King of the world
Why China Has Not Caught Up Yet: Military-Technological Superiority and the Limits of Imitation, Reverse Engineering, and Cyber Espionage
Andrea Gilli & Mauro Gilli
International Security, Winter 2018/19, Pages 141-189
Abstract:
Can countries easily imitate the United States' advanced weapon systems and thus erode its military-technological superiority? Scholarship in international relations theory generally assumes that rising states benefit from the “advantage of backwardness.” That is, by free riding on the research and technology of the most advanced countries, less developed states can allegedly close the military-technological gap with their rivals relatively easily and quickly. More recent works maintain that globalization, the emergence of dual-use components, and advances in communications have facilitated this process. This literature is built on shaky theoretical foundations, however, and its claims lack empirical support. In particular, it largely ignores one of the most important changes to have occurred in the realm of weapons development since the second industrial revolution: the exponential increase in the complexity of military technology. This increase in complexity has promoted a change in the system of production that has made the imitation and replication of the performance of state-of-the-art weapon systems harder — so much so as to offset the diffusing effects of globalization and advances in communications. An examination of the British-German naval rivalry (1890–1915) and China's efforts to imitate U.S. stealth fighters supports these findings.
Teflon Don or Politics as Usual? An Examination of Foreign Policy Flip-Flops in the Age of Trump
Jared McDonald, Sarah Croco & Candace Turitto
Journal of Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
American politics in the age of Donald Trump is characterized by negative affect toward politicians of the opposing party and a willingness on the part of citizens to forgive most sins of copartisans. Against this backdrop, we ask whether Trump’s numerous high-profile reversals on foreign policy issues matter. Given our polarized political environment, we argue that there is little reason for Trump to worry about looking inconsistent. Drawing on prior scholarship, we contend that when citizens evaluate a leader who has reversed, policy preferences will supersede any consideration of a flip-flop. We also argue that partisan motivated reasoning and preexisting attitudes toward Trump will overwhelm the impact of a reversal on most matters of foreign policy. Using two survey experiments that reflect real-world events, we show that citizens do not change their attitudes toward Donald Trump significantly even when his policy reversals are made explicit.
Computer science skills across China, India, Russia, and the United States
Prashant Loyalka et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, forthcoming
Abstract:
We assess and compare computer science skills among final-year computer science undergraduates (seniors) in four major economic and political powers that produce approximately half of the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics graduates in the world. We find that seniors in the United States substantially outperform seniors in China, India, and Russia by 0.76–0.88 SDs and score comparably with seniors in elite institutions in these countries. Seniors in elite institutions in the United States further outperform seniors in elite institutions in China, India, and Russia by ∼0.85 SDs. The skills advantage of the United States is not because it has a large proportion of high-scoring international students. Finally, males score consistently but only moderately higher (0.16–0.41 SDs) than females within all four countries.
Rethinking Power Politics in an Interdependent World, 1871–1914
William Mulligan & Jack Levy
Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Spring 2019, Pages 611-640
Abstract:
Interdependence altered power relations between the European great powers between 1871 and 1914 in ways that both sustained the conditions for peace and, after 1911, made a European war more likely. Interdependence accelerated the development of international financial and commercial networks. Transnational social and cultural exchanges raised the costs of a general war, offered multiple channels for states and societies to exercise influence over each other, and altered power relations. The great powers pursued their interests through not only military force but also trade deals, financial loans, expert missions (teams sent to smaller states ostensibly to aid in modernization), and cultural diplomacy. They competed for influence in smaller states. Many of the crises that pockmarked this era derived from their contested interests in such strategically vital areas in Europe as the Balkans, the Ottoman Empire, and the Low Countries, as well as elsewhere in the world. States that lost out in this transformation, notably Austria-Hungary and Russia, saw the militarization of their foreign policies as a way to compensate for weaknesses in other forms of power.
