Foggy War
Provocation, Bargaining, and War
Hyun-Binn Cho, Kyle Haynes & Brandon Yoder
Journal of Conflict Resolution, forthcoming
Abstract:
The rationalist bargaining literature explains how public statements and military mobilizations can signal resolve. But recent political psychology scholarship shows how such actions can "provoke" targets, increasing their resolve by arousing emotions among their leaders and public. While rationalist models have largely omitted provocation, psychological approaches have neglected its strategic consequences. We model provocation in bargaining, assuming that a challenger's signals endogenously increase the target's resolve. Our model shows that introducing provocation can make signals of resolve more credible precisely because their provocative effects make them more costly to send. Moreover, against the prevailing intuition that provocation uniformly promotes conflict, the information from these signals can mitigate their provocative effects and elicit more generous offers than not signaling. Thus, in contrast to psychological accounts, we show that taking provocative actions can be rational and necessary for reaching peaceful bargains. We illustrate these findings with the 1911 Agadir Crisis.
Nationalist propaganda and support for war in an authoritarian context: Evidence from China
Dongshu Liu & Li Shao
Journal of Peace Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
How can autocrats boost public support for wars? Previous studies have suggested that in democracies, the public changes its war attitude either through rational cost-benefit calculations or simply by following cues from political elites. This article argues that autocrats can follow a similar logic to manipulate public support for war via nationalist propaganda. Based on two online survey experiments with textual and musical propaganda materials in mainland China, this article finds that nationalist propaganda bolsters public support for war, regarding a potential military conflict across the Taiwan Strait. Evidence shows that propaganda increases respondents' expected return on winning wars, arousing national pride, and reducing respondents' sensitivity to war costs. However, people's confidence in winning a given war remains unchanged. These findings suggest that nationalist propaganda can boost support for war by increasing the perceived benefits of the war and reducing their sensitivity toward war costs without changing their perceived probability of winning. It also demonstrates that nationalist propaganda does not need to be explicit about war in order to boost war support in autocracies. This study also reveals the changing dynamic of public opinions in China regarding war for unification over the Taiwan Strait, which has significant implications for security and geopolitics in East Asia.
Estimating conflict losses and reporting biases
Benjamin Radford et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 22 August 2023
Abstract:
Determining the number of casualties and fatalities suffered in militarized conflicts is important for conflict measurement, forecasting, and accountability. However, given the nature of conflict, reliable statistics on casualties are rare. Countries or political actors involved in conflicts have incentives to hide or manipulate these numbers, while third parties might not have access to reliable information. For example, in the ongoing militarized conflict between Russia and Ukraine, estimates of the magnitude of losses vary wildly, sometimes across orders of magnitude. In this paper, we offer an approach for measuring casualties and fatalities given multiple reporting sources and, at the same time, accounting for the biases of those sources. We construct a dataset of 4,609 reports of military and civilian losses by both sides. We then develop a statistical model to better estimate losses for both sides given these reports. Our model accounts for different kinds of reporting biases, structural correlations between loss types, and integrates loss reports at different temporal scales. Our daily and cumulative estimates provide evidence that Russia has lost more personnel than has Ukraine and also likely suffers from a higher fatality to casualty ratio. We find that both sides likely overestimate the personnel losses suffered by their opponent and that Russian sources underestimate their own losses of personnel.
Differential impact of type of killing on posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms in U.S. Army soldiers deployed to Afghanistan
Brian Kok et al.
Journal of Traumatic Stress, forthcoming
Abstract:
Over the past 20 years, U.S. military conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have been marked by high rates of combat and wartime killings. Research on Vietnam-era service members suggests that the type of killing (i.e., killing a combatant vs. noncombatant) is an important predictor of later mental health problems, including posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The present study aimed to update these findings by exploring the impact of type of killing on PTSD symptoms using a sample of postdeployment active duty U.S. Army personnel (N = 875). Using multiple regression analysis, we found that the act of killing a noncombatant was significantly associated with PTSD symptoms, B = 7.50, p < .001, whereas killing a combatant was not, B = -0.85, p = .360. This remained significant after controlling for demographic variables, depressive symptoms, and general combat experiences. These findings support the need for thoughtful postdeployment screenings and targeted clinical interventions.
Risk without Strike: Nuclear Crisis and Corporate Investment
Yichuan Hu, Chang Xue & Xiaoyu Zhou
European Economic Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
While prior works of literature have noted that a crisis brings in not only a strike but also risk, empirical studies on crisis management are largely focusing on the impact of the strike. In this study, we estimate the pure effect of disaster risk on corporate decisions by using the setting of the North Korea nuclear crisis, which brought risk but no actual strike to the neighboring countries. We find that the nuclear tests are significant events for corporate investments and the risk of these tests will lead firms to postpone their long-term investments. The negative impact spreads from the test site and dwindles when firms locate further away, and the geodesic distance rather than the driving distance to the test site matters. Our further analyses show that the negative impact on corporate investment decisions is channeled by the fear of environmental pollution, instead of the geopolitical concern like the outbreak of a war.
