New world order
Nixon's Axe Man: CIA Director James R. Schlesinger
Christopher Moran
Journal of American Studies, February 2019, Pages 95-121
Abstract:
This article sheds light on the stormy few months that James Schlesinger was CIA director. Schlesinger ranks as the least popular director in CIA history; indeed, he had to install a CCTV camera opposite his official portrait at Langley headquarters because of concerns it would be vandalized by disgruntled staff. Conventional wisdom dictates that he was disliked because he commissioned the “Family Jewels,” the notorious list of CIA dirty tricks which, when leaked in the mid-1970s, led to unprecedented public scrutiny of the agency. Using interviews with retired intelligence officers, spy memoirs, and recently declassified records, including Schlesinger's private papers, this article argues that the hatred went much deeper. A Nixon loyalist, Schlesinger was unpopular because he challenged the culture of the CIA and attempted to make the agency more of an obedient instrument of presidential power and policy. The so-called “Schlesinger Purge” – the controversial decision to fire nearly 7 percent of the CIA's workforce, especially from the Directorate of Operations – underscored this cultural attack. The speed and brutality of the change programme resulted in organizational miasma, leaving staff demoralized and with no means to fight back. The article also examines the consequences of the dislike toward him.
Weaponizing Interpol
Edward Lemon
Journal of Democracy, April 2019, Pages 15-29
Abstract:
Interpol, the world's leading police-cooperation body, aims to "connect police for a safer world." Although the organization's constitution states that Interpol cannot engage in "any intervention or activities of a political, military, religious or racial character," it is increasingly being subverted by autocratic regimes seeking to pursue their exiled political opponents. The number of Red Notices (a type of arrest request issued through Interpol) has increased tenfold in the past fifteen years. Those targeted face the risk of arrest if they travel across borders; have difficulties obtaining visas and open bank accounts; and suffer reputational damage. Interpol remains opaque and lacks accountability for its actions. Recent reforms have started to address some of these issues. But more needs to be done to prevent the hijacking, repurposing, and weaponizing of Interpol by today's globalized authoritarian regimes.
The Social Desirability of Rallying ’Round the Flag
Robert Urbatsch
Political Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Identifying the sincerity of shifts in public opinion is difficult: survey settings involve social pressure to provide seemingly popular answers. Names for newborn children in the United States provide an alternative, behavioral measure that can indicate the presence of social-desirability bias. First names typically exceed middle names in visibility and hence sensitivity to social-desirability effects. First names should therefore be more likely to change when name-givers wish to conform to widespread sentiments they do not share. This hypothesis is explored during foreign-policy crises (rallies): French-derived first, but not middle, names declined as anti-French sentiment rose around the 2003 Iraq War, yet no analogous divergence emerged after the 11 September 2001 attacks. Treating all rallies as equally meaningful may then produce misleading analyses of public opinion; seeming waves in political views may reflect conformist dissimulation rather than actual attitudes.
African leaders and the geography of China's foreign assistance
Axel Dreher et al.
Journal of Development Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
We investigate whether foreign aid from China is prone to political capture in aid-receiving countries. Specifically, we examine whether more Chinese aid is allocated to the birth regions of political leaders, controlling for indicators of need and various fixed effects. We collect data on 117 African leaders' birthplaces and geocode 1650 Chinese development projects across 2969 physical locations in Africa from 2000 to 2012. Our econometric results show that political leaders' birth regions receive substantially larger financial flows from China in the years when they hold power compared to what the same region receives at other times. We find evidence that these biases are a consequence of electoral competition: Chinese aid disproportionately benefits politically privileged regions in country-years when incumbents face upcoming elections and when electoral competitiveness is high. We observe no such pattern of favoritism in the spatial distribution of World Bank development projects.
