Dead or Alive
President Al Gore and the 2003 Iraq War: A Counterfactual Test of Conventional "W"isdom
Frank Harvey
Canadian Journal of Political Science, March 2012, Pages 1-32
Abstract:
The almost universally accepted explanation for the Iraq war is very clear and consistent, namely, the US decision to attack Saddam Hussein's regime on March 19, 2003 was a product of the ideological agenda, misguided priorities, intentional deceptions and grand strategies of President George W. Bush and prominent "neoconservatives" and "unilateralists" on his national security team. Notwithstanding the widespread appeal of this version of history, however, the Bush-neocon war thesis (which I have labelled neoconism) remains an unsubstantiated assertion, a "theory" without theoretical content or historical context, a position lacking perspective and a seriously underdeveloped argument absent a clearly articulated logical foundation. Neoconism is, in essence, a popular historical account that overlooks a substantial collection of historical facts and relevant causal mechanisms that, when combined, represent a serious challenge to the core premises of accepted wisdom. This article corrects these errors, in part, by providing a much stronger account of events and strategies that pushed the US-UK coalition closer to war. The analysis is based on both factual and counterfactual evidence, combines causal mechanisms derived from multiple levels of analysis and ultimately confirms the role of path dependence and momentum as a much stronger explanation for the sequence of decisions that led to war.
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COIN and civilian collaterals: Patterns of violence in Afghanistan, 2004-2009
Lisa Hultman
Small Wars & Insurgencies, Spring 2012, Pages 245-263
Abstract:
Theories and counterinsurgency doctrines emphasize the importance of avoiding civilian casualties. Yet, many operations produce large numbers of so-called collateral civilian deaths. I present two competing arguments for when collateral deaths occur. One the one hand, they could be the unintentional result of offensives when trying to maintain force protection; on the other hand, they could be the result of a deliberate choice of relying on indiscriminate violence when pressured on the battlefield. I use new data on violence in Afghanistan 2004-2009, disaggregated by province and month, to examine what type of battlefield dynamics are more likely to produce high levels of collateral civilian casualties. The results show that civilian casualties are particularly high after counterinsurgency forces suffer losses in combat.
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Can International Election Monitoring Harm Governance?
Alberto Simpser & Daniela Donno
Journal of Politics, April 2012, Pages 501-513
Abstract:
The monitoring of elections by international groups has become widespread. But can it have unintended negative consequences for governance? We argue that high-quality election monitoring, by preventing certain forms of manipulation such as stuffing ballot boxes, can unwittingly induce incumbents to resort to tactics of election manipulation that are more damaging to domestic institutions, governance, and freedoms. These tactics include rigging courts and administrative bodies and repressing the media. We use an original-panel dataset of 144 countries in 1990-2007 to test our argument. We find that, on average, high-quality election monitoring has a measurably negative effect on the rule of law, administrative performance, and media freedom. We employ various strategies to guard against endogeneity, including instrumenting for election monitoring.
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Stepping Into It: Lessons Learned from Entering the History You're Writing
Jennifer Mittelstadt
Journal of Policy History, Winter 2012, Pages 135-154
"While social welfare has been thoroughly stigmatized through its racialization and feminization, the military has taken a more opposite trajectory. Defying its recent demographics of disproportionate numbers of nonwhites and record-high numbers of women, the military remains coded as a national institution that is essentially male and white...From a historical perspective, the image of the soldier as deserving - much less extra deserving - has only occasionally been accepted, and it has never dominated discourse about the rights of citizens. If we consider a long history of the United States, the elevation of soldiers as civic paragons may stand as the exception rather than the rule. The legitimacy and honor soldiers and veterans have achieved has been hard fought, entailing rhetorical, ideological, and political work."
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The Reciprocal Relationship between Military Conflict and Democracy
Hyung Min Kim & David Rousseau
Defence and Peace Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Does democracy cause peace, or is democracy a consequence of peace? The burgeoning democratic peace literature has provided strong empirical evidence for the claim that democracies are a cause of peace. However, several skeptics of the democratic peace have suggested that the statistical findings are spurious. We test these competing claims using a simultaneous equation model. Using a unique data-set of all international disputes from 1960 to 1988, we find strong support for reciprocal causation. As the democratic peace theorists claim, democracy causes peace even after controlling for military conflict in the system and region. Conversely, peace in the region appears to encourage the development of democratic polities.
