Adversarial
The Taming of The Red Dragon: The Militarized Worldview and China's Use of Force, 1949-2001
Xiaoting Li
Foreign Policy Analysis, forthcoming
Abstract:
For a long time, the People's Republic of China was known to be prone to use military force to settle foreign policy crises or interstate disputes. Extending Alexander Wendt's analysis of different cultures of anarchy, I argue that Beijing's famed violence proneness - that is, its propensity to use force - was historically a product of the militarized or Hobbesian worldview held by China's leaders during Mao's reign, when the PRC acted as a revolutionary challenger against the international system. Since Mao's death, however, China has been increasingly integrated into the system and, consequently, has experienced a Lockean turn in its worldview, which softens its predilection for violence. A systematic, quantitative test of my theory provides strong evidence that the evolution of China's militarized worldview, rather than its expanding relative power, played a key role in driving Beijing's resort to force between 1949 and 2001.
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Testing the Surge: Why Did Violence Decline in Iraq in 2007?
Stephen Biddle, Jeffrey Friedman & Jacob Shapiro
International Security, Summer 2012, Pages 7-40
Abstract:
Why did violence decline in Iraq in 2007? Many policymakers and scholars credit the "surge," or the program of U.S. reinforcements and doctrinal changes that began in January 2007. Others cite the voluntary insurgent stand-downs of the Sunni Awakening or say that the violence had simply run its course with the end of a wave of sectarian cleansing; still others credit an interaction between the surge and the Awakening. The difference matters for policy and scholarship, yet this debate has not moved from hypothesis to test. An assessment of the competing claims based on recently declassified data on violence at local levels and information gathered from seventy structured interviews with coalition participants finds little support for the cleansing or Awakening theses. Instead, a synergistic interaction between the surge and the Awakening was required for violence to drop as quickly and widely as it did: both were necessary; neither was sufficient. U.S. policy thus played an important role in reducing the violence in Iraq in 2007, but Iraq provides no evidence that similar methods will produce similar results elsewhere without local equivalents of the Sunni Awakening.
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Poverty and Support for Militant Politics: Evidence from Pakistan
Graeme Blair et al.
American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Policy debates on strategies to end extremist violence frequently cite poverty as a root cause of support for the perpetrating groups. There is little evidence to support this contention, particularly in the Pakistani case. Pakistan's urban poor are more exposed to the negative externalities of militant violence and may in fact be less supportive of the groups. To test these hypotheses we conducted a 6,000-person, nationally representative survey of Pakistanis that measured affect toward four militant organizations. By applying a novel measurement strategy, we mitigate the item nonresponse and social desirability biases that plagued previous studies due to the sensitive nature of militancy. Contrary to expectations, poor Pakistanis dislike militants more than middle-class citizens. This dislike is strongest among the urban poor, particularly those in violent districts, suggesting that exposure to terrorist attacks reduces support for militants. Long-standing arguments tying support for violent organizations to income may require substantial revision.
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Ballistic Missiles and International Conflict
Simon Mettler & Dan Reiter
Journal of Conflict Resolution, forthcoming
Abstract:
Governments are concerned about the dangers posed by ballistic missiles. However, there is almost no theoretical or empirical scholarship on ballistic missiles. This article presents and tests the conventional wisdom that the spread of ballistic missiles makes conflict more likely. Original data on ballistic missiles and on crisis initiation is collected, and analysis using a variety of statistical models is conducted. It is found that among all directed dyads from 1946 to 2007, potential challengers possessing ballistic missiles are significantly more likely to initiate international crises. Further, potential targets armed with ballistic missiles are significantly less likely to be challenged. Crises are less likely to escalate when targets are armed with missiles. The results are obtained after accounting for several control variables. Analysis reveals that the findings are not affected by possible endogeneity bias. The analysis also reveals complex interactive effects between ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons on the onset of international crises.
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When Duty Calls: A Pragmatic Standard of Humanitarian Intervention
Robert Pape
International Security, Summer 2012, Pages 41-80
Abstract:
When should the United States and other members of the international community intervene to stop a government from harming its own citizens? Since World War II, the main standard for intervention has been the high bar of genocide, although the international community has rarely acted to stop it. The main alternative - the "responsibility to protect" - would set the bar so low that virtually every instance of anarchy or tyranny would create unbounded obligations beyond the capacity of states to fulfill. A new standard - the pragmatic standard of humanitarian intervention - can help guide decisionmakers on when to intervene to stop governments from targeting their own citizens. The standard has three requirements: (1) an ongoing campaign of mass homicide sponsored by the government; (2) a viable plan for intervention with reasonable estimates of low casualties for the intervening forces; and (3) a workable strategy for creating lasting local security for the threatened population. The pragmatic standard was met in the recent successful intervention in Libya as well as in other cases over the last twenty years, and it should become the basis for deciding which humanitarian crises justify international intervention in the future.
