Pushing the boundaries
Brendan Simms
International Affairs, March 2014, Pages 317–336
Abstract:
Adolf Hitler's experiences during the First World War have been much discussed, with historians tending to concentrate on his involvement in the fighting and the operational lessons he later claimed to draw. Much less has been written about the impact of the war on his world view, though recent work has tended to suggest that his paranoid anti-Semitism was not yet visible during the conflict. Drawing on this latest research, but also on newly discovered sources and previously underused material, the author shows that Hitler's main preoccupation during the war and its immediate aftermath was the overwhelming power of Great Britain and its American ally. He associated these two powers with the alleged international Jewish economic conspiracy that had crushed the German empire. Hitler's anti-Semitism thus originated in an anti-capitalist, rather than anti-communist, discourse. He blamed Britain and the US for the rigours of the Versailles peace settlement, a moment which was far more politically formative for him than the experience of defeat itself. His encounter with American soldiers in the summer of 1918 also marked his first engagement with the global power of the United States and the start of a belief in the demographic weakness of the German empire which inspired his plans for Lebensraum in the east.
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Precision Weapons, Civilian Casualties, and Support for the Use of Force
James Igoe Walsh
Political Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Precision weapons such as drones have become important elements of the military strategies of the United States and other countries. How does the use of precision weapons influence public support for the use of force? The public is averse to casualties, mission failure, and collateral damage. I argue that precision weapons increase the salience and importance of avoiding civilian harm. Individuals adopt their expectations about the outcomes of using these weapons and have lower tolerance for attacks that result in civilian deaths. This proposition is consistent with the results of two survey experiments. In the first, the possibility of civilian casualties leads to larger declines in support for the use of force than do military casualties or mission failure. In the second, respondents primed with information about an attack with precision weapons exhibited less tolerance for civilian harm than those primed with other weapons systems, despite the fact that the outcomes described to all respondents were identical.
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Sarah Croco & Scott Gartner
International Interactions, Winter 2014, Pages 1-24
Abstract:
We address whether politicians ' flip-flopping on support for a war is damaging to their electoral fortunes, and if the gender of the politician has a conditioning effect on this relationship. A series of survey experiments, conducted in 2010 and designed specifically for this project, allows us to examine the causal power of these two cues. Our results challenge the conventional wisdom: respondents do not fault leaders who change their minds about a conflict, and importantly, this effect holds irrespective of the gender of the politician. Instead, individuals react to the policy position the politician currently holds on a war regardless of the politician's consistency and gender.
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Accommodation or Confrontation? Explaining Differences in Policies Toward Iran
Wolfgang Wagner & Michal Onderco
International Studies Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Even though democracies by and large share the perception of Iran as a threat to peace and security, they disagree over the appropriate policy response. This paper examines why some democracies prefer accommodation while others plead for confrontation. Using a new data set on democracies' policies toward Iran in the 2000s, we assess the impact of power positions, commercial interests, and domestic political cultures while controlling for government ideology. While we find little support for any impact of power positions, “cultures of dealing with deviance,” that is, the discourses and practices of dealing with violations of norms domestically as institutionalized in a society's criminal law and justice system, have a substantial and statistically significant effect on state policies. Finally, we find qualified support for commercial liberalism: Whereas high levels of total trade do not have the expected effect of making states more accommodationist, high levels of trade in strategic goods such as oil do.
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Humanitarian Assistance and the Duration of Peace after Civil War
Neil Narang
Journal of Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
The principles of humanitarian assistance dictate that aid be distributed in accordance with need while remaining neutral with respect to the political stakes. However, these principles have unique implications in the postconflict context, where need is often correlated with opponents' performance in the previous contest. In these cases, humanitarian assistance is likely to be biased towards the conflict loser. Using a crisis-bargaining framework, this article describes a simple logic for how humanitarian aid can inadvertently undermine peace by creating a revisionist party with the incentive to renegotiate the postwar settlement. The empirical expectations of the theory are tested using a panel dataset of cross-national humanitarian aid expenditures in civil conflicts since the end of the Cold War. As the theory predicts, postconflict states treated with higher levels of humanitarian assistance exhibit shorter spells of peace; however, this effect only occurs after conflicts that ended with a decisive victory.