Military Attitudes on the Chemical Weapons Taboo: Evidence from the Pacific Theater
Christopher William Blair & Michael Horowitz
Journal of Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Little is known about military attitudes toward weapons taboos, or the durability of non-use norms in wartime. Chemical weapons are a key case given public revulsion and clear international prohibitions. We explore soldiers' attitudes in a salient setting: the Pacific theater of World War II. We draw on a declassified survey covering a representative sample of enlisted US soldiers in Hawai'i in 1944. This unique context, during a total war against an adversary that had employed chemical weapons, represents a hard test for the chemical weapons taboo. Up to 91% of soldiers supported using chemical weapons against Japan, including 24% who favored initiation and 67% who favored retaliatory use. To understand the influence of military instruction, we exploit a novel regimen still used in basic training, which saw some troops exposed to lachrymatory gas. We find exposure to chemical weapons in training reduced support for use. Visceral experiences can mobilize support for weapons taboos in otherwise permissive environments.
Dual Use Deception: How Technology Shapes Cooperation in International Relations
Jane Vaynman & Tristan Volpe
International Organization, Summer 2023, Pages 599-632
Abstract:
Almost all technology is dual use to some degree: it has both civilian and military applications. This feature creates a dilemma for cooperation. States can design arms control institutions to curtail costly competition over some military technology. But they also do not want to limit valuable civilian uses. How does the dual use nature of technology shape the prospects for cooperation? We argue that the duality of technology presents a challenge not by its very existence but rather through the ways it alters information constraints on the design of arms control institutions. We characterize variation in technology along two dual use dimensions: (1) the ease of distinguishing military from civilian uses; and (2) the degree of integration within military enterprises and the civilian economy. Distinguishability drives the level of monitoring needed to detect violations. When a weapon is indistinguishable from its civilian counterpart, states must improve detection though intelligence collection or intrusive inspections. Integration sharpens the costs of disclosing information to another state. For highly integrated technology, demonstrating compliance could expose information about other capabilities, increasing the security risks from espionage. Together, these dimensions generate expectations about the specific information problems states face as they try to devise agreements over various technologies. We introduce a new qualitative data set to assess both variables and their impact on cooperation across all modern armament technologies. The findings lend strong support for the theory. Efforts to control emerging technologies should consider how variation in the dual use attributes shapes this tension between detection and disclosure.
The consequences of CIA-sponsored regime change in Latin America
Samuel Absher, Robin Grier & Kevin Grier
European Journal of Political Economy, forthcoming
Abstract:
The CIA intervened regularly in Latin America politics during the Cold War, in some cases going as far as bringing about regime change. We study the economic, political, and civil society effects of CIA-sponsored regime change in five Latin American countries and find that these actions caused moderate declines in real per-capita income and large declines in democracy scores, rule of law, freedom of speech, and civil liberties. Our findings show that any benefits to come out of these interventions should be weighed against the large costs that were imposed on the people living in these countries.
Loyalty or Accountability? Public Attitudes to Holding Soldiers Accountable for the Murder and Abuse of Civilians
Niheer Dasandi & Neil Mitchell
Journal of Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
How does the public view holding soldiers accountable for murdering and abusing civilians? We examine how the public trade off holding a conational perpetrator accountable for wrongdoing against national loyalty. We use survey experiments in the United States and United Kingdom to investigate how the public balances accountability and loyalty. Political theorists have identified the problem of reconciling "cosmopolitanism" and national loyalty. We investigate it empirically. Our findings suggest that while there is public commitment to accountability, it is conditional on the identity of the perpetrator. The findings are nuanced in theoretically important ways by (a) the substance of the violation and the perceived motives of the perpetrator and (b) the public position taken by specific leaders, which we demonstrate using the timing of the 2020 US election to vary leaders as well as messages in the experiments.
Bureaucracy at the Border: The Fragmentation of United States Foreign Aid
Shannon Carcelli
Journal of Conflict Resolution, forthcoming
Abstract:
Foreign policy scholars often assume that leaders pursue a national interest. However, states often spread their foreign policy authority thinly across bureaucracies and programs with overlapping or conflicting interests. This is especially pronounced in foreign aid, which serves a clear foreign policy purpose but is often mired in bureaucracy. Why is foreign aid often so fragmented? Focusing on the United States, I explain foreign aid fragmentation as a byproduct of domestic politics. When moderate legislators are ideologically diffuse, leadership must persuade them to support a foreign aid agenda by offering pet projects. This increases aid's fragmentation. In contrast, when moderates are relatively homogeneous, leaders can gather support through more traditional compromise, decreasing the need for fragmented pet projects. I test this theory using a mixed-methods approach, employing a novel agency-level dataset of US foreign aid appropriations and a case study of a 1992 act delivering aid to the former Soviet Union.