Commanders in chief
The Myth of the Optional War: Why States Are Required to Wage the Wars They Are Permitted to Wage
Kieran Oberman
Philosophy & Public Affairs, Fall 2015, Pages 255-286
"Within just war theory, much has been written on the question of when states are morally permitted to wage war. Much less is written on the question of when states are morally required to wage war. In the literature that does exist, the predominant view is that while there are wars that states are required to wage and, of course, many wars states are prohibited from waging, there is also a middle category: wars that states are permitted but not required to wage. These are what we may call 'optional wars.' If a war is optional, a state enjoys moral discretion over whether or not to wage it. This article argues that there are no optional wars. States are either required to wage war or prohibited from doing so."
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Valuing Peace: The Effects of Financial Market Exposure on Votes and Political Attitudes
Saumitra Jha & Moses Shayo
Stanford Working Paper, January 2016
Abstract:
Financial markets expose individuals to the risks and returns of the broader economy. Can they also lead to a reevaluation of the costs and benefits of conflict and peace initiatives? Can this happen even in the context of persistent ethnic conflict, and even affect voting decisions? Prior to the 2015 Israeli elections, we randomly assigned financial assets to likely voters and gave them incentives to actively trade for up to seven weeks. The assets included stocks of Israeli and Palestinian companies. We also randomly assigned their initial amounts and divestment dates. We find that the exposure to stocks caused systematic shifts in voting behavior and increased support for peace initiatives. These shifts appear to reflect two main channels. First, financial market exposure leads individuals to follow financial markets over time and to positively reevaluate the effects of potential peace initiatives on the national economy. Second, exposure to Palestinian stocks increases out-group empathy, reflected in higher support for inter-ethnic social integration. The effects of financial market exposure are larger for the risk averse and for inexperienced investors, who become more like experienced investors in favoring concessions for peace.
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Casualty rates of US military personnel during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
Matthew Goldberg
Defence and Peace Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
In Operation Iraqi Freedom, which ended in August 2010, nearly 3500 hostile deaths occurred among US military personnel and 32,000 more were wounded in action (WIA). More than 1800 hostile deaths occurred during Operation Enduring Freedom (in and around Afghanistan) through 2014 and about 20,000 were WIA. A larger proportion of wounded personnel survived in Iraq and Afghanistan than during the Vietnam War, but the increased survival rates were not as high as some studies have asserted. The survival rates were 90.2% in Iraq and 91.6% in Afghanistan, compared with 86.5% in Vietnam. The casualty rates varied between the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and before, during, and after the respective surges. Amputation rates are difficult to measure consistently, but I estimate that 2.6% of all WIA and 9.0% of medically evacuated WIA from the Iraq and Afghanistan theaters combined resulted in the major loss of a limb. Elevated non-hostile death rates (including deaths due to accidents, illnesses, homicides, or suicides) resulted in about 220 more deaths in Iraq and about 200 more deaths in Afghanistan than would have been expected in peacetime among populations of the size deployed to those two conflicts.
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Tweeting Identity? Ukrainian, Russian, and #Euromaidan
Megan Metzger et al.
Journal of Comparative Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Why and when do group identities become salient? Existing scholarship has suggested that insecurity and competition over political and economic resources as well as increased perceptions of threat from the out-group tends to increase the salience of ethnic identities. Most of the work on ethnicity, however, is either experimental and deals with how people respond once identity has already been primed, is based on self-reported measures of identity, or driven by election results. In contrast, here we examine events in Ukraine from late 2013 (the beginning of the Euromaidan protests) through the end of 2014 to see if particular moments of heightened political tension led to increased identification as either "Russian" or "Ukrainian" among Ukrainian citizens. In tackling this question, we use a novel methodological approach by testing the hypothesis that those who prefer to use Ukrainian to communicate on Twitter will use Ukrainian (at the expense of Russian) following moments of heightened political awareness and those who prefer to use Russian will do the opposite. Interestingly, our primary finding is a negative result: we do not find evidence that key political events in the Ukrainian crisis led to a reversion to the language of choice at the aggregate level, which is interesting given how much ink has been spilt on the question of the extent to which Euromaidan reflected an underlying Ukrainian vs. Russian conflict. However, we unexpectedly find that both those who prefer Russian and those who prefer Ukrainian begin using Russian with a greater frequency following the annexation of Crimea, thus contributing a whole new set of puzzles - and a method for exploring these puzzles - that can serve as a basis for future research.
