Saddle Up
Conflict, sticks and carrots: War increases prosocial punishments and rewards
Ayelet Gneezy & Daniel Fessler
Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences, 22 January 2012, Pages 219-223
Abstract:
Unlike most species, humans cooperate extensively with group members who are not closely related to them, a pattern sustained in part by punishing non-cooperators and rewarding cooperators. Because internally cooperative groups prevail over less cooperative rival groups, it is thought that violent intergroup conflict played a key role in the evolution of human cooperation. Consequently, it is plausible that propensities to punish and reward will be elevated during intergroup conflict. Using experiments conducted before, during and after the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war, we show that, during wartime, people are more willing to pay costs to punish non-cooperative group members and reward cooperative group members. Rather than simply increasing within-group solidarity, violent intergroup conflict thus elicits behaviours that, writ large, enhance cooperation within the group, thereby making victory more likely.
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Social identity and perceptions of torture: It's moral when we do it
Mark Tarrant et al.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Two studies examined the effects of social identity concerns on the moral justification of torture. British and American nationals read a media report concerning the torture of a terrorist suspect that they were led to believe had been perpetrated either by members of their own nation's security services or by another nation's security services. When the torture was perpetrated by the ingroup, participants described it as more morally justified than when the torture was perpetrated by the other nation's security services. This effect was mediated by participants' decreased empathy for the ingroup's torture victim (Study 1), as well as increased victim blame and perceiving the perpetrators as prototypical of their national group (Study 2). We consider how social identity concerns enable moral justification of harm doing.
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Multilateralism: America's insurance policy against loss
Dominic Tierney
European Journal of International Relations, December 2011, Pages 655-678
Abstract:
When the United States faces loss or defeat in war, it is often loath to negotiate, make concessions to its adversary, and cut its losses. But the presence of allies and international organizations in the US coalition can help to correct this bias against compromise through a combination of simple bargaining, complex bargaining, and political cover. The costs of multilateralism can be considered a premium that is paid when operations are successful, so that the United States has an insurance policy to minimize loss in times of failure. The article contributes to a number of major debates over the costs and benefits of multilateralism and the impact of less powerful allies and international organizations on US foreign policy.
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Kyle Beardsley & Holger Schmidt
International Studies Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper compares the explanatory power of two models of UN intervention behavior: (i) an "organizational mission model" built around the proposition that variations in the amount of resources that the UN devotes to different conflicts primarily reflect the degree to which a conflict poses a challenge to the UN's organizational mandate of promoting international peace and stability and (ii) a "parochial interest model" that revolves around the purely private interests of the five veto-holding members of the UN Security Council (the so-called P-5), i.e., interests that are either unrelated to or at odds with the UN's organizational mandate. Examining data on UN conflict management efforts in more than 270 international crises between 1945 and 2002, we find that measures of the severity and escalatory potential of a conflict are significantly better predictors of the extent of UN involvement in international crises than variables that measure P-5 interests that do not align with the UN's organizational mission of acting as a global peacemaker. This suggests that the UN adheres more closely to the humanitarian and security mission laid out in its Charter than critics of the organization often suggest.
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The Long-Run Effects of the Scramble for Africa
Stelios Michalopoulos & Elias Papaioannou
NBER Working Paper, November 2011
Abstract:
We examine the long-run consequences of the scramble for Africa among European powers in the late 19th century and uncover the following empirical regularities. First, using information on the spatial distribution of African ethnicities before colonization, we show that borders were arbitrarily drawn. Apart from the land mass and water area of an ethnicity's historical homeland, no other geographic, ecological, historical, and ethnic-specific traits predict which ethnic groups have been partitioned by the national border. Second, using data on the location of civil conflicts after independence, we show that partitioned ethnic groups have suffered significantly more warfare; moreover, partitioned ethnicities have experienced more prolonged and more devastating civil wars. Third, we identify sizeable spillovers; civil conflict spreads from the homeland of partitioned ethnicities to nearby ethnic regions. These results are robust to a rich set of controls at a fine level and the inclusion of country fixed effects and ethnic-family fixed effects. The uncovered evidence thus identifies a sizable causal impact of the scramble for Africa on warfare.