Nudging the Needle: Foreign Lobbies and US Human Rights Ratings
Jon Pevehouse & Felicity Vabulas
International Studies Quarterly, March 2019, Pages 85–98
Abstract:
Newspapers print alarming headlines when foreign governments hire U.S.-based lobbyists to promote their interests in Washington D.C. But does foreign lobbying systematically affect U.S. foreign policy? We provide an analysis of the influence of foreign lobbying on one important component of U.S. foreign policy: the evaluation of human rights practices abroad. U.S. human rights ratings can have a large impact on American foreign policy. They affect foreign aid, sanctions, and trade. Thus, we expect that many countries seek to tilt State Department Country Reports on Human Rights in their favor through information they provide to U.S.-based lobbyists. Our statistical analysis of these State Department reports and lobbying data from the Foreign Agent Registration Act between 1976‒2012 shows that, holding other factors equal, more foreign lobbying leads to more favorable U.S. human rights reports — when compared to both previous reports and Amnesty International reports. Furthermore, our findings contribute to the growing literature on performance indicators like human rights ratings by highlighting the politics of how those ratings are generated.
India's Counterforce Temptations: Strategic Dilemmas, Doctrine, and Capabilities
Christopher Clary & Vipin Narang
International Security, Winter 2018/19, Pages 7-52
Abstract:
Is India shifting to a nuclear counterforce strategy? Continued aggression by Pakistan against India, enabled by Islamabad's nuclear strategy and India's inability to counter it, has prompted the leadership in Delhi to explore more flexible preemptive counterforce options in an attempt to reestablish deterrence. Increasingly, Indian officials are advancing the logic of counterforce targeting, and they have begun to lay out exceptions to India's long-standing no-first-use policy to potentially allow for the preemptive use of nuclear weapons. Simultaneously, India has been acquiring the components that its military would need to launch counterforce strikes. These include a growing number of accurate and responsive nuclear delivery systems, an array of surveillance platforms, and sophisticated missile defenses. Executing a counterforce strike against Pakistan, however, would be exceptionally difficult. Moreover, Pakistan's response to the mere fear that India might be pursuing a counterforce option could generate a dangerous regional arms race and crisis instability. A cycle of escalation would have significant implications not only for South Asia, but also for the broader nuclear landscape if other regional powers were similarly seduced by the temptations of nuclear counterforce.
External Threat, Internal Rivalry, and Alliance Formation
Emerson Niou & Sean Zeigler
Journal of Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
History reveals enemies often ally to confront a common threat. In such competitive coalitions actors must balance the simultaneous risk of distrust of their ally against external danger. We model this interactive relationship and generate several novel outcomes. Intra-alliance rivalry forces allying players to preemptively commit more resources to conflict and to free ride less. Consequently, their likelihood of conflict success increases. However, intra-alliance instability forces weaker players to commit a higher proportion of resources to fighting than do their stronger allies. This outcome runs contrary to Mancur Olson’s classic collective action result that the “small exploit the great.” Furthermore, allies do not demonstrate a uniform preference for bandwagoning or balancing. In general, it is preferable to bandwagon with friends but to balance with enemies. Finally, because rivalry can raise alliance payoffs, actors may rationally seek out risky partnerships with so-called enemies rather than molding more certain alliances with friends.
Aid, Intervention, and Terror: The Impact of Foreign Aid and Foreign Military Intervention on Terror Events and Severity
Orlandrew Danzell, Emizet Kisangani & Jeffrey Pickering
Social Science Quarterly, forthcoming
Objective: Relatively few empirical studies have analyzed the foreign policy options that leaders employ to counter terrorism, and the results have been mixed to date. This study takes a fresh look at two such policies: foreign aid and foreign military intervention.
Method: Using system generalized method of moments to control for endogeneity and a technique that identifies short‐ and long‐term effects, we examine the impact of both policy options within a sample of 122 countries from 1970 to 2005.
Results: The results suggest that foreign aid may be associated with an increase in the number of terrorist incidents, fatalities, and casualties. They also indicate that foreign military intervention increases terrorist incidents in the short term and may eventually reduce them in the long term.
Temporal focus, emotions, and support for intergroup aggression
Marija Spanovic Kelber, Brian Lickel & Thomas Denson
Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, forthcoming
Abstract:
Emotions play an important role in conflict and aggression between groups. Two studies examined the link between temporal focus (past vs. future) and emotion (anger vs. fear) in the context of the threat of terrorism. Study 1 showed that manipulating emotion (fear vs. anger) in the context of terrorist threat against the United States induced different temporal foci. Fear elicited a future focus, whereas anger elicited a past focus. Study 2 manipulated temporal focus (past vs. future) and showed an increase in anger versus fear, respectively. These concordant emotional responses predicted support for intergroup aggression, as did political conservatism and beliefs in American superiority. Anger, but not fear, mediated the effect of past versus future framing on support for aggression. These results support temporal focus as a previously unconsidered but important determinant of the link between emotions and support for intergroup aggression.