Power and Profit at Sea: The Rise of the West in the Making of the International System
J.C. Sharman
International Security, Spring 2019, Pages 163-196
Abstract:
The making of the international system from c. 1500 reflected distinctively maritime dynamics, especially “gunboat diplomacy,” or the use of naval force for commercial gain. Comparisons between civilizations and across time show, first, that gunboat diplomacy was peculiarly European and, second, that it evolved through stages. For the majority of the modern era, violence was central to the commercial strategies of European state, private, and hybrid actors alike in the wider world. In contrast, large and small non-Western polities almost never sought to advance mercantile aims through naval coercion. European exceptionalism reflected a structural trade deficit, regional systemic dynamics favoring armed trade, and mercantilist beliefs. Changes in international norms later restricted the practice of gunboat diplomacy to states, as private navies became illegitimate. More generally, a maritime perspective suggests the need for a reappraisal of fundamental conceptual divisions and shows how the capital- and technology-intensive nature of naval war allowed relatively small European powers to be global players. It also explains how European expansion and the creation of the first global international system was built on dominance at sea centuries before Europeans’ general military superiority on land.
A Cryptographic Escrow for Treaty Declarations and Step-by-Step Verification
Sébastien Philippe, Alexander Glaser & Edward Felten
Science & Global Security, forthcoming
Abstract:
The verification of arms-control and disarmament agreements requires states to provide declarations, including information on sensitive military sites and assets. There are important cases, however, in which negotiations of these agreements are impeded because states are reluctant to provide any such data, because of concerns about prematurely handing over militarily significant information. To address this challenge, we present a cryptographic escrow that allows a state to make a complete declaration of sites and assets at the outset and commit to its content, but only reveal the sensitive information therein sequentially. Combined with an inspection regime, our escrow allows for step-by-step verification of the correctness and completeness of the initial declaration so that the information release and inspections keep pace with parallel diplomatic and political processes. We apply this approach to the possible denuclearization of North Korea. Such approach can be applied, however, to any agreement requiring the sharing of sensitive information.
Communications Technology and Terrorism
Rafat Mahmood & Michael Jetter
Journal of Conflict Resolution, forthcoming
Abstract:
By facilitating the flow of information in society, communications technology (CT; e.g., newspapers, radio, television, the Internet) can help terrorists to (i) spread their message, (ii) recruit followers, and (iii) coordinate among group members. However, CT also facilitates monitoring and arresting terrorists. This article formulates the hypothesis that a society’s level of CT is systematically related to terrorism. We introduce a simple theoretical framework, suggesting that terrorism first becomes more attractive with a rise in CT, but then decreases, following an inverted U shape. Accessing data for 199 countries from 1970 to 2014, we find evidence consistent with these predictions: terrorism peaks at intermediate ranges of CT and corresponding magnitudes are sizable. Our estimations control for a range of potentially confounding factors, as well as country fixed effects and year fixed effects. Results are robust to a battery of alternative specifications and placebo regressions. We find no evidence of a potential reporting bias explaining our findings.
Managing Insurgency
Peter Schram
Journal of Conflict Resolution, forthcoming
Abstract:
Why would an insurgent group turn away foreign fighters who volunteered to fight for its cause? To explain variation in foreign fighter usage, I present a novel perspective on what foreign fighters offer to militant groups. Because foreign fighters possess a different set of preferences from local fighters, integrated teams of foreign and local fighters can self-manage and mitigate the agency problems that are ubiquitous to insurgent groups. However, to create self-managing teams, insurgent leadership must oversee the teams’ formation. When counterinsurgency pressure prevents this oversight, foreign fighters are less useful and the leadership may exclude them. This theory explains variation in foreign fighter use and agency problems within al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI; 2004 to 2010) and the Haqqani Network (2001–2018). Analysis of the targeting of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, AQI’s former leader, further supports the theory, suggesting that leadership targeting inhibited oversight and aggravated agency problems within the group.