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Networks of military alliances, wars, and international trade
Matthew Jackson & Stephen Nei
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 15 December 2015, Pages 15277-15284
Abstract:
We investigate the role of networks of alliances in preventing (multilateral) interstate wars. We first show that, in the absence of international trade, no network of alliances is peaceful and stable. We then show that international trade induces peaceful and stable networks: Trade increases the density of alliances so that countries are less vulnerable to attack and also reduces countries' incentives to attack an ally. We present historical data on wars and trade showing that the dramatic drop in interstate wars since 1950 is paralleled by a densification and stabilization of trading relationships and alliances. Based on the model we also examine some specific relationships, finding that countries with high levels of trade with their allies are less likely to be involved in wars with any other countries (including allies and nonallies), and that an increase in trade between two countries correlates with a lower chance that they will go to war with each other.
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Do Sanctions Always Stigmatize? The Effects of Economic Sanctions on Foreign Aid
Bryan Early & Amira Jadoon
International Interactions, forthcoming
Abstract:
A prevalent view among both scholars and policymakers is that economic sanctions stigmatize and isolate their targets. According to this perspective, the stigma associated with economic sanctions should signal to foreign aid donors that they should be more cautious and restrained in providing assistance to sanctioned states. We test this signaling-based theory via a large-n analysis of the impact that sanctions imposed by the United States and United Nations (UN) had on the aid flows of 133 recipient states from 1960-2000. Contrary to expectations, our results indicate that being sanctioned by the UN does not have a negative effect on target states' aid flows and being sanctioned by the United States actually has a positive effect on them. We explore two potential explanations for our puzzling findings based upon donor self-interest and donor altruism via a scoping analysis of eight sanctions cases in which target states received greater than expected aid flows. Our findings suggest that theories based upon donor self-interest represent the most promising explanations for why individual donors may increase their aid to sanctioned states.
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It's only money: Do voters treat human and financial sunk costs the same?
Charles Miller & Benjamin Barber
Journal of Peace Research, January 2016, Pages 116-129
Abstract:
The sunk costs fallacy is an important concept in the academic and policy worlds. It has helped explain consequential national security decisions such as the escalation in Vietnam and the surges in Iraq and Afghanistan. While previous analysis of sunk costs in international relations has made no distinction between financial and human sunk costs, there is evidence in psychology that people treat human lives and financial costs differently. The consensus in the casualty sensitivity literature is that human sunk costs should lower support for a conflict, but there is as yet no evidence on whether financial costs operate in the same way. Using the Environmental Protection Agency's value of a statistical life to equalize human and financial costs, we create survey experiments through Mechanical Turk and GfK/Knowledge Networks about a hypothetical US military intervention to test if financial and human costs have the same effects on public opinion. We find that public reaction to sunk costs is contingent on the type of costs incurred. Consistent with the growing 'sunk costs skeptic' literature we find no evidence that any sunk costs induce greater commitment to a mission. Where the US contribution to the conflict is purely financial, sunk costs induce a desire to cut losses. When intervention involves US lives, sunk costs make no difference to the level of support. Finally, contrary to the implicit assumptions of past policymakers, ex ante levels of public support for sending troops and sending money are indistinguishable. These findings hold true both in situations involving high Iraq War level sunk costs and low Somalia-style costs.
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Phil Haun & Colin Jackson
International Security, Winter 2015/16, Pages 139-178
Abstract:
Most traditional accounts identify the Linebacker I and Linebacker II campaigns as the most effective and consequential uses of U.S. air power in the Vietnam War. They argue that deep interdiction in North Vietnam played a central role in the defeat of the Easter Offensive and that subsequent strategic attacks on Hanoi forced the North Vietnamese to accept the Paris accords. These conclusions are false. The Linebacker campaigns were rather ineffective in either stopping the Communist offensive or compelling concessions. The most effective and consequential use of U.S. air power came in the form of close air support and battlefield air interdiction directly attacking the North Vietnamese Army in South Vietnam. The success of these air strikes hinged on the presence of a U.S.-operated tactical air control system that incorporated small numbers of ground advisers, air liaison officers, and forward air controllers. This system, combined with abundant U.S. aircraft and a reasonably effective allied army, was the key to breaking the Easter Offensive and compelling Hanoi to agree to the Paris accords. The effectiveness of close air support and battlefield air interdiction and the failure of deep interdiction and strategic attack in the Vietnam War have important implications for the use of air power and advisers in contemporary conflicts in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan.
