Engaged
Attacking the Atom: Does Bombing Nuclear Facilities Affect Proliferation?
Sarah Kreps & Matthew Fuhrmann
Journal of Strategic Studies, March/April 2011, Pages 161-187
Abstract:
What are the consequences of military strikes against nuclear facilities? In particular, do they 'work' by delaying the target states ability to build the bomb? This article addresses these questions by conducting an analysis of 16 attacks against nuclear facilities from 1942 to 2007. We analyze strikes that occurred during peacetime and raids that took place in the context of an ongoing interstate war. The findings indicate that strikes are neither as uniformly fruitless as the skeptics would suggest, nor as productive as advocates have claimed. There is evidence that the peacetime attacks delayed the target's nuclear program, although the size of this effect is rather modest. The wartime cases were less successful, as attacks often missed their targets either due to operational failure or limited intelligence on the location of critical targets. In our concluding section we show that many of the conditions that were conducive to past success are not present in the contemporary Iran case. Overall, our findings reveal an interesting paradox. The historical cases that have successfully delayed proliferation are those when the attacking state struck well before a nuclear threat was imminent. Yet, this also happens to be when strikes are the least legitimate under international law, meaning that attacking under these conditions is most likely to elicit international censure.
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Coups, Corporations, and Classified Information
Arindrajit Dube, Ethan Kaplan & Suresh Naidu
NBER Working Paper, April 2011
Abstract:
We estimate the impact of coups and top-secret coup authorizations on asset prices of partially nationalized multinational companies that stood to benefit from US-backed coups. Stock returns of highly exposed firms reacted to coup authorizations classified as top-secret. The average cumulative abnormal return to a coup authorization was 9% over 4 days for a fully nationalized company, rising to more than 13% over sixteen days. Pre-coup authorizations accounted for a larger share of stock price increases than the actual coup events themselves. There is no effect in the case of the widely publicized, poorly executed Cuban operations, consistent with abnormal returns to coup authorizations reflecting credible private information. We also introduce two new intuitive and easy to implement nonparametric tests that do not rely on asymptotic justifications.
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Graceful Decline? The Surprising Success of Great Power Retrenchment
Paul MacDonald & Joseph Parent
International Security, Spring 2011, Pages 7-44
Abstract:
There is broad scholarly consensus that the relative power of the United States is declining and that this decline will have negative consequences for international politics. This pessimism is justified by the belief that great powers have few options to deal with acute relative decline. Retrenchment is seen as a hazardous policy that demoralizes allies and encourages external predation. Faced with shrinking means, great powers are thought to have few options to stave off decline short of preventive war. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, however, retrenchment is not a relatively rare and ineffective policy instrument. A comparison of eighteen cases of acute relative decline since 1870 demonstrates that great powers frequently engage in retrenchment and that retrenchment is often effective. In addition, we find that prevailing explanations overstate the importance of democracies, bureaucracies, and interest groups in inhibiting retrenchment. In fact, the rate of decline can account for both the extent and form of retrenchment, even over short periods. These arguments have important implications for power transition theories and the rise of China.
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Michael King, Haula Noor & Donald Taylor
Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, May 2011, Pages 402-417
Abstract:
Families might be an important source of norms that legitimize terrorism, an assumption that has yet to be tested empirically. To investigate this, surveys were administered to 20 immediate relatives of 16 Jema'ah Islamiyah (JI) members in Indonesia. Family members were found to agree with their kin's involvement in the violent activities of JI, and perceived their community as being supportive. Agreement with their relative's involvement in JI was predicted by anti-Western sentiment, not support for violent jihad. Kinship to a suicide bomber predicted less support for their family member's involvement in JI. Implications for deradicalization strategies are discussed.
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Krista De Castella & Craig McGarty
Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article examines fear and anger content in the political rhetoric of former U.S. President George W. Bush and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair during the period 2001-2003. A total of 49 terrorism-related speeches were coded for content that could plausibly elicit fear or anger in listeners. Although anger and fear inductions were present in the vast majority of coded speeches, the percentage of speeches containing emotional content varied widely over time and between speakers, with the highest levels present in the lead-up to the War in Iraq. The content of Bush's communication was also considered alongside polling data measuring presidential approval and fear of falling victim to a terrorist attack. Results indicate that fear content in political rhetoric was not associated with significant changes in public fear of terrorism. However, the presence of emotional content did coincide with declining presidential approval. This finding is consistent with claims that emotional appeals are selectively deployed at times of declining public support for governments and their counter-terrorism policies (De Castella, McGarty, & Musgrove, 2009). However, the lack of relationship between fear content and fear levels also raises questions about the purpose and effectiveness of alleged fear appeals.