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The Austrian hunger crisis and the genesis of international organization after the First World War
Patricia Clavin
International Affairs, March 2014, Pages 265–278
Abstract:
From its foundation in 1918, the new Austrian republic was gripped by famine and a crisis of confidence in its currency that threatened to tip the new state into hyperinflation and revolution. This article shows how western efforts to aid Austria combat famine and its financial crisis were linked, and how they had a profound impact on the new League of Nations, the world's first multi-purpose intergovernmental organization. It also demonstrates the importance of the incipient wartime international bureaucracy for League agency. Contrary to the expectations of its architects, member governments, international financiers, businessmen and economists began to see the League as a useful tool to meet common needs that today would be called the search for human security. The article demonstrates how the Austrian food and financial crisis was the founding moment in the institutionalization of international economic and financial coordination, cooperation and oversight. It established the Economic and Financial Organization of the League of Nations, whose work would later inform its successors, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the European Union. The study speaks to the ways in which the notion of security has broadened in the past two decades to embrace economic, social, political and environmental concerns. But the notion of ‘human security’ is not new; it was written into the body of the League.
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Does State Failure Cause Terrorism? An Empirical Analysis (1999–2008)
Bridget Coggins
Journal of Conflict Resolution, forthcoming
Abstract:
A developed-world consensus ties state failure to new and serious international insecurity. But that conclusion rests upon an uncertain foundation; insights into the nature and intensity of failure-related threats remain tentative and unsystematic. This study begins to remedy the problem, examining the broad relationships between weakness, failure, and terrorism with panel data for 153 countries (1999–2008). I argue that the quantitative literature too often disregards the political context determining terrorism's use, that terrorism is endogenous to many measures of state failure, and that estimates of the failure-related threat of terrorism are overstated. Consistent with these expectations, I find that most failing and failed states are not predisposed to terrorism. However, among the “most failed” states, those at war or experiencing political collapse are significantly more likely to experience and produce terror. These results refine the relationship between failure and external threat and highlight the importance of terrorism's macro-level political context.
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Under Construction: Development, Democracy, and Difference as Determinants of Systemic Liberal Peace
Erik Gartzke & Alex Weisiger
International Studies Quarterly, March 2014, Pages 130–145
Abstract:
The widely documented dyadic democratic peace observation has led to optimism that the spread of democracy might prove pacifying even outside of democratic dyads. Yet, tensions between the logic of liberal peace in dyads and systems suggest that economic development may be better suited than democracy as a determinant of systemic liberal peace. In particular, regime type heterogeneity (difference) stands to increase conflict at the system level. We argue that there exists a systemic developmental peace, in which increased wealth encourages powerful developed nations to discourage other countries from fighting, even as these same developed states continue to use force in service of their own private objectives. We also separate out the effects of aggregate democracy from regime type difference in our analysis. Systemic and cross-level statistical tests support the following propositions: greater systemic development encourages peace, difference propagates war, and increased systemic democracy has no consistent impact on interstate conflict.
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Information, Popular Constraint, and the Democratic Peace
Philip Potter & Matthew Baum
Harvard Working Paper, March 2014
Abstract:
Politicians and scholars have long argued that democracies are less prone to international conflict, at least with other democracies. However, while there is widespread acceptance of this “law” in international affairs, the theoretical mechanism that drives it remains opaque. We argue that the distinctive behavior of democracies arises from very specific features of their political institutions that can facilitate (or hinder) the transmission of information between leaders and the public. Specifically, popular constraint on executive action relies on robust partisan opposition that can blow the whistle on foreign policy failures, and media institutions that can effectively relay this information to the voting public. Crucially, not all democracies are alike when it comes to these institutions, meaning that the “democratic peace” may not actually apply equally to all. We find support for these propositions in time series, cross-sectional analyses of conflict initiation from 1965 to 2006.