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The Escalation of Terror: Hate and the Demise of Terrorist Organizations
Catherine Langlois & Jean-Pierre Langlois
Conflict Management and Peace Science, November 2011, Pages 497-521
Abstract:
Our goal in this article is to examine the strategic interaction between terror groups, hosts, and the United States in order to better understand the parameters of the interaction and the elements of a winning strategy. We adopt a game theoretic approach assuming that each player has a well-defined goal and accounts for the anticipated behavior of the others to develop strategy. The game that we develop is a repeated game in which the host and the US must decide whether to fight a terrorist organization whose membership and resources will grow indefinitely if left unchecked. Our model predicts circumstances in which a host will begin to push back against the terrorists in anticipation of a future involvement of the US. It also predicts circumstances in which the terrorist organization's hatred of the US prompts attacks that seal its fate and early demise.
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Threat, Politics, and Attitudes: Toward a Greater Understanding of Rally-'Round-the-Flag Effects
Alan Lambert, J.P. Schott & Laura Scherer
Current Directions in Psychological Science, December 2011, Pages 343-348
Abstract:
Social scientists have long known that threatening situations can have a powerful effect on sociopolitical attitudes. One of the more dramatic examples of this phenomenon is the "rally 'round the flag effect," characterized by dramatic spikes in popularity of the American president. Previous models of rally effects have strongly emphasized the role of anxiety and the desire for security as explanations for these changes in support. In this article, we present a contrasting view, showing support for an anger-based conceptualization that builds upon earlier research on emotional appraisal. We discuss the relevance of our findings for theory and research across a variety of different paradigms in the social psychological and political science literature.
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James Hollyer & Peter Rosendorff
Quarterly Journal of Political Science, December 2011, Pages 275-327
Abstract:
Traditional international relations theory holds that states will join only those international institutions with which they generally intend to comply. Here we show when this claim might not hold. We construct a model of an authoritarian government's decision to sign the UN Convention Against Torture (CAT). Authoritarian governments use the signing of this treaty - followed by the willful violation of its provisions - as a costly signal to domestic opposition groups of their willingness to employ repressive tactics to remain in power. In equilibrium, authoritarian governments that torture heavily are more likely to sign the treaty than those that torture less. We further predict that signatory regimes survive longer in office than non-signatories, and enjoy less domestic opposition - and we provide empirical support for these predictions.
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Robert Hayden
Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, Fall 2011, Pages 313-330
Abstract:
This article argues that the actions and activities of the ICTY have not been beneficial to achieving reconciliation or stability in the Balkans, but to the contrary are part of the reason that parts of the region have remained unstable. This result should not be unexpected as there is very little evidence, if indeed any, that indicates that protracted tribunals like the ICTY (and unlike, therefore, Nuremberg), have ever had, or even could have, beneficial effects on reconciliation. It argues, further, that the primary beneficiaries of the ICTY have been international human rights lawyers and human rights agencies, and in the region itself, the political parties of indictees. Considering the amounts of money spent on the Tribunal compared to those spent on rebuilding the region it seems that the ICTY has functioned better as an antiwar profiteer than it has as a promoter of peace and reconstruction.
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Paul Huth, Sarah Croco & Benjamin Appel
International Studies Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
In this paper, we investigate how international law shapes leaders' decisions regarding the use of force in the context of territorial disputes. We argue that if the legal principles relevant to the dispute are capable of suggesting a focal point, international law will have a powerful role to play in informing leader behavior. Specifically, if a focal point exists, the state that it favors will avoid using force and prefer negotiations when considering an initial challenge to the status quo. However, we expect focal points to have the opposite effect once states are involved in a militarized dispute. Under these circumstances, the state with a legal advantage will be more likely to escalate the level of military force. Using a series of statistical tests, we find strong support for our theoretical argument.