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Anger, Hatred, and the Quest for Peace: Anger Can Be Constructive in the Absence of Hatred
Eran Halperin et al.
Journal of Conflict Resolution, April 2011, Pages 274-291
Abstract:
Anger is often viewed as a destructive force in intergroup conflicts because of its links to aggressive behavior. The authors hypothesized, however, that anger should have constructive effects in those with low levels of hatred toward the out-group. Using experimental designs with subsamples of nationwide representative surveys, the authors conducted two studies within the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Study 1 showed that inducing anger toward Palestinians several weeks before the Annapolis summit increased support for making compromises in upcoming negotiations among those with low levels of hatred but decreased support for compromise among those with high levels of hatred. Study 2 showed that, even when a strong anger induction was used just days before the summit, the anger induction led to increased support for compromise among those low in hatred, but not among those high in hatred. The authors discuss the implications of these findings for informing a psychological understanding of conflicts.
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Domestic Political Survival and International Conflict: Is Democracy Good for Peace?
Sandeep Baliga, David Lucca & Tomas Sjöström
Review of Economic Studies, April 2011, Pages 458-486
Abstract:
We build a game-theoretic model where aggression can be triggered by domestic political concerns as well as the fear of being attacked. In the model, leaders of full and limited democracies risk losing power if they do not stand up to threats from abroad. In addition, the leader of a fully democratic country loses the support of the median voter if he attacks a non-hostile country. The result is a non-monotonic relationship between democracy and peace. Using Polity data, we classify countries as full democracies, limited democracies, and dictatorships. For the period 1816-2000, Correlates of War data suggest that limited democracies are more aggressive than other regime types, including dictatorships, and not only during periods when the political regime is changing. In particular, a dyad of limited democracies is more likely to be involved in a militarized dispute than any other dyad (including "mixed" dyads, where the two countries have different regime types). Thus, while full democratization might advance the cause of peace, limited democratization might advance the cause of war. We also find that as the environment becomes more hostile, fully democratic countries become more aggressive faster than other regime types.
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Public opinion and terrorist acts
Jitka Malečková & Dragana Stanišić
European Journal of Political Economy, forthcoming
Abstract:
The paper examines support for terrorism in public opinion and the relationship with terrorist attacks. We link the 2007 PEW survey data on justification for suicide terror and opinions in 16 countries of the Middle East, Africa and Asia on nine regional powers, to the NCTC data on international terrorist acts between 2004 and 2008. We find that justification in public opinion for suicide terrorism increases terror attacks on people in countries that are unfavorably regarded. There is a robust positive relationship between the share of the population in a country that at the same time justifies suicide bombings and has an unfavorable opinion of another country, and terrorism originating from the former country.
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The Origins of Commitment: Truman and West Berlin
Deborah Welch Larson
Journal of Cold War Studies, Winter 2011, Pages 180-212
Abstract:
Until the 1948-1949 Berlin blockade, the United States had not decided whether U.S. forces should remain in West Berlin after the establishment of a West German government. But after the Soviet Union closed off surface routes to West Berlin, the Truman administration embarked on a massive airlift and established a de facto commitment to preserve the western sectors' independence. The U.S. guarantee to West Berlin is difficult to explain from the standpoint of realist theories of foreign policymaking. Realism maintains that leaders should undertake commitments only if adequate power is available and that ends should be commensurate with means. West Berlin was indefensible, and its access routes could be restricted at any time. Only by analyzing the decision-making process from the standpoint of political psychology can scholars determine why U.S. policymakers acted as they did. President Harry Truman played a pivotal role in decision-making in Berlin, and he relied on his own judgment rather than policy analysis. Psychological research on intuitive judgment indicates that people sometimes make important decisions without deliberating when the problem is highly complex and the outcome uncertain-precisely the conditions Truman faced in 1948.
