Grand strategy
The Secrecy Heuristic: Inferring Quality from Secrecy in Foreign Policy Contexts
Mark Travers, Leaf Van Boven & Charles Judd
Political Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Three experiments demonstrate that in the context of U.S. foreign policy decision making, people infer informational quality from secrecy. In Experiment 1, people weighed secret information more heavily than public information when making recommendations about foreign political candidates. In Experiment 2, people judged information presented in documents ostensibly produced by the Department of State and the National Security Council as being of relatively higher quality when those documents were secret rather than public. Finally, in Experiment 3, people judged a National Security Council document as being of higher quality when presented as a secret document rather than a public document and evaluated others' decisions more favorably when those decisions were based on secret information. Discussion centers on the mediators, moderators, and broader implications of this secrecy heuristic in foreign policy contexts.
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Wearing Away the Stone: Assessing Theories of Combat Attrition
Sean Clark
Comparative Strategy, Spring 2013, Pages 115-132
Abstract:
The most common explanation for military victory and defeat is numerical preponderance. This is the causal assertion that the preponderant will use their material advantage optimally and win the military conflicts they engage in through attrition. When it comes to battle, more is better, whether it be troops in the field or raw economic potential. Regrettably, this big battalions theory has rarely been tested, particularly against a series of cases with great historical breadth. This article analyzes data from 754 battles spanning nearly 3,500 years, and contrasts these empirical details against the core hypotheses of preponderance theory. Unfortunately for the theory, the returns to preponderance are highly ambiguous. Historically, armies both large and small emerge victorious in nearly equal fashion - a result highly contrary to the theory's central claim.
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Insurgent Compensation: Evidence from Iraq
Benjamin Bahney et al.
American Economic Review, May 2013, Pages 518-522
Abstract:
Participating in insurgency is physically risky. Why do people do so? Using new data on 3,799 payments to insurgent fighters by Al Qa'ida Iraq, we find that: (i) wages were extremely low relative to outside options, even compared to unskilled labor; (ii) the estimated risk premium is negative; and (iii) the wage schedule favors equalization and provides additional compensation for larger families. These results challenge the notion that fighters are paid their marginal product, or the opportunity cost of their time. They may be consistent with a "lemons" model in which fighters signal commitment by accepting low wages.
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Fair-Weather Allies? Terrorism and the Allocation of US Foreign Aid
Andrew Boutton & David Carter
Journal of Conflict Resolution, forthcoming
Abstract:
While it is commonly assumed that the United States uses foreign aid as an instrument to combat global terrorism, it is unclear whether it views terrorist threats to other countries, particularly its allies, with urgency. We show that the relationship between transnational terrorism and foreign aid flows is strongly conditional on whether terrorist activity based in a potential recipient directly threatens the United States. Using data on terrorist attacks and casualties in potential recipient countries, we demonstrate that terrorist activity based within a state's borders, which targets US interests is a strong determinant of both whether that state receives any aid and also how much aid it receives. In contrast, the presence of terrorism targeted at non-US interests, even if it targets formal allies of the United States, is generally unrelated to US aid allocation. These findings suggest that the United States' use of foreign aid to fight terrorism and political violence is narrowly tailored to assist countries that directly threaten its own security, rather than those of other countries, even its allies.
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Strategic Stability in Europe: Risks with Low Numbers of US and Russian Nuclear Weapons
David Yost
Nonproliferation Review, Summer 2013, Pages 205-245
Abstract:
This article offers a survey of risks that might arise for strategic stability (defined as a situation with a low probability of major-power war) with the reduction of US and Russian nuclear arsenals to "low numbers" (defined as 1,000 or fewer nuclear weapons on each side). These risks might include US anti-cities targeting strategies that are harmful to the credibility of extended deterrence; renewed European anxiety about a US-Russian condominium; greater vulnerability to Russian noncompliance with agreed obligations; incentives to adopt destabilizing "launch-on-warning" strategies; a potential stimulus to nuclear proliferation; perceptions of a US disengagement from extended deterrence; increased likelihood of non-nuclear arms competitions and conflicts; and controversial pressures on the UK and French nuclear forces. Observers in North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) states who consider such risks significant have cited four possible measures that might help to contain them: sustained basing of US nonstrategic nuclear weapons in Europe; maintaining a balanced US strategic nuclear force posture; high-readiness means to reconstitute US nuclear forces; and enhanced US and allied non-nuclear military capabilities. These concrete measures might complement the consultations with the NATO allies that the United States would in all likelihood seek with respect to such important adjustments in its deterrence and defense posture.