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Nuclear Dominoes: A Self-Defeating Prophecy?
Nicholas Miller
Security Studies, Winter 2014, Pages 33-73
Abstract:
Is the nuclear domino theory historically valid? Despite its longstanding centrality to thinking on nuclear proliferation amongst scholars and policymakers, in recent years a revisionist consensus has emerged in opposition to this traditional view. Based on an analysis of historical evidence from the aftermath of the 1964 Chinese nuclear test, this article argues that scholars have gone too far in rejecting the nuclear domino theory. Reactive proliferation has been more prevalent than commonly believed, and while it is true that only India acquired a nuclear arsenal in response to the Chinese test, to a significant extent this is precisely because the United States was aware of the danger of reactive proliferation and worked to stop it. Finally, the historical evidence suggests that the nuclear domino theory is compatible with both domestic and prestige motivations for proliferation in addition to the security motives normally associated with the theory.
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Employment Restrictions and Political Violence in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Sami Miaari, Asaf Zussman & Noam Zussman
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, May 2014, Pages 24–44
Abstract:
Following the outbreak of the Second Intifada in 2000, Israel imposed severe restrictions on the employment of Palestinians within its borders. We study the effect of this policy change on the involvement of West Bank Palestinians in fatal confrontations with Israelis during the first phase of the Intifada. Identification relies on the fact that variation in the pre-Intifada employment rate in Israel across Palestinian localities was not only considerable but also unrelated to prior levels of involvement in the conflict. We find robust evidence that localities that suffered from a sharper drop in employment opportunities were more heavily involved in the conflict.
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The Political Economy of Multilateral Foreign Aid: UNICEF as a Tool of U.S. Foreign Policy
Marek Hlavac
Harvard Working Paper, February 2013
Abstract:
The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has long been controlled by the United States. I show that countries that are politically closely aligned with the United States receive more foreign aid from UNICEF. In addition, UNICEF provides more aid to U.S.-friendly governments in recipient countries' election years, but only if those elections are competitive. I conclude that the United States uses UNICEF as a tool of its foreign policy. It uses its influence in an international organization to help aligned governments win elections, but does not want to waste aid money on elections whose result is known ahead of time. None of these findings hold for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) or the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), two U.N. organizations that have not been dominated by the United States.
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Groupthink and Terrorist Radicalization
Eteri Tsintsadze-Maass & Richard Maass
Terrorism and Political Violence, forthcoming
Abstract:
Why do groups adopt terrorism? Major theories of terrorist radicalization assume it to be a rational process whereby groups select terrorism as the policy most likely to advance their goals. Not all terrorism is rational, however, and these theories cannot explain cases when groups pursue terrorism despite it being self-defeating. We distinguish between rational and irrational terrorism, and explain the latter using social psychology's groupthink mechanism. Although terrorists are widely assumed to be vulnerable to groupthink, empirical work on the phenomenon has focused overwhelmingly on decision-making by national executives. We firmly establish the link between groupthink and terrorist radicalization by tracing groupthink's operation through the development of the Weather Underground, an American terrorist group that emerged in the late 1960s and conducted six years of bombings against the U.S. government. All of the antecedent conditions, symptoms, and decision-making defects predicted by groupthink are evident in the Weather Underground, providing valuable evidence of the dangers of irrational radicalization and offering lessons for its prevention.