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Thomas Morton & Tom Postmes
European Journal of Social Psychology, December 2011, Pages 866-873
Abstract:
Two studies explore how salience of the human category influences responses to intergroup harm and how different images of humanity modify these effects. In Study 1, British participants (n = 86) contemplated acts of terrorism against their group. When the human category (versus intergroup distinctions) was salient and when the prevailing image of humanity was malevolent (versus benevolent), participants were not only more understanding of terrorism, blamed this less on religious group memberships, but also more strongly endorsed the use of extreme force by countries to defend their boarders, preserve the peace and prevent future attacks. In Study 2, British participants (n = 83) contemplated the torture of Iraqi prisoners by British soldiers. When the human category was salient and the prevailing image of humanity was malevolent, participants experienced less guilt and justified torture more. We conclude that the effects of human category salience on interpretations of intergroup harm depend on what it means to be human. When human nature is perceived negatively, thinking in terms of the human category can normalise intergroup harm regardless of whether the outgroup or the ingroup is the perpetrator. Implications for re-categorisation approaches to conflict reduction are discussed.
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Bruce Blair et al.
Science & Global Security, Fall 2011, Pages 167-194
Abstract:
Nuclear exchange models using Monte Carlo methods were used to test the stability of U.S.-Russian deterrence for reduced nuclear force sizes off alert in the presence of missile defenses. For this study U.S. and Russian weapons were partitioned into a postulated First Echelon, consisting of single-warhead, silo-based ICBM launchers that can be generated in hours to launch-ready status, and into a postulated Second Echelon of more diverse nuclear forces including multiple-warhead, road-mobile and sea-based systems that require days to weeks to become launch ready. Given reasonable estimates of weapons characteristics, First Echelon nuclear forces can survive to retaliate in numbers that satisfy the requirements of deterrence, given limitations on the numbers of missile defense interceptors, a result which is bolstered by the added capabilities of the more deeply de-alerted Second Echelon.
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Extended nuclear deterrence in East Asia: Redundant or resurgent?
Andrew O'Neil
International Affairs, November 2011, Pages 1439-1457
Abstract:
A number of commentators have claimed that the strategic relevance of extended nuclear deterrence is declining in the twenty-first century. This claim is based on three key arguments. First, that the positive effects of extended nuclear deterrence have been exaggerated by its proponents; second, that the rational actor logic underpinning extended nuclear deterrence is increasingly redundant; and third, that extended deterrence using conventional weapons is equally, if not more, effective as extended nuclear deterrence. This article applies these arguments to East Asia, a region where nuclear weapons continue to loom large in states' security equations. In applying each of the above arguments to the East Asian context, the analysis finds that not only is extended nuclear deterrence alive and kicking in the region, but also that in the coming decades it is likely to become more central to the strategic policies of the United States and its key allies, Japan and South Korea. Despite predictions of its demise, US extended nuclear deterrence remains a critical element in East Asia's security order and will remain so for the foreseeable future.
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Detecting Nuclear Materials Smuggling: Performance Evaluation of Container Inspection Policies
Gary Gaukler et al.
Risk Analysis, forthcoming
Abstract:
In recent years, the United States, along with many other countries, has significantly increased its detection and defense mechanisms against terrorist attacks. A potential attack with a nuclear weapon, using nuclear materials smuggled into the country, has been identified as a particularly grave threat. The system for detecting illicit nuclear materials that is currently in place at U.S. ports of entry relies heavily on passive radiation detectors and a risk-scoring approach using the Automated Targeting System (ATS). In this article we analyze this existing inspection system and demonstrate its performance for several smuggling scenarios. We provide evidence that the current inspection system is inherently incapable of reliably detecting sophisticated smuggling attempts that use small quantities of well-shielded nuclear material. To counter the weaknesses of the current ATS-based inspection system, we propose two new inspection systems: the Hardness Control System (HCS) and the Hybrid Inspection system (HYB). The HCS uses radiography information to classify incoming containers based on their cargo content into "hard" or "soft" containers, which then go through different inspection treatment. The HYB combines the radiography information with the intelligence information from the ATS. We compare and contrast the relative performance of these two new inspection systems with the existing ATS-based system. Our studies indicate that the HCS and HYB policies outperform the ATS-based policy for a wide range of realistic smuggling scenarios. We also examine the impact of changes in adversary behavior on the new inspection systems and find that they effectively preclude strategic gaming behavior of the adversary.