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World military expenditures and global cardiovascular mortality
Harvey Brenner
Journal of Public Health Policy, February 2016, Pages 20-35
Abstract:
Can we estimate the consequences of world military expenditures for the physical and mental health of nations that produce and purchase armaments? If anxiety and fear are promoting military expenditures, then those sentiments may well reflect poorer mental health and war-related stress as it influences cardiovascular illness rates. Further, extensive military expenditure by a society implies that other societal needs are allocated fewer resources, including nutrition, water and sanitation, health care, and economic development. We use a model focused on military expenditures to predict cardiovascular mortality in world samples of industrialized and developing countries over 2000-2011. The cardiovascular mortality model controls for economic development, smoking, body mass index, systolic blood pressure, and carbon dioxide emissions. Military expenditures as proportion of gross domestic product show significant positive relations to cardiovascular disease mortality in linear multiple regression analyses, using both cross-sectional and pooled cross-sectional time-series approaches.
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Between the hammer and the anvil: The impact of economic sanctions and oil prices on Russia's ruble
Christian Dreger et al.
Journal of Comparative Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Exchange rate fluctuations strongly affect the Russian economy, given its heavy dependence on foreign trade and investment. In the aftermath of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine that broke out early 2014, the Russian ruble lost 50% of its value against the US dollar. The impact of the conflict on Russia may have been amplified by sanctions imposed by Western countries. However, as Russia is heavily dependent on natural resource exports, another factor behind the deterioration could be the sharp decline in oil prices starting in summer 2014. Using high-frequency data on nominal exchange and interest rates, oil prices, actual and unanticipated sanctions, we provide evidence on forces underlying the ruble exchange rate. The analysis is based on cointegrated VAR models, where fundamental long-run relationships are implicitly embedded. The results indicate that the bulk of the depreciation can be related to the decline of oil prices. In addition, unanticipated sanctions matter for the conditional volatility of the variables involved.
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Sanctions and Alternate Markets: How Trade and Alliances Affect the Onset of Economic Coercion
Dursun Peksen & Timothy Peterson
Political Research Quarterly, March 2016, Pages 4-16
Abstract:
Although much research has examined how third parties might affect the success of economic sanctions, scant research has considered the extent to which potential - rather than realized - alternate markets affect strategic behavior between sanctioning (sender) and target states prior to sanction use. We argue that the sender is more likely to threaten or impose sanctions against a potential target with higher trade dependence on the sender, but only under the condition that the target's ability to redirect lost trade to third parties is low. As the target's ability to redirect lost trade increases, the sender is less likely to use sanctions because it expects that the target could mitigate the intended costs of the coercion more easily. We capture potential alternate markets using a measure of the total economic capabilities held by the target's allies, finding support for our expectations in statistical tests using data on U.S. sanctions spanning 1950 to 2005. Our results affirm the importance of accounting for third parties and alternate markets as factors influencing the strategic behavior associated with the use of economic coercion.
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Domestic Signaling of Commitment Credibility: Military Recruitment and Alliance Formation
Michael Horowitz, Paul Poast & Allan Stam
Journal of Conflict Resolution, forthcoming
Abstract:
We provide a new perspective on how domestic factors shape the prospects for international cooperation. Internal arms, specifically conscription, signal a willingness and suitability to be a dependable ally. Possessing ineffective military forces inhibits a state's ability to assist prospective allies and renders a state less able to deter threats on its own. This exemplifies an instance where the trade-off between arms and allies does not apply. Using new data on the military recruitment policies of states since 1816, we find that adopting a conscription-based recruitment system in the previous five years makes a state more likely to form an alliance in the current year, even when accounting for a heightened threat environment.