Seminar By Salvatore Modica

06.06.2017

Intervention and Peace

Seminar by Salvatore Modica, Università di Palermo

Intervention often does not lead to peace, but rather to prolonged coflict. Indeed, we document that it is an important source of prolonged conflicts. We introduce a theoretical model of the balance of power to explain why this should be the case and to analyze how peace can be achieved: either a cold peace between hostile neighbors or the peace of the strong dominating the weak. Non-intervention generally leads to peace after defeat of the weak. Cold peace can be achieved with suffciently strong outside intervention. The latter is thus optimal if the goal of policy is to prevent the strong from dominating the weak.