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Victory in scholarship on strategy and war
William Martel
Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Fall 2011, Pages 513-536
Abstract:
When policy-makers use force to achieve political ends, they use the word ‘victory', yet its meaning is frequently left unclear. Policy-makers are using force for new purposes (peace operations, preemption, state-building, democracy promotion, counterinsurgencies and counterterrorism), but the language and thinking on victory in these new situations has not kept pace with the times. The essential problem is that the term ‘victory' is an imprecisely defined concept for guiding decisions about military intervention. Everyone, from scholars to policy-makers, should understand that the failure historically to develop a precise concept of victory weakens the ability of policy-makers to use force effectively and contributes to confusion when societies debate whether to use force. This article seeks to make three fundamental contributions towards reducing the ambiguity that surrounds the term ‘victory' in the strategic studies literature. First, it establishes the renewed importance of the question: ‘what is precisely the meaning of "victory?"' Second, it presents a typology for understanding the nature of victory. Third, it uses this typology to reevaluate the contributions of prominent and lesser-known thinkers in strategic studies whose ideas have contributed to the scholarship on what it means to achieve victory in war.
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Sacred Time and Conflict Initiation
Ron Hassner
Security Studies, Winter 2011, Pages 491-520
Abstract:
This article examines the manner in which rituals and symbols associated with sacred time have influenced conflict initiation. Leaders will time their attacks with sacred dates in the religious calendar if the force multiplying effects of sacred time, motivation, and vulnerability, outweigh its force dividing effects, constraint, and outrage. This is most likely to occur under three conditions: When conflict occurs across religious divides, when the sacred day is unambiguous in significance and meaning, and when rituals connected to that day will undermine an opponents' military effectiveness. I illustrate these effects with twentieth century examples, including the timing of insurgent attacks in Iraq and the launching of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. By exploring the pervasive effects of religious calendars on modern combat, I hope to redirect the focus of the study of religion and violence away from the narrow preoccupation with fundamentalism and terrorism and onto the much broader range of cases in which religion shapes secular conflict in multiple - and often unexpected - ways.
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The Kennedy Administration, Counterinsurgency, and Iraq's First Baʿthist Regime
Weldon Matthews
International Journal of Middle East Studies, November 2011, Pages 635-653
Abstract:
This article explores the relationship between the administration of President John F. Kennedy and the Arab Baʿth Socialist Party's first regime in Iraq from February to November 1963. It demonstrates that Kennedy administration officials had adopted a paradigm of modernization through which they believed recently decolonized countries could achieve high-consumption economies with democratic governments. Because this process appeared threatened by communist-supported insurgencies, the administration developed a doctrine of counterinsurgency, which entailed support for the repressive capacities of developing states. Administration officials regarded the Iraqi Baʿth Party as an agent of Iraq's modernization and of anticommunist counterinsurgency. They consequently cultivated supportive relationships with Baʿthist officials, police commanders, and members of the party's militia, despite the regime's wide-scale human rights violations. The American relationship with militia members began before the coup that brought the Baʿthists to power, and Baʿthist police commanders involved in the coup were trained in the United States.