International Intervention and the Rule of Law after Civil War: Evidence from Liberia
Robert Blair
International Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
What are the effects of international intervention on the rule of law after civil war? Rule of law requires not only that state authorities abide by legal limits on their power, but also that citizens rely on state laws and institutions to adjudicate disputes. Using an original survey and list experiment in Liberia, I show that exposure to the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) increased citizens’ reliance on state over nonstate authorities to resolve the most serious incidents of crime and violence, and increased nonstate authorities’ reliance on legal over illegal mechanisms of dispute resolution. I use multiple identification strategies to support a causal interpretation of these results, including an instrumental variables strategy that leverages plausibly exogenous variation in the distribution of UNMIL personnel induced by the killing of seven peacekeepers in neighboring Côte d'Ivoire. My results are still detectable two years later, even in communities that report no further exposure to peacekeepers. I also find that exposure to UNMIL did not mitigate and may in fact have exacerbated citizens’ perceptions of state corruption and bias in the short term, but that these apparently adverse effects dissipated over time. I conclude by discussing implications of these complex but overall beneficial effects.
Negative surprise in UN Security Council authorization: UK and French vetoes send valuable information for the general public in deciding if they support a US military action
Naoko Matsumura & Atsushi Tago
Journal of Peace Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Authorization of the use of force by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is believed to increase levels of public support for military action. While scholars have performed sterling research both in theory and empirics on the power of UNSC authorization, there is still much that we do not understand. In particular, we believe that it is necessary to conduct a further study on ‘failed’ authorization cases. As Terrence Chapman points out in his theoretical framework, the general public can derive valuable information based on which of the permanent members of the Council casts a veto; this in turn affects public attitudes towards the use of force. An expected veto cast by the perpetual nay-sayer would not serve as information for the general public. However, if the veto is cast by an allied state of a proposer of the authorizing resolution, the negative vote functions as an information short-cut signaling that the use of force presents a variety of problems, thus reducing public support for the military action. Using online survey experiments, we find supportive evidence for this argument. Our data also suggest that surprising negative information changes the perceptions of legitimacy, legality, public goods, and US interest in a proposed military action, but is unrelated to the perception of costs, casualties or duration.
Credible Commitments? Explaining IGO Suspensions to Sanction Political Backsliding
Inken von Borzyskowski & Felicity Vabulas
International Studies Quarterly, March 2019, Pages 139–152
Abstract:
Why do intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) that espouse democratic commitments suspend the membership of some states that backslide on those commitments, while leaving that of others intact? We argue that a combination of geopolitical factors and institutional rules help explain this inconsistent pattern. Remaining member states insulate geopolitically important states — particularly those with large endowments of oil resources — from suspension. Institutional factors, such as voting rules and the size of the IGO, create veto points that reduce suspensions. Using an original global data set of IGO suspensions and charter commitments from 1980 to 2010, we find strong support for our argument. We test a key assumption of existing scholarship that claims IGOs serve as credible-commitment devices for political reform and democratization. We show that once a state becomes an IGO member, it can often remain in the IGO even after violating its democratic commitments.
Power changes, alliance credibility, and extended deterrence
Jesse Johnson & Stephen Joiner
Conflict Management and Peace Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
A primary motivation for forming military alliances is to deter adversaries. However, some alliances are more effective at deterrence than others. Deterrence theory suggests that an alliance may fail to deter if the commitment is not considered credible by adversaries. Building on alliance reliability research, we contend that alliances whose members have experienced significant changes in power since formation are vulnerable to violation. Moreover, we argue that these changes are observable to adversaries, making them more likely to target the alliance. We test this argument using a sample of countries with membership in defensive alliances between 1816 and 2000. Our results indicate that states whose allies have experienced significant changes in power are more likely to be the target of militarized disputes than states whose allies have not experienced significant changes in power. These findings connect alliance reliability research to deterrence theory, illustrating the need to take into account changes over time in understanding the deterrence potential of military alliances. Our findings also suggest that future research should take these processes into account in studying dispute escalation and intra-alliance relations.