Stalemate and the Termination of Civil War: Rhodesia Reassessed

Investigating the Rhodesian war of 1972–80, and the military circumstances surrounding the successful Lancaster House peace conference of 1979, this article investigates the utility of the concept of ‘stalemate’ 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 countermeasures failed to halt guerrilla infiltration. Focusing too heavily on killing guerrillas rather than protecting 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 belligerents themselves all expected to win. The acceptance of a negotiated settlement is not explained by ‘deadlock’, ‘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.