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Horsemen of the apocalypse? Jihadist strategy and nuclear instability in South Asia
Andrew Phillips
International Politics, May 2012, Pages 297-317
Abstract:
Since 9/11, counter-terrorism officials have fretted over the possibility of jihadist terrorists obtaining and deploying a nuclear weapon. Although acknowledging that such anxieties are well grounded, I offer here a reconceptualisation of the jihadist terrorist nuclear threat that focuses alternatively upon the remote but real possibility that jihadist terrorists may seek to advance their goals by trying to provoke an Indo-Pakistani nuclear confrontation. Such a confrontation would serve jihadist goals by aggravating religious polarisation on the sub-continent while dramatically weakening the Pakistani state. The system-destabilising consequences of such a catastrophe would likely also offer the jihadists their best opportunity to revive their faltering movement, which otherwise appears fated to terminal decline. In the light of this assessment, I argue that a higher priority must be accorded towards strengthening Indo-Pakistani crisis stability and advancing regional reconciliation if the risk of a jihadist-provoked nuclear exchange is to be minimised.
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Cognitive-Affective Styles Associated With Position on War
Jo Ann Abe
Journal of Language and Social Psychology, June 2012, Pages 212-222
Abstract:
This study examined cognitive-affective styles associated with position on the Iraq war by analyzing responses posted on an online discussion forum using a computerized text-analysis program (Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count). Overall, the results were consistent with those obtained in narrative-coding studies. The pro-war group was associated with an external focus and a simplistic style of information processing. The anti-war group was associated with an internal focus and high levels of cognitive processing and negative emotion words. The "neither" group scored the highest on cognitive complexity and positive emotion words, and it was also the most balanced in terms of internal and external focus.
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Cooking the Books: Strategic Inflation of Casualty Reports by Extremists in the Afghanistan Conflict
Chris Lundry et al.
Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, May 2012, Pages 369-381
Abstract:
Islamist extremists in Afghanistan and elsewhere are exaggerating their successes in inflicting casualties on American and other International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) forces. This article quantifies the exaggeration for the month of November 2010, putting the claimed casualty rate at approximately one-half battalion per month. It provides an analysis of how and why this is occurring, and links this extremist strategic communication effort to dominant historical master narratives in the region that may produce sympathy among intended recipients of the messages. The authors argue that these measures undertaken by the extremists can be countered successfully through the use of similar story forms, more timely reporting, use of side-by-side comparisons, and use of similar reporting venues. These steps could challenge the credibility of the Taliban reports, reduce sympathy, and diminish potential recruitment.
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J.A. Giesecke et al.
Risk Analysis, April 2012, Pages 583-600
Abstract:
We investigate the regional economic consequences of a hypothetical catastrophic event - attack via radiological dispersal device (RDD) - centered on the downtown Los Angeles area. We distinguish two routes via which such an event might affect regional economic activity: (i) reduction in effective resource supply (the resource loss effect) and (ii) shifts in the perceptions of economic agents (the behavioral effect). The resource loss effect relates to the physical destructiveness of the event, while the behavioral effect relates to changes in fear and risk perception. Both affect the size of the regional economy. RDD detonation causes little capital damage and few casualties, but generates substantial short-run resource loss via business interruption. Changes in fear and risk perception increase the supply cost of resources to the affected region, while simultaneously reducing demand for goods produced in the region. We use results from a nationwide survey, tailored to our RDD scenario, to inform our model values for behavioral effects. Survey results, supplemented by findings from previous research on stigmatized asset values, suggest that in the region affected by the RDD, households may require higher wages, investors may require higher returns, and customers may require price discounts. We show that because behavioral effects may have lingering long-term deleterious impacts on both the supply-cost of resources to a region and willingness to pay for regional output, they can generate changes in regional gross domestic product (GDP) much greater than those generated by resource loss effects. Implications for policies that have the potential to mitigate these effects are discussed.
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The Defence-Debt Nexus: Evidence from the High-Income Members Of NATO
Robert Alexander
Defence and Peace Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
The literature in defence economics has tended to focus on the relationship between defence spending and economic growth. Studies examining the linkage between defence spending and government debt have been relatively rare. Given the recent Global Financial Crisis, originating in the developed economies, and the changed international security picture since 9/11, it is timely to reconsider the defence-debt nexus in the rich economies. This study pays particular attention to developing an empirical strategy which is both soundly based on economic theory concerning the evolution of public debt and which uses econometric methods that are welladapted to the dynamic aspects of the relationship. From the standpoint of economic theory, if a government seeks to minimize the distortionary costs of taxation, then taxation will follow a random walk. Unexpected shocks (war and recession) will cause debt. Other idiosyncratic national-level political considerations that affect the evolution of debt can be factored out by the use of a dynamic panel estimation method. Employing the Arellano-Bond dynamic panel model to the data available from members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development and North Atlantic Treaty Organization over the periods 1988-2009 and 1999-2009, this study finds that the defence burden is a statistically significant and economically important determinant of public debt.
