Stalemate and the Termination of Civil War: Rhodesia Reassessed
| Published date | 01 January 2004 |
| Date | 01 January 2004 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0022343304040050 |
| Subject Matter | Journal Article |
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Introduction
‘Stalemate is easily the most important con-
dition of a settlement’, wrote George
Modelski (1964: 143) of the negotiated
termination of civil war. The field of civil war
termination has advanced much in the inter-
vening decades, but stalemate – whose com-
ponents are almost always implicitly
(Zartman, 2000: 231–232) or explicitly
(Mooradian & Druckman, 1999: 712–713)
assumed to be military – remains at the heart
of most theories of negotiated civil war
termination. William Zartman provides the
most important recent incarnation of the
stalemate. Recognizing the contribution of
the ‘war as an extension of economics’ school,
which stresses the often supportable and even
profitable nature of stalemate in civil war,
Zartman (1983, 2000) emphasizes the
importance of a mutually hurting stalemate.
Together with the construction of a mutually
enticing opportunity for exit from conflict,
the perception of such a deadlock by the
combatants makes for a ‘ripe moment’ pro-
pitious for civil war termination. Meanwhile,
components that contribute to the mutually
hurting stalemate include ‘escalation’ and the
‘turning point’. Escalation is a ‘significant
change in the nature of the conflict in the
direction of increased violence as distinct
© 2004 Journal of Peace Research,
vol. 41, no. 1, 2004, pp. 65–83
Sage Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA
and New Delhi) www.sagepublications.com
DOI 10.1177/0022343304040050
Stalemate and the Termination of Civil War:
Rhodesia Reassessed*
MATTHEW PRESTON
Global Issues Research Group, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, London
Investigating the Rhodesian war of 1972–80, and the military circumstances surrounding the success-
ful Lancaster House peace conference of 1979, this article investigates the utility of the concept of ‘stale-
mate’ in civil war termination. It finds that there was a rough military parity in Rhodesia in 1979.
Zimbabwean guerrilla tactics were proving effective, undermining the settler state’s systems of rural rule,
increasing recruitment and neutralizing the peasant population. Meanwhile, Rhodesian counter-
measures failed to halt guerrilla infiltration. Focusing too heavily on killing guerrillas rather than pro-
tecting the rural population and with a weakening economy and disjointed command-and-control
system, the Rhodesian authorities failed to derive significant benefits from attempting to win ‘hearts
and minds’, allying with African paramilitaries and moderate nationalists, and attacking guerrilla bases
in Zambia and Mozambique. However, despite escalation between 1976 and 1979, the Rhodesian
regime was not defeated. But there was no stalemate: the fighting was too intense, it was too explicitly
political in character and, though the British mediators felt that there was military parity, the belliger-
ents themselves all expected to win. The acceptance of a negotiated settlement is not explained by ‘dead-
lock’, ‘escalation’ or ‘turning point’; instead, it derived from developments within the belligerent factions
and from leverage exercised by regional patrons. Military factors helped determine the shape of the
settlement, but not the achievement of it.
* The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own
and should not be taken as an expression of the UK govern-
ment. Correspondence: matthew.preston@fco.gov.uk.
04 040050 (ds) 18/11/03 1:05 pm Page 65
from a gradual intensification of conflict with
no definable change in its nature’ (Zartman,
1995: 18–19). The turning point serves to
reinforce belligerents’ awareness of the futility
of continued fighting. The sources of turning
points can include an inconclusive defeat, a
bloody stand-off that suddenly brings costs
home, a loss of foreign support or an increase
in foreign pressure, or a shift in fortunes that
weakens the stronger side or strengthens the
weaker.
Attacked, supported and used by scholars
and policymakers such as Kleiboer (1994),
Hampson (1996), Licklider (1993),
Stedman (1991), Rubin (1991) and
Goulding (2002), Zartman’s concept of the
mutually hurting stalemate has remained
central to the study of civil war termination.
Yet, in truth, beyond the basic principle that
belligerents in civil war prefer not to make a
negotiated compromise when victory on the
battlefield is only a stone’s throw away (a
hardly surprising conclusion), we actually
have very little systematic idea of how
military developments impact on the
prospects for a successful settlement. In
practice, it has been difficult to refine the
common usage of the word ‘stalemate’ into
an analytically robust concept. The ‘deadlock
that keeps both parties from achieving their
goals’ obscures the point that war aims
change in the course of war, and that
‘achievement’ is a matter of degree. Even
when stalemate hurts, it rarely does so evenly
to all sides. The belligerent that is hurting
least may therefore hold out hopes for
victory. Zartman himself (2000; Zartman &
Aurik, 1991) is unclear, meanwhile, on
whether it is the cost of the current escala-
tion that pushes parties to negotiate, or the
fear of imminent escalation.
However, perhaps most important is the
question of perception. Like Pillar (1983:
196), Zartman (2000: 229) stresses that
stalemate occurs only when the belligerents
perceive it to. As he claims, though, certain
combatants can experience ‘resistant reac-
tions’, where psychological, cultural and/or
ideological factors ensure that stalemate
increases rather than decreases resistance to
settlement. But even among ‘rational’ bel-
ligerents, stalemate is not easily perceived.
An analytically robust concept of stalemate
must take account not just of current battle-
field conditions, but of belligerents’ beliefs
about their future military prospects. To
believe they will not be able to win in the
future, states Smith (1995: 15), both sides
must agree on their relative bargaining power
and the likelihood of that bargaining power
changing over time. Such assessments of
relative strengths are notoriously difficult to
make for the outside observer, let alone the
belligerent. The periodic, diffuse and
seasonal nature of fighting in most civil wars
makes ‘success’ extremely difficult to assess.
In addition, apart from one’s own and the
enemy’s present strength, one has to consider
latent strength, which may involve not only
financial, economic and manpower factors,
but also levels of morale and the frequent
uncertainty surrounding the extent and
possibility of outside help. At the same time,
though, to reduce the mutually hurting stale-
mate only to the level of perception and so
detach it entirely from objective reality, as
Zartman (2000: 238) comes close to doing,
risks abandoning the important task of
understanding how civil war dynamics can
produce such perceptions.
Theoretically, there would appear to be
strong prima facie reasons for treating the
concept of stalemate with caution. However,
the purpose of this article is to investigate the
concept empirically and qualitatively. By
looking at the civil war in Rhodesia between
1972 and 1979–80, investigating the
strategies employed by the Zimbabwean
guerrillas and the Rhodesian security forces
and assessing their relative performance by
the time of the successful Lancaster House
peace conference of 1979, I aim to illustrate
journal of PEACE RESEARCH volume 41 / number 1 / january 2004
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