Theater of War
Trivial Tripwires?: Military Capabilities and Alliance Reassurance
Brian Blankenship & Erik Lin-Greenberg
Security Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
How can states most effectively reassure their allies? Existing studies assessing signals of commitment focus on the role of resolve in making assurances credible. This sidelines important questions about the role of capability. We argue that reassurance effectiveness is the product of both capability and resolve, and suggest that high resolve cannot offset low capability. We introduce a new typology of reassurance measures based on the interaction of military capability and resolve, and test which types of measures are most reassuring using an original survey fielded on European foreign policy experts and a case study of US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization reassurance initiatives in the Baltics. We find that high-resolve, low-capability signals such as tripwire forces in allied territory are not viewed as any more reassuring than high-capability, low-resolve signals such as forces stationed offshore. Our study casts doubt on the reassurance value of tripwires and contributes to scholarship on interstate signaling.
Playing Both Sides: Russian State-Backed Media Coverage of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement
Samantha Bradshaw, Renée DiResta & Carly Miller
International Journal of Press/Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Russian influence operations on social media have received significant attention following the 2016 US presidential elections. Here, scholarship has largely focused on the covert strategies of the Russia-based Internet Research Agency and the overt strategies of Russia's largest international broadcaster RT (Russia Today). But since 2017, a number of new news media providers linked to the Russian state have emerged, and less research has focused on these channels and how they may support contemporary influence operations. We conduct a qualitative content analysis of 2,014 Facebook posts about the #BlackLivesMatter (BLM) protests in the United States over the summer of 2020 to comparatively examine the overt propaganda strategies of six Russian-linked news organizations -- RT, Ruptly, Soapbox, In The NOW, Sputnik, and Redfish. We found that RT and Sputnik diverged in their framing of the BLM movement from the newer media properties. RT and Sputnik primarily produced negative coverage of the BLM movement, painting protestors as violent, or discussed the hypocrisy of racial justice in America. In contrast, newer media properties like In The NOW, Soapbox, and Redfish supported the BLM movement with clickbait-style videos highlighting racism in America. Video footage bearing the Ruptly brandmark appears in both traditional and new media properties, to illustrate, in real time, civil unrest across the US. By focusing on overt propaganda from the broad array of Russian-affiliated media, our data allows us to further understand the “full spectrum” and “counter-hegemonic” strategies at play in contemporary information operations.
Whose lives matter? Race, public opinion, and military conflict
Whitney Hua & Thomas Jamieson
Politics, Groups, and Identities, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper examines how race affects attitudes towards conflict beyond the water’s edge. While prior literature largely assumes that all casualties affect voters’ attitudes similarly, we argue that attitudes toward casualties are importantly shaped by racial-group identities. More specifically, we argue that domestic responses to international events – namely American casualties in military conflict – are conditioned by individuals’ attitudes and biases toward the race of fallen soldiers. Using a novel survey experiment, we find that while people become more supportive of conflict when informed of any soldier’s death, support for escalating conflict only increases when the fallen soldiers have Pakistani and African American names. Our results suggest that people are more resistant to conflict when casualties of the war effort are perceived as belonging to their racial in-group, and less averse to those perceived as belonging to their racial out-group. This research is theoretically significant as it speaks to the fields of American politics; public opinion; international relations; and race, ethnicity, and politics. Further, this study demonstrates the need for scholars of public opinion and foreign policy to pay greater attention to race in future research, and highlights the importance of taking heterogeneity of racial-group identities seriously in social science.
The drawbacks of drones: The effects of UAVs on escalation and instability in Pakistan
Erik Gartzke & James Igoe Walsh
Journal of Peace Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Growing reliance on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in the effort to combat militant groups has led to considerable debate about the consequences of this new mode of warfare. While critics have focused on the impact of civilian casualties on militant recruitment and the resulting use of terrorism, evidence suggests that ‘drones’ are paradoxically more effective in limiting civilian deaths compared to other forms of military force. This article demonstrates a different causal pathway connecting militant use of force to terrorist attacks. Drone strikes encourage militants to displace operations to urban centers. Confronted with unfamiliar terrain and greater government capacity, militants emphasize terrorist attacks against civilians. The article explores these dynamics in the longest running drone campaign, in Pakistan. While civilian casualties from drone strikes have no discernible effect on terrorism, strikes that kill militants increase terrorist attacks against civilians in urban settings, while failing to reduce attacks on government targets.
Systemic effects of economic interdependence and the militarisation of diplomacy: 1914 and beyond
Jack Levy & William Mulligan
Journal of Strategic Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
Empirical research generally supports the dyadic-level trade-promotes-peace hypothesis, while demonstrating that the relationship is weaker, more complex, and more conditional than liberal theory suggests. We shift to the system level and examine a neglected path to conflict in economically interdependent systems. In the great power competition for support among smaller states, a great power at a competitive disadvantage in economic instruments of influence may be incentivised to adopt more militarised strategies. We illustrate our argument with case studies of Austro-Hungarian and Russian influence strategies before the First World War and of Prussian strategies among German states before the Franco-Prussian War.