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How Do Tourists React to Political Violence? An Empirical Analysis of Tourism in Egypt
David Fielding & Anja Shortland
Defence and Peace Economics, March/April 2011, Pages 217-243
Abstract:
This paper uses a detailed database of political violence in Egypt to study European and US tourists' attitudes towards a conflict region. We study the heterogeneous impacts of different dimensions of political violence and counter-violence on tourist flows to Egypt in the 1990s. Both US and EU tourists respond negatively to attacks on tourists, but are not influenced by casualties arising in confrontations between domestic groups. However, European tourists are sensitive to the counter-violence measures implemented by the Egyptian government. There is also evidence of arrivals of tourists into Egypt rising when fatalities in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict increase.
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Do Working Men Rebel? Insurgency and Unemployment in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Philippines
Eli Berman et al.
Journal of Conflict Resolution, forthcoming
Abstract:
Most aid spending by governments seeking to rebuild social and political order is based on an opportunity-cost theory of distracting potential recruits. The logic is that gainfully employed young men are less likely to participate in political violence, implying a positive correlation between unemployment and violence in locations with active insurgencies. The authors test that prediction in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Philippines, using survey data on unemployment and two newly available measures of insurgency: (1) attacks against government and allied forces and (2) violence that kill civilians. Contrary to the opportunity-cost theory, the data emphatically reject a positive correlation between unemployment and attacks against government and allied forces (p < .05 percent). There is no significant relationship between unemployment and the rate of insurgent attacks that kill civilians. The authors identify several potential explanations, introducing the notion of insurgent precision to adjudicate between the possibilities that predation on one hand, and security measures and information costs on the other, account for the negative correlation between unemployment and violence in these three conflicts.
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Rafi Nets-Zehngut
Journal of Peace Research, March 2011, Pages 235-248
Abstract:
The major historical issue in the Israeli-Arab/Palestinian conflict is the causes for the 1948 Palestinian exodus. Among the Israelis/Jews there are two main narratives regarding this issue: the Zionist one - the refugees fled, for various reasons; and the critical one - some fled while others were expelled by the Jewish/Israeli security forces. This article explores the way the Israeli/Jewish historical memory (i.e. the Israeli/Jewish research community) related to this historical issue from 1949 until 2004. According to the findings, until 1957 this memory exclusively presented the Zionist narrative. However, from 1958 to 1976 this Zionist trend largely continued but was accompanied by considerable critical studies. Later, from 1977 to 2004, this memory was characterized by the almost exclusive adoption of the critical narrative (with major increase in its significance since 1988). These findings contradict the way the literature relates to this memory as almost exclusively Zionist until the late-1980s. Other aspects of this memory are also discussed, such as the explanations for its characteristics, the significance of non-academic scholars, the contribution of scholars who reside externally to the given country, state-research community relations, the influence of present interests on the portrayal of the past, and gender issues. The findings have theoretical implications for collective and historical memories.
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China's HEU and Plutonium Production and Stocks
Hui Zhang
Science & Global Security, Spring 2011, Pages 68-89
Abstract:
This article discusses the history of China's production of highly enriched uranium and plutonium for nuclear weapons and uses new public information to estimate the amount of highly enriched uranium and plutonium China produced at its two gaseous diffusion plants and two plutonium production complexes. The new estimates in this article are that China produced 20 ± 4 tons of HEU, 2 ± 0.5 tons of plutonium, and currently has stockpiles of about 16 ± 4 tons of HEU and 1.8 ± 0.5 tons of plutonium available for weapons. The values for China's fissile material production are at the low end of most previous independent estimates, which range from 17-26 tons of highly enriched uranium and 2.1-6.6 tons of plutonium. These new estimates would be significant to assess China's willingness to join a fissile material cutoff treaty and a multilateral nuclear disarmament.
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The Domestic Politics of Irrational Intelligence Oversight
Amy Zegart
Political Science Quarterly, Spring 2011, Pages 1-25
Abstract:
Amy B. Zegart examines the roots of weak congressional intelligence oversight and challenges the view that ineffectual oversight stems from executive branch secrecy. Instead, she finds that Congress has tied its own hands by failing to consolidate its budgetary power or to develop robust expertise in intelligence.
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Brian Rathbun
International Organization, April 2011, Pages 243-273
Abstract:
Rationalist accounts of international cooperation maintain that states create international institutions to solve problems of distrust. They rest on a particular notion of trust, a strategic variety in which states trust based on information about others' interests. I seek to overturn this conventional wisdom. Drawing on social psychology, I point to the importance of generalized trust, an ideological belief about the trustworthiness of others in general. Generalized trust precedes institution-building and serves as a form of anarchical social capital, facilitating diffuse reciprocity and allowing state leaders to commit to multilateralism even in cases that rationalists deem inhospitable to cooperation and without the institutional protections that rationalists expect. In case studies of U.S. policy on the creation of the League of Nations and the United Nations, I demonstrate that generalized trust is necessary for explaining the origins of American multilateralism and the design of these organizations.