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Laura Dugan & Erica Chenoweth
American Sociological Review, August 2012, Pages 597-624
Abstract:
Rational choice approaches to reducing terrorist violence would suggest raising the costs of terrorism through punishment, thereby reducing the overall expected utility of terrorism. In this article, we argue that states should also consider raising the expected utility of abstaining from terrorism through rewards. We test effects of repressive (or punishing) and conciliatory (or rewarding) actions on terrorist behavior using the newly developed GATE-Israel dataset, which identifies events by Israeli state actors toward Palestinian targets on a full range of counterterrorism tactics and policies from 1987 to 2004. Results show that repressive actions are either unrelated to terror or related to subsequent increases in terror, and conciliatory actions are generally related to decreases in terror, depending on the tactical period. Findings also reveal the importance of understanding the role of terrorists' constituencies for reducing violence.
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Point process modelling of the Afghan War Diary
Andrew Zammit-Mangion et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 31 July 2012, Pages 12414-12419
Abstract:
Modern conflicts are characterized by an ever increasing use of information and sensing technology, resulting in vast amounts of high resolution data. Modelling and prediction of conflict, however, remain challenging tasks due to the heterogeneous and dynamic nature of the data typically available. Here we propose the use of dynamic spatiotemporal modelling tools for the identification of complex underlying processes in conflict, such as diffusion, relocation, heterogeneous escalation, and volatility. Using ideas from statistics, signal processing, and ecology, we provide a predictive framework able to assimilate data and give confidence estimates on the predictions. We demonstrate our methods on the WikiLeaks Afghan War Diary. Our results show that the approach allows deeper insights into conflict dynamics and allows a strikingly statistically accurate forward prediction of armed opposition group activity in 2010, based solely on data from previous years.
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Misplaced Blame: Foreign Aid and the Consequences of UN Security Council Membership
Omar Bashir & Darren Lim
Journal of Conflict Resolution, forthcoming
Abstract:
In a well-publicized finding, Bueno de Mesquita and Smith argue that temporary members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) suffer politically and economically because they receive elevated inflows of foreign aid in exchange for votes. Closer examination of the data reveals a lack of support for this claim. Even when the analysis is limited to countries that do not enjoy temporarily increased aid during tenure, UNSC membership retains an association with poor outcomes that are disproportionately strong in nondemocratic countries, contrary to the expectation generated by selectorate theory. A separate least-likely test specification further weakens the case against foreign aid. The authors postulate and weigh alternative explanations. Temporary membership may enable deleterious state policy through a lessened fear of international sanction. Alternatively, the membership selection process may be biased in a way not currently recognized by scholars who employ UNSC election as a source of exogenous variation in the international system.
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Does Foreign Military Intervention Help Human Rights?
Dursun Peksen
Political Research Quarterly, September 2012, Pages 558-571
Abstract:
This article examines the effect of foreign armed intervention on human rights conditions in target countries. It is argued that military intervention contributes to the rise of state repression by enhancing the state's coercive power and encouraging more repressive behavior, especially when it is supportive or neutral toward the target government. Results from bivariate probit models estimated on time-series cross-section data show that supportive and neutral interventions increase the likelihood of extrajudicial killing, disappearance, political imprisonment, and torture. Hostile interventions increase only the probability of political imprisonment. The involvement of an intergovernmental organization or a liberal democracy as an intervener is unlikely to make any major difference in the suggested negative impact of intervention.
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War, Trade, and Distrust: Why Trade Agreements Don't Always Keep the Peace
Emilie Hafner-Burton & Alexander Montgomery
Conflict Management and Peace Science, July 2012, Pages 257-278
Abstract:
There is growing evidence that preferential trade agreements (PTAs) provide strong institutional incentives to prevent international conflict among member states, often creating the conditions of trust that can help prevent militarized aggression. We provide an approach to the study of how international institutions influence conflict behavior that considers how PTAs exclude as well as include members and create asymmetrical relationships among members that could exacerbate conflict. PTAs do more than create expectations of economic gains and reduce opportunism; they also create hierarchical relations between states, which can encourage conflict under different conditions due to distrust. We theorize these conditions for militarized international disputes, develop appropriate measures using social network analysis, and test our expectations on new PTA data during the period 1950 to 2000.
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The Political Economy of Plunder: Economic Opportunity and Modern Piracy
Ryan Jablonski & Steven Oliver
Journal of Conflict Resolution, forthcoming
Abstract:
Maritime piracy is a growing scourge on the international community - imposing large costs on maritime states and the shipping industry, as well as potentially undermining state capacity and funding terrorism. Using original data on over 3,000 pirate attacks, the authors argue that these attacks are, in part, a response to poor labor market opportunities. To establish this, the authors take advantage of the strong effect of commodity prices on labor market opportunities in piracy-prone states. Consistent with this theory, the authors show that changes in the price of labor- and capital-intensive commodities have consistent and strong effects on the number of pirate attacks in a country's territorial waters each month. The authors confirm these results by instrumenting for commodity prices using monthly precipitation levels.