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Revisionism Triumphant: Hanoi's Diplomatic Strategy in the Nixon Era
Pierre Asselin
Journal of Cold War Studies, Fall 2011, Pages 101-137
Abstract:
After the Tet Offensive of early 1968, Hanoi agreed to hold talks with U.S. representatives in Paris. The North Vietnamese, however, used the resulting talks with the Johnson administration not to negotiate in any traditional sense but to probe the intentions of Washington and to manipulate domestic and world opinion. Hanoi continued this charade for approximately a year, until domestic and international circumstances forced a meaningful reassessment of its position on a negotiated settlement of the war with the United States. This article explores that reassessment, as well as the evolution of North Vietnam's diplomatic strategy thereafter. Specifically, it considers the factors that conditioned the thinking and policies of Vietnamese Communist leaders, including the balance of forces below the seventeenth parallel and the behavior of close allies in Beijing and Moscow vis-à-vis the United States. The article proposes that military and economic setbacks in the South and in the North combined with recognition of the limits of socialist solidarity forced Hanoi to talk secretly and then to negotiate seriously with the Nixon administration and, ultimately, to accept a peace settlement that fell far short of the goals set by the Vietnamese Communists at the onset of the war.
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Human Rights Law and Military Aid Delivery: A Case Study of the Leahy Law
Winifred Tate
PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review, November 2011, Pages 337-354
Abstract:
Explicitly prohibiting US military counternarcotics assistance to foreign military units facing credible allegations of abuses, Leahy Law creation and implementation illuminates the epistemological challenges of knowledge production about violence in the policy process. First passed in 1997, the law emerged from strategic alliances between elite NGO advocates, grassroots activists, and critically located Congressional aides in response to the perceived inability of Congress to act on human rights information. I explore the resulting transformation of aid delivery; rather than suspend aid when no "clean" units could be found, US officials convinced their Colombian allies to create new units consisting of vetted soldiers. I use the implementation of the law in Colombia to explore how the vetting process exposed the knowledge practices inherent in policy implementation, the social production of credibility, and ways in which some forms of political violence were made visible while others were erased.
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Re-examining the evidence on the electoral impact of terrorist attacks: The Spanish election of 2004
Jose Montalvo
Electoral Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper re-examines the electoral effect of the 11-M terrorist attacks in Madrid. Previous research has focused on post-electoral surveys to construct counterfactuals for the evaluation of the electoral impact of the attack. Bali (Electoral Studies, 2007) claims that the terrorists attacks had an important electoral impact while Lago and Montero (2005) claim the opposite. In this paper I propose to re-examine the evidence using a methodological approach based on actual votes instead of opinions revealed by surveys, and the difference-in-differences estimator. The calculations under the counterfactual of "no terrorist attack" support the forecasts of the polls taken prior to the terrorist attack and the results of Bali (2007). The incumbent (conservative) party would have won the election with between 42% and the 45% of the votes, while the socialist party would have obtained 37% of the votes.
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Terrorism and Political Science
Matt Haunstrup Qvortrup
British Journal of Politics & International Relations, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article shows empirically, theoretically and statistically that domestic (or ‘home-grown') terrorism in Western Europe occurs more frequently in countries with majoritarian political systems (typically first-past-the-post electoral systems and single-party governments) than in countries with consensus political systems (typically countries with PR electoral systems and coalition governments). Based on a survey of all domestic terrorist incidents in Western Europe from 1985 to 2010, the article shows strong negative correlations between consensus institutions and levels of terrorism; that is, the more disproportional the political system is, the higher the levels of terrorism are likely to be. Thus domestic terrorism tends to occur when minorities are excluded from the decision-making process on matters they find important. These findings indicate that constitutional engineering provides a more promising model of counterterrorism than the prevailing orthodoxy.
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Earthquakes, hurricanes, and terrorism: Do natural disasters incite terror?
Claude Berrebi & Jordan Ostwald
Public Choice, December 2011, Pages 383-403
Abstract:
A novel and important issue in contemporary security policy is the impact of natural disasters on terrorism. Natural disasters can strain a society and its government, creating vulnerabilities which terrorist groups might exploit. Using a structured methodology and detailed data on terrorism, disasters, and other relevant controls for 167 countries between 1970 and 2007, we find a strong positive impact of disaster-related deaths on subsequent terrorism incidence and fatalities. Furthermore, the effects differ by disaster type and GDP per capita. The results consistently are significant and robust across a multitude of disaster and terrorism measures for a diverse set of model specifications.