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Who Becomes a Terrorist?: Poverty, Education, and the Origins of Political Violence
Alexander Lee
World Politics, April 2011, Pages 203-245
Abstract:
Many studies of the social backgrounds of terrorists have found that they are wealthier and better educated than the population from which they are drawn. However, studies of political behavior have shown that all forms of political involvement are correlated with socioeconomic status. Among those who are politically active, opportunity costs may lead those involved in nonviolent activities to have a higher social status than violent individuals with a similar ideological orientation. This article develops a theory of participation in violence that incorporates both opportunity costs and informational barriers to participation and tests it by comparing violent and nonviolent political activists involved in the anticolonial agitation in Bengal (1906-39) using data from their police files. While the Bengali terrorists are better educated and have higher status jobs than the population average, they are less educated and less wealthy than the nonviolent activists. These results suggest that socioeconomic status may play a substantial negative role in terrorist recruitment within elites.
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Subhayu Bandyopadhyay & Javed Younas
Economics Letters, forthcoming
Abstract:
We find that political freedom has a significant and non-linear effect on domestic terrorism, but has no statistically significant effect on transnational terrorism. Geography and fractionalization limit a country's ability to curb terrorism, while strong legal institutions deter terrorism.
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Information, Commitment, and War
Scott Wolford, Dan Reiter & Clifford Carrubba
Journal of Conflict Resolution, forthcoming
Abstract:
The authors analyze a bargaining model of war that incorporates both commitment problems due to shifting power and asymmetric information. Four results emerge when both bargaining problems are present. First, in contrast to asymmetric information models, the resolution of uncertainty through fighting can lead to the continuation of war rather than its termination. Second, wars can be less - not more - likely to end in settlement the longer they last. Third, war aims increase over time as a belligerent becomes more confident that its opponent will grow unacceptably strong in the future. Finally, the dynamics that characterize wars in purely asymmetric information or commitment models should exist only when the other factor is absent.
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Christopher Cotton & Chang Liu
Journal of Peace Research, March 2011, Pages 217-223
Abstract:
We present game theoretic models of two of the most famous military bluffs from history. These include the legend of Li Guang and his 100 horsemen (144 BC), and the legend of Zhuge Liang and the Empty City (228 AD). In both legends, the military commander faces a much stronger opposing army, but instead of ordering his men to retreat, he orders them to act in a manner consistent with baiting the enemy into an ambush. The stronger opposing army, uncertain whether it is facing a weak opponent or an ambush, then decides to flee and avoid battle. Military scholars refer to both stories to illustrate the importance of deception in warfare, often highlighting the creativity of the generals' strategies. We model both situations as signaling games in which the opponent is uncertain whether the general is weak (i.e. has few soldiers) or strong (i.e. has a larger army waiting to ambush his opponent if they engage in combat). We then derive the unique Perfect Bayesian Equilibrium of the games. When the probability of a weak general is high enough, the equilibrium involves mixed strategies, with weak generals sometimes fleeing and sometimes bluffing about their strength. The equilibrium always involves the generals and their opponents acting as they did in the historical examples with at least a positive probability. When the probability of a weak general is lower (which is reasonable given the reputations of Li Guang and Zhuge Liang), then the unique equilibrium always involves bluffing by the general and retreat by his opponent.
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Combating "maritime terrorism" off the coast of Somalia
Anja Shortland & Marc Vothknecht
European Journal of Political Economy, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper evaluates the effectiveness of the international naval mission in the Gulf of Aden from 2008-2010, both in terms of its counter-piracy and its counter-terrorism objectives. We draw on arguments developed in the literature of terrorism and law and economics, detailed statistical analyses and a large number of in depth interviews. Counter-piracy operations are a qualified success: their main effects are the stabilisation of attacks at a high level and the substitution between the relatively well protected transit corridor in the Gulf of Aden and the open sea. However, the counter-piracy measures deterred pirates from forming alliances with Islamist movements and may therefore have made a major contribution to international security.