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William Nordhaus, John Oneal & Bruce Russett
International Organization, July 2012, Pages 491-513
Abstract:
We consider the influence of countries' external security environments on their military spending. We first estimate the ex ante probability that a country will become involved in a fatal militarized interstate dispute using a model of dyadic conflict that incorporates key elements of liberal and realist theories of international relations. We then estimate military spending as a function of the threat of armed interstate conflict and other influences: arms races, the defense expenditures of friendly countries, actual military conflict, democracy, civil war, and national economic output. In a panel of 165 countries, 1950 to 2000, we find our prospectively generated estimate of the external threat to be a powerful variable in explaining military spending. A 1 percentage point increase in the aggregate probability of a fatal militarized dispute, as predicted by our liberal-realist model, leads to a 3 percent increase in a country's military expenditures.
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'A Better War?' - The View from the Nixon White House
Gregory Daddis
Journal of Strategic Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article examines the relationship between the White House and the US Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) during President Richard M. Nixon's administration. It argues that dysfunctional civil-military relations between 1969 and 1972 undermined the implementation of a sound military strategy during the United States' withdrawal from South Vietnam as Nixon attempted to achieve 'peace with honor' during the Vietnam War's final campaigns. By 1972, the relationship between the White House and MACV headquarters had reached the nadir of civil-military relations during the Southeast Asian conflict and had served to undercut the United States' ability to effectively disengage from a long and bitterly contested war.
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NATO Burden Sharing 1999-2010: An Altered Alliance
Todd Sandler & Hirofumi Shimizu
Foreign Policy Analysis, forthcoming
Abstract:
Motivated by US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates' farewell address to NATO, this article investigates whether NATO burden-sharing behavior has changed during the last ten years. Based on a Spearman rank correlation test, we find almost no evidence that the rich NATO allies shouldered the defense-spending burden of the poor allies during 1999-2009. In 2010, there is the first evidence of the exploitation of the rich. When allies' defense burdens are related to defense benefit proxies, a Wilcoxon test finds that there is no concordance between burdens and benefits after 2002. This is indicative of a less cohesive alliance, in which allies are not underwriting their derived benefits. We also find that allies' benefits, which are tied to their exposed border protection and terrorism risk, motivate defense spending. Allies' benefits, based on economic base and population, are less of a driver of defense spending for most NATO allies. We devise a broad-based security expenditure burden that accounts for defense spending, UN peacekeeping, and overseas foreign assistance. In terms of this security burden, there is evidence of the exploitation of the rich by the poor beginning in 2004. Our findings indicate a two-tiered alliance that faces significant policy challenges.
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The Illusion of Democratic Credibility
Alexander Downes & Todd Sechser
International Organization, July 2012, Pages 457-489
Abstract:
Do democracies make more effective coercive threats? An influential literature in international relations argues that democratic institutions allow leaders to credibly signal their resolve in crises, thereby making their threats more likely to work than threats by nondemocracies. This article revisits the quantitative evidence for this proposition, which we call the "democratic credibility hypothesis," and finds that it is surprisingly weak. Close examination of the data sets most commonly used to test this hypothesis reveals that they contain few successful democratic threats, or indeed threats of any kind. Moreover, these data sets' outcome variables do not properly measure the effectiveness of threats, and therefore yield misleading results. The article then reassesses the democratic credibility hypothesis using the Militarized Compellent Threats data set, a new data set designed specifically to test hypotheses about the effectiveness of coercive threats. The analysis indicates that threats from democracies are no more successful than threats from other states.
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Self-exciting point process models of civilian deaths in Iraq
Erik Lewis et al.
Security Journal, July 2012 Pages 244-264
Abstract:
Our goal in this article is to characterize temporal patterns of violent civilian deaths in Iraq. These patterns are expected to evolve on time-scales ranging from years to minutes as a result of changes in the security environment on equally varied time-scales. To assess the importance of multiple time-scales in evolving security threats, we develop a self-exciting point process model similar to that used in earthquake analysis. Here the rate of violent events is partitioned into a background rate and a foreground self-exciting component. Background rates are assumed to change on relatively long time-scales. Foreground self-excitation, in which events trigger an increase in the rate of violence, is assumed to be short-lived. We explore the model using data from Iraq Body Count on civilian deaths between 2003 and 2007. Our results indicate that self-excitation makes up as much as 37-50 per cent of all violent events and that self-excitation lasts at most between two and six weeks, depending upon the district in question. Appropriate security responses may benefit from taking these different time-scales of violence into consideration.
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Bethany Lacina & Charlotte Lee
Foreign Policy Analysis, forthcoming
Abstract:
We extend the logic of the democratic peace to query whether information about a foreign country's regime type affects US citizens' opinions of that country. We contrast this with the suggestion in other areas of international relations theorizing, such as the "clash of civilizations" thesis and constructivist frameworks, that a country's culture, especially its dominant religious tradition, may be more salient in citizen attitudes toward foreign countries. We designed a survey experiment to test the effects of randomly assigned cues regarding the regime type (democracy/nondemocracy) and religious culture (Islam/Christianity) of a foreign country on respondents' attitudes. Religious cultural cues outperformed regime type cues in determining respondents' perceptions of threat or expressions of trust, but respondents' views did not conform to maximalist claims of either the democratic peace or the clash of civilizations frameworks. These findings suggest that the need for a more synergetic approach to understanding the microfoundations of public foreign policy opinion formation.