Tracking the rise of United States foreign military training: IMTAD-USA, a new dataset and research agenda
Theodore McLauchlin, Lee Seymour & Simon Pierre Boulanger Martel
Journal of Peace Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Training other countries’ armed forces is a go-to foreign policy tool for the United States and other states. A growing literature explores the effects of military training, but researchers lack detailed data on training activities. To assess the origins and consequences of military training, as well as changing patterns over time, this project provides a new, global dataset of US foreign military training. This article describes the scope of the data along with the variables collected, coding procedures, and spatial and temporal patterns. We demonstrate the added value of the data in their much greater coverage of training activities, showing differences from both existing datasets and aggregate foreign military aid data. Reanalyzing prior research findings linking US foreign military training to the risk of coups d’état in recipient states, we find that this effect is limited to a single US program representing a small fraction of overall US training activities. The data show comprehensively how the United States attempts to influence partner military forces in a wide variety of ways and suggest new avenues of research.
Transnational Terrorist Recruitment: Evidence from Daesh Personnel Records
Anne Brockmeyer et al.
Review of Economics and Statistics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Global terrorist organizations attract radicalized individuals across borders and constitute a threat for both sending and receiving countries. We use unique personnel records from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Daesh) to show that unemployment in sending countries is associated with the number of transnational terrorist recruits from these countries. The relationship is spatially heterogeneous, which is most plausibly attributable to travel costs. We argue that poor labor market opportunities generally push more individuals to join terrorist organizations, but at the same time limit their ability to do so when longer travel distances imply higher migration costs.
Under the Hood – Learning and Innovation in the Islamic State’s Suicide Vehicle Industry
Ellen Tveteraas
Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article explores how the Islamic State learned from its suicide bombings, a tactic that in theory undermines the in-group stability associated with organizational learning. Using interviews from Mosul and Baghdad together with internal documents from the Division of Soldiers it provides a case study of the learning and production process underlying innovations in suicide vehicle designs between 2014 and 2017. It examines how the group acquired, distributed, interpreted, implemented, and stored information from suicide vehicle operations in its military-industrial complex, and details how the group learned by maximizing continuity among personnel in support, coordinating, and production roles.
Does Public Opinion Affect the Preferences of Foreign Policy Leaders? Experimental Evidence from the UK Parliament
Jonathan Art Chu & Stefano Recchia
Journal of Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Scholars continue to debate whether public opinion in democracies influences the foreign policy preferences of their leaders. We intervene into this literature through a survey experiment in which we asked 101 British members of Parliament (MPs) for their views about the United Kingdom’s military presence in the South China Sea. Based on random assignment, some of the MPs received information from a public opinion poll about this issue. MPs who received the polling information, compared with those who did not, voiced opinions closer to those of the public. This finding advances the state of knowledge because we use causally identified evidence and employ a realistic research design (we surveyed policy makers of a global power using real public opinion data about an active policy issue). Our study suggests that leaders respond to public opinion, which has implications for theories about democratic responsiveness and the impact of domestic audiences on foreign policy.
Re-examining women leaders and military spending
Ulkar Imamverdiyeva & Patrick Shea
Journal of Peace Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Do women leaders enact more hawkish foreign policies? Some research argues women leaders are more likely to adopt aggressive and masculine characteristics to obtain national office. As a result, women leaders should exhibit more hawkish behavior than men. In this study we re-examine the relationship between the women leaders and foreign policy by focusing on military spending behavior. We argue that conventional empirical methods, such as linear regression, are ill-suited to examine data on women leaders and military spending. These methods are sensitive to outliers and small sample sizes: two characteristics of women leadership. To address these issues, we use the synthetic control method to estimate the military spending behavior of women leaders. By creating unique synthetic counterfactuals for three prominent women leaders – Thatcher, Gandhi, and Meir – we analyze what would have happened if a particular state had a male leader. Generalizing beyond these cases, we also conduct a multiple treatment test that examines the effect of women leadership jointly across multiple countries and time periods. We find that women leaders do not spend more on the military than men. We analyze plausible explanations of these null results and discuss their implications.
A century of coalitions in battle: Incidence, composition, and performance, 1900-2003
Rosella Cappella Zielinski & Ryan Grauer
Journal of Strategic Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
Under what conditions do battlefield coalitions fight as greater or less than the sum of their parts? Introducing the Belligerents in Battle dataset, which contains information on actors fighting in 492 battles during interstate wars waged between 1900 and 2003, we present, for the first time, a portrait of the universe of battlefield coalitions. Battlefield coalitions win more often and suffer fewer casualties than belligerents fighting alone. Battlefield coalitions including forces fielded by the United States, states with pre-existing treaty agreements, and democracies are particularly powerful. By contrast, battlefield coalitions that include non-state actors lose the majority of their fights.