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Force or Friendship? Explaining Great Power Nonproliferation Policy
Matthew Kroenig
Security Studies, Winter 2014, Pages 1-32
Abstract:
Why do great powers take such different approaches to the issue of nuclear proliferation? Why do states oppose nuclear proliferation more vigorously in some cases than in others? In short, what explains great power nonproliferation policy? To answer these questions, this article tests two competing theories of nonproliferation policy. The first, political relationship theory, suggests that states oppose nuclear proliferation to their enemies but are less concerned when friends acquire nuclear weapons. The second, power-projection theory, argues that states oppose the spread of nuclear weapons to states over which they have the ability to project military power because nuclear proliferation in those situations would constrain their military freedom of action. In contrast, states will be less likely to resist, and more likely to promote, nuclear proliferation to states against which they cannot use force. To test these hypotheses, this article uses evidence from great power nonproliferation policy from 1945 to 2000. While both theories find some support, the power-projection theory performs significantly better. The findings of this article have important implications for international relations theory and US nonproliferation policy.
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Vicarious Revenge and the Death of Osama bin Laden
Mario Gollwitzer et al.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
Three hypotheses were derived from research on vicarious revenge and tested in the context of the assassination of Osama bin Laden in 2011. In line with the notion that revenge aims at delivering a message (the “message hypothesis”), Study 1 shows that Americans’ vengeful desires in the aftermath of 9/11 predicted a sense of justice achieved after bin Laden’s death, and that this effect was mediated by perceptions that his assassination sent a message to the perpetrators to not “mess” with the United States. In line with the “blood lust hypothesis,” his assassination also sparked a desire to take further revenge and to continue the “war on terror.” Finally, in line with the “intent hypothesis,” Study 2 shows that Americans (but not Pakistanis or Germans) considered the fact that bin Laden was killed intentionally more satisfactory than the possibility of bin Laden being killed accidentally (e.g., in an airplane crash).
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Katherine Seifert & Clark McCauley
Terrorism and Political Violence, forthcoming
Abstract:
Extending data reported by Mohammed Hafez in 2007, we compiled a database of 1,779 suicide bombers who attempted or completed attacks in Iraq from 2003 through 2010. From 2003 through 2006, monthly totals of suicide bombers show a pattern different from the pattern of non-suicide insurgent attacks, but from 2007 through 2010 the two patterns were similar. This biphasic pattern indicates that suicide attacks sometimes warrant separate analysis but sometimes are just one tactic in a larger envelope of insurgent violence. We also show that only 13 percent of suicide bombers targeted coalition forces and international civilians, primarily during the early years of the conflict, whereas 83 percent of suicide bombers targeted Iraqis (civilians, members of the Anbar Awakening Movement, Iraqi security forces, and government entities) in attacks that extended throughout the duration of the insurgency. These results challenge the idea that suicide attacks are primarily a nationalist response to foreign occupation, and caution that “smart bombs” may be more often sent against soft targets than hard targets. More generally, our results indicate that suicide attacks must be disaggregated by target in order to understand these attacks as the expression of different insurgent priorities at different times.
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Scenarios for Russia's natural gas exports to 2050
Sergey Paltsev
Energy Economics, March 2014, Pages 262–270
Abstract:
Russia is an important energy supplier as it holds the world's largest natural gas reserves and it is the world's largest exporter of natural gas. Despite a recent reduction in Russia's exports to Europe, it plans to build new pipelines. We explore the long-term (up to 2050) scenarios of Russian natural gas exports to Europe and Asia using the MIT Emissions Prediction and Policy Analysis (EPPA) model, a computable general equilibrium model of the world economy. We found that over the next 20–40 years natural gas can still play a substantial role in Russian exports and there are substantial reserves to support a development of the gas-oriented energy system both in Russia and in its current and potential gas importers. Based on the considered scenarios, Russia does not need any new pipeline capacity to the EU unless it wants to diversify its export routes to supply the EU without any gas transit via Ukraine and Belarus. Asian markets are attractive to Russian gas and substantial volumes may be exported there. Relatively cheap shale gas in China may sufficiently alter the prospects of Russian gas, especially in Asian markets. In the Reference scenario, exports of natural gas grow from Russia's current 7 Tcf to 11–12 Tcf in 2030 and 13–14 Tcf in 2050. Alternative scenarios provide a wider range of projections, with a share of Russian gas exports shipped to Asian markets rising to more than 30% by 2030 and almost 50% in 2050. Europe's reliance on LNG imports increases, while it still maintains sizable imports from Russia.