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Can states buy peace? Social welfare spending and civil conflicts
Zeynep Taydas & Dursun Peksen
Journal of Peace Research, March 2012, Pages 273-287
Abstract:
This study examines whether the state's ability to provide social welfare services has any major effect on the probability of civil conflict onset. We argue that welfare spending contributes to sustaining peace because the provision of social services reduces grievances by offsetting the effects of poverty and inequality in society. Welfare spending serves as an indication of the commitment of the government to social services and reflects its priorities and dedication to citizens. By enacting welfare policies that improve the living standards of citizens, governments can co-opt the political opposition and decrease the incentives for organizing a rebellion. Utilizing time-series, cross-national data for the 1975-2005 period, the results indicate that as the level of the government investment in welfare policies (i.e. education, health, and social security) increases, the likelihood of civil conflict onset declines significantly, controlling for several other covariates of internal conflict. Additional data analysis shows that general public spending and military expenditures are unlikely to increase or decrease the probability of civil unrest. Overall, these findings suggest that certain types of public spending, such as welfare spending, might have a strong pacifying effect on civil conflict, and therefore the state's welfare efforts are vital for the maintenance of peace.
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Resource Curse in Reverse: How Civil Wars Influence Natural Resource Production
Sara McLaughlin Mitchell & Cameron Thies
International Interactions, Spring 2012, Pages 218-242
Abstract:
Conflict scholars have argued that natural resources, such as oil, diamonds, and gemstones, may increase the chances for civil wars because rebels can sustain their organizations by looting resources and because certain types of resources, such as oil, create weaker state governments that are less capable of putting down insurgencies. Natural resources like oil also raise the value of capturing the state through war. However, empirical studies typically treat natural resources as exogenous variables, failing to consider the possibility that war alters the production levels of various natural resources. This endogenous relationship may help to explain the inconsistent empirical results linking natural resources and civil war onset. This article examines the two-way relationship between natural resources and civil war, focusing on oil, diamonds, and fisheries. The empirical findings suggest that most of the relationships run in the direction from war to resources, with no significant effects of resources on the onset of civil war. States with civil wars experience lower oil and diamond production, while marine fisheries production recovers in civil war-torn states.
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Trade Concentration and Interstate Conflict
Katja Kleinberg, Gregory Robinson & Stewart
French Journal of Politics, April 2012, Pages 529-540
Abstract:
Existing studies of the trade-conflict relationship focus primarily on dyadic trade and its implications for the opportunity cost of conflict. Most states maintain economic relations with numerous partners, yet few studies have examined the effects of extradyadic trade on dyadic conflict. In an influential discussion of economic interdependence, Albert Hirschman ([1945] 1980) draws attention to the importance of both direct trade ties and the extent to which a state's total trade is monopolized by any one trading partner. Building on this notion, we present and test a theoretical argument about the conflict-reducing implications of third-party trade. The findings provide support for our prediction that greater concentration of trade outside the dyad is associated with a reduced risk of interstate hostility and violent disputes.
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Ideology as a Factor in Deterrence
Peter Vincent Pry
Comparative Strategy, Spring 2012, Pages 111-146
Abstract:
History is replete with examples of deterrence failure and war occurring unexpectedly, taking nations by surprise, because of failure to comprehend an adversary's ideology. The modern world has been shaped by failure to comprehend the ideologically driven aggression of Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, Soviet communism, and Islamic jihadism. The Soviet "war scare" during NATO's nuclear exercise ABLE ARCHER-83 exemplifies how ideology could cause deterrence failure and even nuclear war. Understanding the ideology of potential adversaries must be part of any informed deterrence strategy. U.S. overconfidence in deterrence theory, which is itself an ideological belief system, could contribute to deterrence failure.
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‘Winston has gone mad': Churchill, the British Admiralty, and the Rise of Japanese Naval Power
John Maurer
Journal of Strategic Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
As Chancellor of the Exchequer during the late 1920s, Winston Churchill was at the center of British strategic decision making about how to respond to the naval challenge posed by Japan's rise as a rival sea power. Churchill downplayed the likelihood of war with Japan. The leadership of the Royal Navy disagreed: they saw Japan as a dangerous threat to the security of the British Empire. Examining this dispute between Churchill and the Admiralty highlights the awkward political, economic, and strategic tradeoffs confronting British leaders between the world wars.