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Weather, terrain and warfare: Coalition fatalities in Afghanistan
Timothy Allen Carter & Daniel Jay Veale
Conflict Management and Peace Science, July 2013, Pages 220-239
Abstract:
The study of conflict increasingly focuses on events and relationships within wars. Among these is the relationship between physical geography and violence. Careful examinations of the relationship between physical geography, especially weather, and events within wars are, however, still few. With increasingly available data on the violence within wars and the physical geography within states, the opportunities for such quantitative analysis have grown. In particular, the ongoing war in Afghanistan provides a useful opportunity to examine this relationship. Using this conflict, we test an argument about how the constraints and opportunities provided by physical geography, in particular daily and seasonal measures of weather, explain combat fatalities. We evaluate our argument with a series of event count models and find consistently significant evidence connecting warm temperatures, decreased visibility and windy conditions to coalition combat fatalities. Alternatively, we find mixed support that the more commonly studied elements of physical geography, distance and rough terrain are connected to these fatalities.
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United Nations Peacekeeping and Civilian Protection in Civil War
Lisa Hultman, Jacob Kathman & Megan Shannon
American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Does United Nations peacekeeping protect civilians in civil war? Civilian protection is a primary purpose of UN peacekeeping, yet there is little systematic evidence for whether peacekeeping prevents civilian deaths. We propose that UN peacekeeping can protect civilians if missions are adequately composed of military troops and police in large numbers. Using unique monthly data on the number and type of UN personnel contributed to peacekeeping operations, along with monthly data on civilian deaths from 1991 to 2008 in armed conflicts in Africa, we find that as the UN commits more military and police forces to a peacekeeping mission, fewer civilians are targeted with violence. The effect is substantial - the analyses show that, on average, deploying several thousand troops and several hundred police dramatically reduces civilian killings. We conclude that although the UN is often criticized for its failures, UN peacekeeping is an effective mechanism of civilian protection.
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Are Lives a Substitute for Livelihoods? Terrorism, Security, and US Bilateral Imports
Daniel Mirza & Thierry Verdier
Journal of Conflict Resolution, forthcoming
Abstract:
In this article, we assess the impact of counterterrorism measures on trade. Our work brings three value addition to the literature: (1) it develops a simple theory to emphasize the endogeneity between terrorism acts, counterterrorism measures, and trade; (2) it delivers an original strategy to identify empirically the effect of counterterrorism security measures on trade flows (using third country incidents); and (3) it uses a new data set on business visas issued by the United States to test further the hypothesis that terrorism is affecting trade through the security channel. Our results suggest that counterterrorism security measures matter for US imports. The level of the impact is up to three times higher when the acts result in a relatively high number of victims, when the products are sensitive to shipping time, or when they ask for networks and business people mobility in order to be sold.
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The Potential Impact of an Anthrax Attack on Real Estate Prices and Foreclosures in Seattle
Noah Dormady, Thomas Szelazek & Adam Rose
Risk Analysis, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article provides a methodology for the economic analysis of the potential consequences of a simulated anthrax terrorism attack on real estate within the Seattle metropolitan area. We estimate spatially disaggregated impacts on median sales price of residential housing within the Seattle metro area following an attack on the central business district (CBD). Using a combination of longitudinal panel regression and GIS analysis, we find that the median sales price in the CBD could decline by as much as $280,000, and by nearly $100,000 in nearby communities. These results indicate that total residential property values could decrease by over $50 billion for Seattle, or a 33% overall decline. We combine these estimates with HUD's 2009 American Housing Survey (AHS) to further predict 70,000 foreclosures in Seattle spatial zones following the terrorism event.
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Scott Helfstein
Defence and Peace Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Many studies of terrorism explain the use of violence against civilians with political or economic forces, often relegating social variables to the margins. Social factors, specifically societal-level social capital, play a far more important role in explaining patterns of terrorist activity than previously recognized. Social capital can exert pressures that act as both restraint and catalyst for terrorism, making explicit exposition of these differential effects critical. Analysis shows that higher stocks of social capital positively correlate with the number of terrorist groups, but the average attack activity of those groups increase as measures of social capital decline. The complex relationship makes it difficult to draw simple policy implications, but it does offer insight into the role that social dynamics play in terrorist activity.