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Domestic Institutions and Wartime Casualties
Michael Horowitz, Erin Simpson & Allan Stam
International Studies Quarterly, December 2011, Pages 909-936
Abstract:
Military leaders, policymakers, and academics have long debated the relative merits of volunteer versus conscript armies. They also have studied the possible effects of eroding resolve among mass publics in democratic states during wartime. In this paper, we use battlefield casualty data from the population of interstate wars to compare theories of property takings and domestic institutions. We find conscription, like other non-market-based property takings, to be a wasteful means of mobilizing military manpower. Volunteer armies suffer far fewer casualties than their conscripted counterparts. We also find that this effect compounds when interacted with regime type. Volunteer democratic armies suffer especially few casualties. Finally, we find that democratic societies are willing to bear the costs of large-scale commitments to maintaining state sovereignty and survival when targeted by authoritarian states, at times in the face of certain defeat.
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Authoritarian Responses to Foreign Pressure: Spending, Repression, and Sanctions
Abel Escribà-Folch
Comparative Political Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article explores how international sanctions affect authoritarian rulers' decisions concerning repression and public spending composition. Rulers whose budgets are not severely constrained by sanctions will tend to increase spending in those categories that most benefit their core support groups. When budget constraints are severe, dictators are more likely to increase repression. Using data on regime types, public expenditures and spending composition (1970-2000) as well as on repression levels (1976-2001), I show that the empirical patterns conform well to the theoretical expectations. Single-party regimes, when targeted by sanctions, increase spending on subsidies and transfers which largely benefit their key constituencies. Likewise, military regimes increase their expenditures on goods and services, which include military equipment and soldiers' and officers' wages. Conversely, personalist regimes targeted by sanctions reduce spending in all categories and thus increase repression more than other autocracies.
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Time to Agree: Is Time Pressure Good for Peace Negotiations?
Marco Pinfari
Journal of Conflict Resolution, October 2011, Pages 683-709
Abstract:
This article explores the impact of time pressure on negotiation processes in territorial conflicts in the post-cold war era. While it is often argued that time pressure can help generate positive momentum in peace negotiations and help break deadlocks, extensive literature also suggests that perceived time shortage can have a negative impact on the cognitive processes involved in complex, intercultural negotiations. The analysis explores these hypotheses through a comparison of sixty-eight episodes of negotiation using fuzzy-set logic, a form of qualitative comparative analysis (QCA). The conclusions confirm that time pressure can, in certain circumstances, be associated with broad agreements but also that only low levels of time pressure or its absence are associated with durable settlements. The analysis also suggests that the negative effect of time pressure on negotiations is particularly relevant in the presence of complex decision making and when a broad range of debated issues is at stake.
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The economic costs of the German participation in the Afghanistan war
Tilman Brück, Olaf de Groot & Friedrich Schneider
Journal of Peace Research, November 2011, Pages 793-805
Abstract:
In this article, we estimate the total costs of the German participation in the Afghanistan war, both past and future. This is a hugely complex and uncertain calculation, which depends on several important assumptions. These assumptions pertain to the different cost channels and the shares of these channels that can be attributed to the German participation in the war. By calculating the costs of the German participation, we provide a framework for other researchers to do the same with respect to other countries. The article can function as a roadmap for researchers focusing on this topic. In the end we find that, in the most realistic of several possible scenarios regarding the duration and intensity of the German participation in the war in Afghanistan, the German share of the net present value of the total costs of the war ranges from 26 billion Euro to 47 billion Euro. This large range reflects the uncertainties with which the costs must be estimated. On an annual basis, we estimate that the German participation in the war costs between 2.5 and 3 billion Euro. This contrasts with the official war budget, which is little over 1 billion Euro for 2010, showing that governments may not adequately represent the costs of military action.