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Grounds for War: The Evolution of Territorial Conflict
Dominic Johnson & Monica Duffy Toft
International Security, Winter 2013/14, Pages 7-38
Abstract:
In international relations, unlike the natural sciences, there are few fundamental principles or laws. The world map, however, reveals at least one iron law of global politics: human territoriality. Almost every inch of the globe is partitioned into exclusive and bounded spaces that “belong” to specific groups of humans. Any that is not — such as Kashmir, Jerusalem, and the South China Sea — remains hotly contested. Throughout history, territory has led to recurrent and severe conflict. States are prepared to go to war, and individuals are prepared to die, even over land with little intrinsic value. While such behavior presents a puzzle for international relations theory, a broader evolutionary perspective reveals that territorial behavior has the following three characteristics: (1) it is common across the animal kingdom, suggesting a convergent solution to a common strategic problem; (2) it is a dominant strategy in the “hawk-dove” game of evolutionary game theory (under certain well-defined conditions); and (3) it follows a strategic logic, but one calibrated to cost-benefit ratios that prevailed in our evolutionary past, not those of the present. These insights generate novel predictions about when territorial conflict is more or less likely to occur in international relations.
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Multi-decadal global cooling and unprecedented ozone loss following a regional nuclear conflict
Michael Mills et al.
Earth's Future, forthcoming
Abstract:
We present the first study of the global impacts of a regional nuclear war with an Earth system model including atmospheric chemistry, ocean dynamics, and interactive sea-ice and land models. A limited, regional nuclear war between India and Pakistan in which each side detonates 50 15-kt weapons could produce about 5 Tg of black carbon. This would self-loft to the stratosphere, where it would spread globally, producing a sudden drop in surface temperatures and intense heating of the stratosphere. Using the Community Earth System Model with the Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model (CESM1(WACCM)), we calculate an e-folding time of 8.7 years for stratospheric black carbon, compared to 4–6.5 years for previous studies. Our calculations show that global ozone losses of 20-50% over populated areas, levels unprecedented in human history, would accompany the coldest average surface temperatures in the last 1000 years. We calculate summer enhancements in UV indices of 30-80% over Mid-Latitudes, suggesting widespread damage to human health, agriculture, and terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Killing frosts would reduce growing seasons by 10–40 days per year for 5 years. Surface temperatures would be reduced for more than 25 years, due to thermal inertia and albedo effects in the ocean and expanded sea ice. The combined cooling and enhanced UV would put significant pressures on global food supplies and could trigger a global nuclear famine. Knowledge of the impacts of 100 small nuclear weapons should motivate the elimination of the more than 17,000 nuclear weapons that exist today.
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Anti-Americanism in Europe: Theoretical Mechanisms and Empirical Evidence
Heiko Beyer & Ulf Liebe
European Sociological Review, February 2014, Pages 90-106
Abstract:
One of the most popular explanations for post-9/11 anti-Americanism argues that resentment against America and Americans is mainly a function of the US government’s unpopular actions. The present article challenges this interpretation: first, it argues that neither the vitality of the resentment in times when the United States had no influence in the respective parts of the world nor its recent radical manifestations are accounted for in a political reductionist framework. In fact, specific traditions of anti-Americanism have an influence on the negative attitudes observed today, as a comparison between Britain, France, Germany, and Poland reveals. Second, this article suggests an alternative theoretical approach. Anti-Americanism can be explained by two basic mechanisms: it functions as a strategy to project denied and disliked self-concepts onto an external object, and it offers an interpretation frame for complex social processes that allows to reduce cognitive dissonance. Multivariate analyses based on empirical data collected in the Pew surveys of 2002 and 2007 show the fruitfulness of our theoretical approach.