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Homa Katouzian
British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
In June 1924 Tehran woke up to the news that a famous saqqa-khanih had performed miracles. The most widespread story was that a Babi / Baha'i girl had tried to poison the saqqa-khanih's water and had suddenly gone blind. This happened against the background of an acute power struggle between Reza Khan and the opposition which had recently ended with the failure of his campaign to turn Iran into a republic. The news of the miracles led to anti-Babi demonstrations as well as a rush by the sick and the disabled to seek cure from the saqqa-khanih. And when the American vice-consul Robert Imbrie and his friend went to take photos of the scenes they were murdered by a mob, probably helped by police and soldiers. The government and the opposition both blamed each other for the incident, but the likeliest explanation is that the demonstrations had been fomented by the royal court and a few conservative clerics close to them, though the murder of Imbrie had been totally unplanned.
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What Does It Take to Deter? Regional Power Nuclear Postures and International Conflict
Vipin Narang
Journal of Conflict Resolution, June 2013, Pages 478-508
Abstract:
Existing nuclear deterrence scholarship evinces a pervasive "existential bias," assuming that once a state merely possesses nuclear weapons, it should be able to deter armed conflict. The empirical literature expresses this bias by simply dichotomously coding a state based on whether it has nuclear weapons, thereby treating all nuclear states as equivalent. Thus, whether nuclear weapons deter conflict, and how much is required to do so, is unclear. This article shifts the unit of analysis away from nuclear weapons to postures, hypothesizing that different nuclear postures are distinct and generate differential deterrent power, particularly amongst the non-superpower states which comprise the lion's share of nuclear powers. I find that an asymmetric escalation nuclear posture uniquely deters conflict initiation and escalation. Not only do small arsenals have little deterrence success, but I find that even assured retaliation postures fail to deter intense conventional conflict. This suggests that the deterrence dividend is distributed unequally across nuclear powers, and that states may need to do more than simply acquire nuclear weapons to successfully deter conventional attacks.
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Zachary Selden
Security Studies, Spring 2013, Pages 330-364
Abstract:
During the 2001-2009 period when American foreign policy was internationally unpopular and perceived as unilateral, many states strengthened their security cooperation with the United States and facilitated the reach of the us military. This behavior spans a range of actions along a spectrum from reaffirming traditional alliances to far more subtle forms of alignment. This pattern is in large part driven by the actions of regional powers such as Russia and China whose rising power pushes neighboring states to seek the assurance of the United States, and it has distinct implications for the endurance of American hegemony. As those regional powers seek to expand their influence, secondary states may increase their contributions to the maintenance of American hegemony, thus helping to extend it well into the future. They are less prone to do so, however, if the United States follows a strategy of restraint that calls into question its willingness to defend its hegemony. Therefore, a policy focused on maintaining American military preeminence and the demonstrated willingness to use it may be what sustains the cooperation from second-tier states that helps to maintain American hegemony.
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Masanori Kuroki
Defence and Peace Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper investigates how public trust in the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) changed after 2004 when it was sent to Iraq in support of the USA. Because Japan's Constitution clearly prohibits the use of military forces unless for self-defense purposes, public opinion was divided. I find that liberals' distrust in the JSDF grew after the deployment in Iraq relative to moderates. Somewhat surprisingly, the trust among conservatives also declined relative to moderates after the deployment in Iraq.
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Governance, Naval Intervention and Piracy in Somalia
Anja Shortland & Sarah Percy
Peace Economics, Peace Science and Public Policy, forthcoming
Abstract:
Might criminals in weak states benefit from better governance? We test the relationship between Somali piracy and local business conditions as well as (naval) law enforcement. Anarchy on land is not helpful to pirates, but corruptible governance is. Increasingly effective naval measures in the Gulf of Aden displaced piracy into the Indian Ocean.
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Foreign Targets and Diversionary Conflict
Sung Chul Jung
International Studies Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
When does domestic unrest lead to interstate conflict? I present the diversionary target theory that argues that domestically troubled states are more likely to use military force against some, but not all, states because political leaders prefer targets that can evoke their domestic audience's fear or greed in order to enjoy "rally-round-the-flag" effects. I suggest that the fear-producing targets are foreign states that exhibit rapidly rising power or manifest different identities. The greed-producing targets are foreign states occupying disputed territory or exercising regional/local hegemony despite declining power. In addition, I expect that political leaders prefer fear- or greed-producing targets that possess similar powers, because domestic audiences may see initiation of military conflicts against too-powerful states or too-weak states as excessively risky and unnecessary, respectively. From statistical analyses on directed dyad-years from 1920 to 2001, I find that the presence of a rising power, a territory target, or a hegemony target contributes to the correlation between domestic unrest and the initiation of interstate conflict in a statistically significant way.
