce agreements in an anarchic system), they will be motivated to NOT end a war and continue to an absolute victory or a victory that ensures the other state will not be able to break the agreement at all (sound familiar?).
Basic argument that, yes, helps explain certain current events but I was hoping for some more novelty (although I think the commitment credibility analysis was novel when this was published). Shamefully made me miss a certain hunter elective and teacher… let’s not think about it.
Basic argument that, yes, helps explain certain current events but I was hoping for some more novelty (although I think the commitment credibility analysis was novel when this was published). Shamefully made me miss a certain hunter elective and teacher… let’s not think about it.
November 17, 2025
By the time I finished reading How Wars End by Dan Reiter, I was no longer interested in the thesis of the book: why do some wars stop on limited terms while others are fought to the bitter end? But rather something else totally different: BLACK EMANCIPATION. Blacks think that they fought for their freedom from the whites, but they fought nothing. It was a military strategy by the Union to get more people to fight the Confederates because they (the Union) did not have the numbers. Wajinga sisi! Stay with me.
Let’s be done with how wars end (overally): after defeats/victory, when enough information has been generated to close the gap in expectations between the two sides; when there is regime change, occupation, or even the destruction of the enemy’s power base; or after negotiated terms.
Now, the crux: emancipation as a military strategy in the American Civil War—the Union raised its war aims in 1862 to include emancipation of Southern slaves, and Abraham Lincoln refused to retreat from emancipation even when the war went badly and his own re-election seemed in doubt. Radical Republicans and abolitionists wanted to arm and enlist black men, after a string of battlefield disappointments and desperate calls from commanders for more troops, and thus emancipation was a “military necessity”, encouraging Southern blacks to join the Union army while simultaneously withdrawing their labour from the Confederate war effort. In conversations with his cabinet, Lincoln framed the policy explicitly in strategic terms: “We must free the slaves or be ourselves subdued.”
So, there it is: The timing of the Emancipation Proclamation was “purely strategic”, not because a moral epiphany suddenly transformed the whites, but because it promised to increase Union capabilities and shorten the war. And then a white activist was paid to push the narrative, and blacks joined the fray, and humpty-dumpty they went singing of freedom and evils of slavery. Even when there were calls to revoke it, Lincoln refused, because he believed it was now vital to Union military power. He feared that reversing emancipation would halt black recruitment, prompt mass desertion among black soldiers already serving, and effectively double the enemy by returning those men to slavery and to the Confederate labour pool.
In short, emancipation had become non-negotiable not because black freedom was sacred in itself, but because it had become structurally embedded in the Union’s war-fighting capacity and post-war settlement. See, blacks wherever you are, how you are manipulated/played like a grand piano? Need say no more.
Black freedom is not an independent, unconditional good. It was contingent, granted at the point where it served the security and political needs of the whites. Don’t lie to yourselves, Black Lives (Don’t) Matter, White Survival is Reigns, constrained by white interests and state-building priorities. The same state that “freed” enslaved people did so in a way that maximised its own power, left room for new systems of racial control after the war, and never relinquished its authority to define the terms of black citizenship.
As a work of political science, How Wars End is rigorous, clearly written, and impressively synthetic. For readers interested in the ethics and politics of liberation, the Civil War chapter is especially valuable because it strips away comforting myths and forces us to confront emancipation as a calculated wartime move. The big question you should ask yourself whenever states proclaim “liberation” is: liberation for whom, on whose terms, and in service of which strategic goals?
Let’s be done with how wars end (overally): after defeats/victory, when enough information has been generated to close the gap in expectations between the two sides; when there is regime change, occupation, or even the destruction of the enemy’s power base; or after negotiated terms.
Now, the crux: emancipation as a military strategy in the American Civil War—the Union raised its war aims in 1862 to include emancipation of Southern slaves, and Abraham Lincoln refused to retreat from emancipation even when the war went badly and his own re-election seemed in doubt. Radical Republicans and abolitionists wanted to arm and enlist black men, after a string of battlefield disappointments and desperate calls from commanders for more troops, and thus emancipation was a “military necessity”, encouraging Southern blacks to join the Union army while simultaneously withdrawing their labour from the Confederate war effort. In conversations with his cabinet, Lincoln framed the policy explicitly in strategic terms: “We must free the slaves or be ourselves subdued.”
So, there it is: The timing of the Emancipation Proclamation was “purely strategic”, not because a moral epiphany suddenly transformed the whites, but because it promised to increase Union capabilities and shorten the war. And then a white activist was paid to push the narrative, and blacks joined the fray, and humpty-dumpty they went singing of freedom and evils of slavery. Even when there were calls to revoke it, Lincoln refused, because he believed it was now vital to Union military power. He feared that reversing emancipation would halt black recruitment, prompt mass desertion among black soldiers already serving, and effectively double the enemy by returning those men to slavery and to the Confederate labour pool.
In short, emancipation had become non-negotiable not because black freedom was sacred in itself, but because it had become structurally embedded in the Union’s war-fighting capacity and post-war settlement. See, blacks wherever you are, how you are manipulated/played like a grand piano? Need say no more.
Black freedom is not an independent, unconditional good. It was contingent, granted at the point where it served the security and political needs of the whites. Don’t lie to yourselves, Black Lives (Don’t) Matter, White Survival is Reigns, constrained by white interests and state-building priorities. The same state that “freed” enslaved people did so in a way that maximised its own power, left room for new systems of racial control after the war, and never relinquished its authority to define the terms of black citizenship.
As a work of political science, How Wars End is rigorous, clearly written, and impressively synthetic. For readers interested in the ethics and politics of liberation, the Civil War chapter is especially valuable because it strips away comforting myths and forces us to confront emancipation as a calculated wartime move. The big question you should ask yourself whenever states proclaim “liberation” is: liberation for whom, on whose terms, and in service of which strategic goals?
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June 9, 2025So this book isn’t *actually* about how wars end. Reiter doesn’t give a concrete answer. It’s more about war duration and why credible commitment problems draw out wars that information problems start.
April 11, 2018
Such scholarly effort wasted in hammering an idea (committment more important than informatio in wars) into the evidence.
November 7, 2009
This book attempts to build on Fearon's famous article on warfare and commitment problems using historical case studies to focus on war-termination behavior. Reiter's fundamental argument is that war-termination behavior is better explained by the commitment problem than by the information problem. There are many situations in which battle outcomes (and their theoretical effect on the information possessed by both adversaries about capabilities and stakes) would seem to predict a rapid conclusion to conflict where empirical evidence reveals conflict continuance or even escalation. Reiter notes that awareness of commitment problems attending negotiated settlement between a set of adversaries shapes the conflict behavior prior to such a settlement. While the book adds some complexity and interesting insights, it doesn't substantively expand beyond Fearon's basic thesis. Furthermore his implicit conclusion that absolute war is often the only way of dealing with commitment problems of negotiated settlements and his categorization of "regime change" as being a form of "absolute warfare" is misleading and wrong headed. The shadow of the Bush Iraq War experience lies heavily upon this book and distorts the argument's clarity and potential influence.
January 27, 2016
Reiter's book seeks to explain under what conditions wars end, and when stats are willing to make concessions to their competitors. He discusses conflict as a form of information sharing, in which both sides signal their commitment and aims. This is the "information problem"; conflict breaks out because neither side knows fully what each others' intentions are. A more serious problem, however, is the commitment problem, that neither side can trust the other. This leads to continued fighing even in the face of defeat.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews