Cornell Studies in Security Affairs. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2019. xiv, 197 pp. US$39.95, cloth. ISBN 978-1-5017-3220-1.
Oriana Skylar Mastro’s The Costs of Conversation: Obstacles to Peace Talks in Wartime draws on Chinese, American, Soviet, Indian, and Vietnamese archival materials that have been newly declassified along with data that has never been used by scholars. She covers the wartime diplomacy of Asian conflicts during the Cold War, a framework “for understanding when and how states incorporate talking with the enemy into their war-fighting strategies” (6) and reinterpretation of previous scholarship that incorporates some new primary research. She treats current concerns within a broad historical and theoretical context, explores the depth and scope of presumed factors and constraints that influence states’ decisions about whether to talk to their enemies during wars, and underscores the complexity and abiding tensions inherent in the relationship between the open and the closed diplomatic posture.
Chapters of The Costs of Conversation examine a wide range of cases of “how states calculate the costs of conversation throughout a war” (126). Four distinct cases of such war diplomacy are identified: Chinese decision-making during the Korean War and the China-India War of 1962, India’s diplomatic decision-making during the aforementioned China-India War, and North Vietnamese diplomatic decisions during the Vietnam War. Mastro offers a convincing analysis of the strategic costs of conversation by studying these four organically correlated cases. She also investigates the theoretical and practical implications of such conversations for a war’s duration and ultimate termination. From the point of view of international relations historiography, The Costs of Conversation is an outstanding monograph that combines macro analysis and micro arguments, and demonstrates an academic breakthrough.
Mastro seeks to provide a comprehensive theory for when leaders are willing to talk to each other during a conflict, and why they sometimes refuse. Mastro explores the framework to understand the dynamic of war diplomacy and offers a systematic portrait of the combination of factors that have driven countries to take interrelated postures and actions. She provides an excellent discussion of how decision makers must weigh factors such as “likelihood” and “strategic capability.” As Mastro points out, likelihood means an “adversary will infer weakness in the form of reduced war aims, degraded ability to fight, or waning resolve from an open diplomatic posture,” and strategic capability stands for “the ability of the enemy to respond to such an inference by escalating, intensifying, or prolonging the fighting” (126).
Unsurprisingly, the author is at her best when she deals with the factors that “influence states’ decisions about talking to the enemy during wars and how future generations of policymakers can shape those factors for the sake of peace” (141). Why and how decision makers choose a diplomatic posture is the crux of her argument. Mastro also sheds new light on the role of changing beliefs to determine the strategy of diplomatic posture on the part of decision makers. How much of a role did domestic politics play? What domestic concerns or international factors were most influential in determining the costs of conversation (28–29)? Mastro highlights the interplay between the factors that she believes to be critical to the strategic costs of conversation. Her research and analysis of the origins, meanings, and implications of the strategic nature of diplomatic posture are persuasive. In her discussion about the costly conversation thesis, Mastro rightly points out that “when the strategic costs are low, states will choose an open diplomatic posture; when the costs are high, they will choose a closed diplomatic posture” (9).
What is striking in The Costs of Conversation are the implications for contemporary issues. The book brings us not only to an understanding of the costly conversation framework during the Cold War, but also to a realization of how equally important it is in the present times. Mastro correctly notes that “leaders fighting interstate wars have considered the strategic costs of conversation above all else when deciding on a diplomatic posture” (126). Most importantly, as she points out, the future generations of policy makers “should consider establishing openness to wartime talks as official standard policy before conflict erupts” and “should reevaluate their tendency to rely primarily on coercion—whether through use of force, threats, or sanctions—to get an adversary to the negotiating table” (139–140).
Mastro’s research is undoubtedly challenging; a new perspective rarely comes, however, without questions. Although she stresses “additional research could evaluate the conditions under which mediation is effective at getting all belligerents to shift to open diplomatic postures” (132), there is little discussion in her book of the role of mediators. The declassified archives demonstrate the critical roles of India’s mediators in the Korean War and of the Six Colombo Conference powers in the 1962 War. She makes a convincing case that the role of mediators should be rethought.
Brilliant in its methodological approach and replete with inspirational analysis, The Costs of Conversation deserves praise for its extensive research using both primary and secondary sources. Mastro’s book contains detailed overviews of the general historical and political context, and her analytical framework and conclusions, which are argued succinctly and persuasively throughout, should be taken seriously by both scholars working in the field and by leaders. For those already familiar with the context, the book should prove a major contribution both to the research of countries’ diplomatic postures and to explorations of the global order. Though some of the book’s details may still be open to challenge, Mastro’s research is a useful addition to the growing literature on Cold War international history and international relations theory.
Dai Chaowu
Yunnan University, Kunming