To Stay or to Leave? Displacement Decisions During Rebel Governance
Mara Revkin
Yale Working Paper, April 2019
Abstract:
What are the conditions under which civilians living in territory captured by a rebel group will prefer its system of governance to that of the incumbent state? Given the opportunity to leave rebel-held territory, who stays and why? Through an original survey of 1,458 residents of Mosul, an Iraqi city governed by the Islamic State (IS) for more than three years, I compare the characteristics of “stayers” (those who remained in Mosul for the duration of IS rule) against “leavers” (those who fled). I test and find some support for a theory of “competitive governance”: Civilians who perceived improvements in the quality of governance under IS rule — in comparison with the Iraqi state — were more likely to stay than those who perceived no change or a deterioration. This finding suggests that weak rule of law and ineffective governance in Iraq may have contributed to civilian cooperation with IS.
Demographic Engineering and International Conflict: Evidence from China and the Former USSR
Lachlan McNamee & Anna Zhang
International Organization, Spring 2019, Pages 291-327
Abstract:
When and where do states coercively alter their internal demography? We build a theory that predicts under what conditions states alter the demographic “facts on the ground” by resettling and expelling ethno-national populations. We predict that, under particular scope conditions, states will employ demographic engineering to shore up control over (1) nonnatural frontiers, and (2) areas populated by ethnic minorities who are co-ethnics with elites in a hostile power. We then substantiate our predictions using new subnational data from both China and the USSR. Causally identifying the spatially differential effect of international conflict on demographic engineering via a difference-in-differences design, we find that the Sino-Soviet split (1959–1982) led to a disproportionate increase in the expulsion of ethnic Russians and resettlement of ethnic Han in Chinese border areas lacking a natural border with the USSR, and that resettlement was targeted at areas populated by ethnic Russians. On the Soviet side, we similarly find that the Sino-Soviet split led to a significant increase in expulsion of Chinese and the resettlement of Russians in border areas, and that resettlement was targeted at areas populated by more Chinese. We develop the nascent field of political demography by advancing our theoretical and empirical understanding of when, where, and to whom states seek to effect demographic change. By demonstrating that both ethnic group concentration and dispersion across borders are endogenous to international conflict, our results complicate a large and influential literature linking ethnic demography to conflict.
Challenges to Traditional Narratives of Intractable Conflict Decrease Ingroup Glorification
Quinnehtukqut McLamore, Levi Adelman & Bernhard Leidner
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
Conflict narratives are cornerstones of group identity, but often facilitate violence by framing the group’s actions in ways that foster defensive forms of group identification (i.e., glorification). Three experiments tested whether alternative narratives inclusive of the ingroup’s and the adversarial group’s suffering can reduce glorification. Israeli Jews (Study 1) and Americans (Study 2) reported less glorification after reading inclusive narratives rather than narratives that dismiss the outgroup’s suffering. Study 3 found that through reducing glorification, inclusive narratives indirectly weakened support for retributive justice and militaristic policies and strengthened support for reconciliation. These effects were specific to people high in both (preexisting) glorification and attachment — people identified by prior research as the strongest supporters of violent approaches to conflict. These findings suggest that alternative narratives can reduce glorification by challenging the myopic focus of traditional conflict narratives on ingroup victimization, helping societies move beyond intractable conflict toward lasting peace.
The Effects of Foreign Aid on Rebel Governance: Evidence from a Large-Scale U.S. Aid Program in Syria
Allison Carnegie et al.
Columbia University Working Paper, March 2019
Abstract:
Most research underscores the inefficacy of foreign aid as an instrument for influencing local perceptions of governance in countries affected by conflict. In contrast, we argue that aid can improve public perceptions of governing institutions during civil wars when those institutions arise from popular uprisings against authoritarian regimes. To evaluate our theory, we analyze new perceptions-based data, both quantitative and qualitative, which was collected from residents of 27 opposition-held communities inside Syria from 2014 to 2016. We find a positive statistical relationship between aid and perceptions of local institutions, but only when the populace does not believe the institutions were imposed by an outside actor. These results are further supported by placebo tests and a case study of Raqqa City, in which we show that aid boosted citizens' views of the local councils until ISIS took over.