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Watching From Afar: Media Consumption Patterns Around the Arab Spring
Sean Aday et al.
American Behavioral Scientist, July 2013, Pages 899-919
Abstract:
Uses of new media in the context of the Arab Spring have attracted scholarly attention from a wide array of disciplines. Amid the anecdotes and speculation, most of the available empirical research in this area has examined how new media have enabled participants and spectators to produce and circulate protest-related content. In contrast, the current study investigates patterns of consumption of Arab Spring-related content using a unique data set constructed by combining archived Twitter content with metadata drawn from the URL shortening service Bit.ly. This data set allows us to explore two critical research questions: First, were links posted to Twitter (among other platforms) followed primarily by individuals inside the affected country, within the broader Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region or by those outside the region and country? And second, who attracted more attention online: protesters and other nonelite citizens or traditional news organizations? Our findings suggest that the vast majority of attention to Arab Spring content came from outside of the MENA region and, furthermore, that mass media, rather than citizen media, overwhelmingly held the world's attention during the protests. We thus conclude that Twitter was broadly useful as an information channel for non-MENA onlookers but less so for protesters on the ground.
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Ruth Judson
Federal Reserve Working Paper, November 2012
Abstract:
U.S. currency has long been a desirable store of value and medium of exchange in times and places where local currency or bank deposits are inferior in one or more respects. Indeed, as noted in earlier work, a substantial share of U.S. currency circulates outside the United States. Although precise measurements of stocks and flows of U.S. currency outside the United States are not available, a variety of data sources and methods have been developed to provide estimates. This paper reviews the raw data available for measuring international banknote flows and presents updates on indirect methods of estimating the stock of currency held abroad: the seasonal method and the biometric method. These methods require some adjustments, but they continue to indicate that a large share of U.S. currency is held abroad, especially in the $100 denomination. In addition to these existing indirect methods, I develop a framework and basic variants of a new method to estimate the share of U.S. currency held abroad. Although the methods and estimates are disparate, they provide support for several hypotheses regarding cross-border dollar stocks and flows. First, once a country or region begins using dollars, subsequent crises result in additional inflows: the dominant sources of international demand over the past decade and a half are the countries and regions that were known to be heavy dollar users in the early to mid-1990s. Second, economic stabilization and modernization appear to result in reversal of these inflows. Specifically, demand for U.S. currency was extremely strong through the 1990s, a period of turmoil for the former Soviet Union and for Argentina, two of the largest overseas users of U.S. currency. Demand eased in the early 2000s as conditions gradually stabilized and as financial institutions developed. However, this trend reversed sharply with the onset of the financial crisis in late 2008 and has continued since then.
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What's in a Claim? De Jure versus De Facto Borders in Interstate Territorial Disputes
Kenneth Schultz
Journal of Conflict Resolution, forthcoming
Abstract:
This note uses a new data set on international territorial disputes and boundary agreements to explore whether and how legal commitments affect state behavior. Do border treaties reduce subsequent conflict simply through their effect on the distribution of the disputed good, or do treaties have legal and political implications such that a given distribution of territory has different effects depending on whether it is de facto or de jure? There are three main results. First, among states that have homeland territory disputes, the adoption of a legally binding border is associated with a significant reduction in the likelihood of future militarized conflict over the territory. Second, this effect is the same regardless of whether the treaty transfers territory or converts a de facto or contested border into a de jure border without changing the status quo distribution. Third, there is no equivalent reduction in conflict when states create explicitly provisional borders that allow them to retain their claims to areas that they do not possess. These findings suggest that border treaties do more than simply specify the distribution of territory and provide for transfers. By requiring states to renounce claims to territories that they do not receive, treaties generate ex ante costs of signing and/or ex post costs for reneging that explain their association with subsequent peace.
