The demise of the Cold War caught many, if not all, observers and participants alike by surprise. For much of the time between the end of World War II and the late 1980s/early 1990s, analysts and policymakers alike assumed that the East-West structural cleavage in world politics would remain unvarying. This cleavage was so paramount that it permeated and influenced world politics at all levels. In fact, for many observers every competition appeared, rightly or wrongly, as if it were a proxy struggle for the U.S.-Soviet rivalry. Then, abruptly, the central cleavage no longer existed. As a consequence, analysts and...

How do rivalries de-escalate and eventually terminate? Some international relations scholars argue that these outcomes depend on favorable background conditions that encourage adversaries to believe in the settlement of their outstanding disagreements.¹ Shifts in these background conditions create moments of opportunities or “ripeness” when peacemaking efforts have a chance to have positive outcomes. In other words, critical turning points occur when decision makers have the opportunity to pursue alternative strategies of conflict resolution. Which factor or combination of factors introduce critical choice points and why is left unclear.

We argue that an expectancy framework is best positioned to address these...

The Egyptian-Israeli antagonism has played a central role in the Arab-Israeli conflict in the post–World War II era. It accounts for five wars (the Palestine War of 1948, the Sinai War of 1956, the Six Day War of 1967, the War of Attrition of 1969–1970, and the October War of 1973), numerous international crises, and most of the interstate casualties in the Arab-Israeli conflict. The rivalry emerged in 1948 during the Palestine War and began de-escalating after the October War in 1973, a process that continued in some respects through 1979 with the signing of the Egyptian-Israeli Friendship...

If the first twenty-two years of the Egyptian-Israeli rivalry were characterized by little or no change in expectations, then the years 1971–1979 began an era of de-escalation and important shifts in this variable and the others that we stress as important. In this chapter, the expectancy model is applied in the context of two periods: the years 1971–1973, which were associated with failed peace initiatives, and the years 1974–1979, which coincided with major diplomatic agreements, such as Sinai I (1974), Sinai II (1975), the Camp David Accords (1978), and the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty (1979). Anwar Sadat emerged...

While the Egyptian-Israeli rivalry de-escalated to some less than full extent, sometimes described as a “cold peace,” Israel’s relationships with Syria and Palestinians, although also subject to windows of opportunity for de-escalation at various points in time, have failed to make much of a dent in either of the other key antagonistic relationships that have been central to Arab-Israeli conflict. In this respect, the comparison between these two cases and the Egyptian-Israeli outcome offers an excellent opportunity to see whether or to what extent our expectancy model can distinguish among the cases. This chapter first examines the ups and downs...

The Indo-Pakistani rivalry has proven to be one of the most enduring conflicts of the post–World War II era. It has resulted in four wars (1947–1948, 1965, 1971, and 1999) and multiple crises, several of which almost culminated in war. Since 1998, this rivalry has also acquired an overt nuclear dimension. Unilateral, bilateral, and multilateral efforts to bring it to a close have proven to be mostly fruitless. The origins of this rivalry have been discussed at length elsewhere (Ganguly 1994; Paul 2005). Suffice it to say that the conflict can be traced to the process of British...

What we have been describing in earlier chapters resembles the following account. A dyad or pair of states at time t is characterized by a relationship described as rivalry that, in turn, is predicated on a mutual set of expectations about each side’s adversary and the ability to deal with the adversary. The consequent rivalry behavior reflects a routine of strategies developed by both sides to deal with the problems posed by their opponent. Given the right sort of conditions, such as the confluence of shocks, consolidated policy entrepreneurs, reciprocity, and reinforcement, expectational revision may occur. Some change in strategies...

In Chapters 1 and 2, we presented and developed our argument that some types of interstate rivalry terminations can be explained with a small handful of variables. It was noted that a respectable number of rivalries terminate simply because one or both sides acquiesce to the superior strength of their adversary. They are beaten in wars, eclipsed by transition dynamics, or simply are forced to acknowledge that they are unable to maintain their competition. In other words, they are no longer in the same league. These rivalry terminations are not difficult to explain. Other rivalries, however, cannot be explained by...