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Defence Spending and Economic Growth in the EU15
John Paul Dunne & Eftychia Nikolaidou
Defence and Peace Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Over the last 30 years, there has been an impressive amount of empirical work on the defence-growth nexus, using different methodologies, models and econometric techniques and focusing on individual case studies, cross-country studies or panel data studies. Despite the number and the variety of studies, the evidence on the defence-growth relationship is still far from conclusive. Rather surprisingly, very limited work has been published in the relevant literature for the European Union despite the continuous discussions for a Common European Defence Policy that would require an assessment of the economic effects of defence in this region. To fill in the gap in the literature, this paper employs an augmented Solow-Swan model and estimates it both with panel and time series methods to provide empirical evidence on the economic effects of defence spending in the EU15 over the period 1961-2007. Overall, evidence derived from both panel and time series methods is consistent and suggests that military burden does not promote economic growth in this region.
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Sparrow Mission: A US Intelligence Failure during World War II
Zoltan Peterecz
Intelligence and National Security, March/April 2012, Pages 241-260
Abstract:
The article presents an intelligence case gone bad during the Second World War, when the United States decided to drop a three-man OSS group into Hungary. Hungary, a close ally of Germany, after seeing that the war was not going to end with an Axis victory, wished to seek contact with the Western Allies in order to try to find a way out of its precarious situation. The study, based mainly on archival research, shows the evolution of the Sparrow Mission, whose goals are still unclear today. Both the preparations and the timing of the mission seem to indicate that the plan had some influence on the German decision of occupying Hungary in March 1944, and such a German move helped the Normandy landing of the Allies a few months later.
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When and how many: The effects of third party joining on casualties and duration in interstate wars
Zachary Shirkey
Journal of Peace Research, March 2012, Pages 321-334
Abstract:
What makes some wars longer and more severe than others is an important question in international relations scholarship. One underexplored answer to this question is the role that third party joiners play in lengthening conflicts, especially those states that intervene militarily after a war's initial stages. This article argues that late joining complicates bargaining by adding new issues to the war and increases uncertainty about the relative balance of forces. Thus, more information will be needed to resolve the bargaining impasse. This means additional fighting and a longer war. This lengthening in turn increases the number of casualties. This is a distinct process from simply having more participants in a war from the outset as those participants would not add uncertainty in the same way that late joiners do since questions about how those participants affect the relative balances of forces would be answered just as quickly as if there were only two participants at the outset. These claims are supported by a non-proportional hazards model regression, a Cox proportional hazards regression, and an ordinary least squares regression using the Correlates of War interstate war dataset.
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Military Expenditures and Inequality in the Middle East and North Africa: A Panel Analysis
Hamid Ali
Defence and Peace Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) countries have been characterized by the preponderant role of their military forces in economic matters, as demonstrated by the high levels of military spending and the growing industrial complex. While extensive research examines the relationship between military expenditure and economic growth, little attention has been paid to the effect of military expenditure on economic inequality. Studying inequality in MENA countries provides an opportunity to assess factors that shape the countries' level of economic well-being, which has greater public policy implications in terms of how society allocates its scarce resources among competing needs. This paper examines two important issues. In the first part of the paper, we examine the relationship between military spending and inequality in MENA countries using a panel regression for country-level observations over the period 1987-2005. The empirical results indicate that military spending has a strong and negative effect on inequality. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, in MENA countries a systematic increase in military spending could reduce the level of inequality. In the second part of this paper, we examine the demand for military expenditure; we find that factors such as inequality level and per capita income negatively affect military expenditure.
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Inequality and conflict in federations
Christa Deiwiks, Lars-Erik Cederman & Kristian Skrede Gleditsch
Journal of Peace Research, March 2012, Pages 289-304
Abstract:
Case study evidence suggests that inequality between regions in federations affects the risk of secessionist conflict. However, the conventional quantitative literature on civil war has found little support for a link between economic inequality and civil war. We argue that this seeming discrepancy in part stems from differences in the conceptualization of inequality and its operationalization, which has focused on individual-level wealth differences. In contrast, we investigate regional-level inequality, which is more readily applicable to understanding possible incentives for internal conflict. We adopt a spatial approach, based on new geo-coded data on administrative units in 31 federal states between 1991 and 2005, economic wealth, and ethnic settlements, and demonstrate strong evidence that regional inequality affects the risk of secessionist conflict. The results indicate that in highly unequal federations, both relatively developed and underdeveloped regions are indeed more likely to be involved in secessionist conflict than regions close to the country average. In addition, we provide evidence that exclusion from central state power as well as ethnic groups' access to regional institutions are associated with an increased risk for secessionist conflict. The findings on inequality remain robust even when controlling for other confounding factors such as country GDP, population and war history.