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Disappearing violence: JSOC and the Pentagon's new cartography of networked warfare
Steve Niva
Security Dialogue, June 2013, Pages 185-202
Abstract:
In the twilight of the USA's ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there has been an expanding shadow war of targeted killings and drone strikes outside conventional war zones, where violence is largely disappeared from media coverage and political accountability. While many attribute the growth in these shadowy operations to the use of new technologies and platforms such as drones, this article argues that the central transformation enabling these operations is the increasing emergence of network forms of organization within and across the US military and related agencies after 2001. Drawing upon evidence from unclassified reports, academic studies, and the work of investigative journalists, this article will show that elements within the US military and related agencies developed in the decade after 2001 a form of shadow warfare in which hybrid blends of hierarchies and networks combine through common information and self-synchronization to mount strike operations across transnational battle spaces. But, rather than a top-down transformation towards networks, this article will show how it was the evolution of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) from an elite strike force into a largely autonomous networked command that has been central to this process. Although drone strikes have received the bulk of critical attention in relation to this expanding shadow war of targeted killing, this often-lethal networked warfare increasingly resembles a global and possibly permanent policing operation in which targeted operations are used to manage populations and threats in lieu of addressing the social and political problems that produce the threats in the first place.
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The Failure of Pacifism and the Success of Nonviolence
Dustin Ells Howes
Perspectives on Politics, June 2013, Pages 427-446
Abstract:
Although pacifism and nonviolence bear a close relationship to one another historically, pacifism is the ideological assertion that war and violence should be rejected in political and personal life, whereas nonviolence refers to a distinct set of political practices. Unlike other modern ideologies such as liberalism and socialism, pacifism has never gained widespread acceptance among a significant portion of humanity and seems to remain a minority position among most of the peoples of the world. Even among those who use nonviolent techniques, the conventional wisdom that physical violence is necessary under certain circumstances often prevails. However, a growing body of empirical evidence shows that the methods of nonviolence are more likely to succeed than methods of violence across a wide variety of circumstances and that more people are using nonviolence around the world. At the same time, both the effectiveness of military and material superiority in achieving political ends and the incidence of warfare and violence appear to be waning. In a remarkable example of convergence between empirical social science and political theory, explanations for the effectiveness of nonviolence relative to violence point to a people-centered understanding of power. This research can provide a basis for a reinvigorated and pragmatic brand of pacifism that refocuses the attention of political scientists on the organization, actions, and loyalties of people as opposed to technologies of domination and destruction.
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Female Peacekeepers and Gender Balancing: Token Gestures or Informed Policymaking?
Sabrina Karim & Kyle Beardsley
International Interactions, forthcoming
Abstract:
Since the UN Security Council (UNSC) adopted Resolution 1325 (2000), which is referenced in most of the mandates for peacekeeping authorizations and renewals since, UN peacekeeping forces have begun a process of gender balancing. While we have seen an increase in the numbers of female peacekeepers during the decade 2000-2010 and variation in the distribution patterns of female military personnel, we do not know if female military peacekeepers are deploying to areas that are safest or to areas with the greatest need for gender-balanced international involvement. Since the decision-making authority in the allocation of peacekeeping forces rests with the troop contributing countries (TCCs), which might not have bought into the gender balancing and mainstreaming initiatives mandated by the UNSC, we propose and find evidence that female military personnel tend to deploy to areas where there is least risk. They tend not to deploy where they may be most needed - where sexual violence and gender equity has been a major problem - and we find only a modest effect of having specific language in the mandates related to gender issues.
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Connecting the Dots: Dispute Resolution and Escalation in a World of Entangled Territorial Claims
Molly Melin & Alexandru Grigorescu
Journal of Conflict Resolution, forthcoming
Abstract:
We explore states' decisions to escalate disputes over their territorial claims or settle them peacefully. We complement existing arguments by accounting for the fact that states are often simultaneously entangled in multiple territorial claims. We build on previous scholarship in positing that two states involved in a territorial dispute will act based on information they glean from each other's reputation for dealing with claims with other states and their recent actions involving disputes with other states. Because states know that their actions will impact their adversaries' calculations, the existence of multiple ongoing territorial claims will act as a deterrent from any type of action to resolve the dispute, whether militarized or peaceful. Our hypotheses therefore consider the impact of the number of states' other territorial claims as well as the number of their adversaries' claims. Tests using the Issue Correlates of War data support our arguments.
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Gens una sumus?! - Or Does Political Ideology Affect Experts' Aesthetic Judgment of Chess Games?
Björn Frank & Stefan Krabel
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, August 2013, Pages 66-78
Abstract:
This paper presents evidence on biased voting by jurors from the Warsaw Pact countries who ranked high-level chess games. This bias is observed only for jurors from Eastern countries, not for those from the West (NATO), and most interestingly, it disappears after the collapse of the Warsaw Pact in 1989.