In January 1995 fighting broke out between Ecuadorean and Peruvian military forces in a remote section of the Amazon that ultimately cost hundreds and perhaps even more than a thousand lives.¹ Ecuador refused to abandon outposts constructed in territory it disputed with Peru. As the fighting quickly escalated before becoming bogged down for some thirty-four days, first dismay and then determination gripped the Western Hemisphere. How could fighter bombers, helicopters, land mines, surface-to-air missiles, and thousands of troops be converging rapidly on a far-off section of the jungle? How could tanks, warships, and thousands more troops be mobilized in reserve,...

Like any pair of countries, particularly two that share a common border, Ecuador and Peru have had both converging and conflicting interests throughout their historical relationship. In this chapter we situate one particular conflict, the border war of 1995, in its historical context to help understand why the conflict characteristics loomed so large in this relationship. That context has three important components: one internal to each country, one bilateral, and a third regional in nature. With the 1995 war placed within these broader historical dynamics, the second part of this chapter explains why this war broke out between two elected...

Institutions constrain political leaders’ behavior and policy choices. By establishing precedents and constitutional guarantees, institutions lend legitimacy to certain themes while denying it to others. They also affect, directly and indirectly, who can participate in the domestic political game as well as how.¹ The institutional context is not determining, but it does affect which interests matter and what leaders need to do in order to maintain the support of their policy constituencies. The leaders’ skill in devising new responses to their constituencies’ interests (innovativeness) and their willingness to try them out (risk acceptance) help us understand the degree to which...

This chapter analyzes the domestic political dynamics that produced war between Ecuador and Peru in 1995. Because the decision to respond to one of a series of minor border engagements by escalating to war was taken at the highest levels of government, we focus on the policy-making context in which the decision was made. While the broader context for the 1995 war includes both international and domestic factors, we argue that domestic considerations were determinant in producing the actual decision to fight. Therefore we focus our analysis largely on these factors.

In his analysis of interstate militarized disputes in Latin...

The 1995 war changed the international, bilateral, and domestic contexts in which this border dispute evolved. This chapter analyzes the domestic political dynamics among civilian politicians, diplomats, and military officers in Ecuador and Peru after 1995 that permitted adjustments in the negotiating positions of the two sides, thereby making resolution a realistic possibility. In Chapter 6 we examine the international changes produced by the war which helped Ecuadorean and Peruvian leaders actually achieve resolution.

The analysis does not focus on which side was “right” or make a judgment on the merits of the cases presented by the two sides. Over...

Diplomacy is an ancient tool used by states to promote cooperation as well as war. Perhaps diplomacy’s greatest challenge lies in overcoming the residues of distrust produced by the existence of anarchy in the international system. States may want to cooperate, but they need to consummate bargains on important issues to bring that cooperation to fruition. The priority that states give to those issues makes it fundamental that the credibility of goodwill and the transparency of cooperation win out over efforts to maximize gains by deception and treachery.

We have seen thus far that prior diplomatic efforts failed to resolve...

The economic benefits of a resolution of the boundary dispute were clear to both Ecuador and Peru. At the same time, however, some observers felt that such benefits, while positive, were unlikely to have a significant macroeconomic effect on either country.¹ Diplomats on both sides were interested in putting the dispute behind them. Yet the dispute festered for another fifty years after war and a peace treaty ostensibly had produced a settlement. With hindsight, we can describe the Ecuador-Peru boundary dispute as not yet “ripe” for resolution; from our analytic perspective that means that political leaders on both sides would...