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152. Two Cheers for Bargaining Theory: Assessing Rationalist Explanations of the Iraq War
- Author:
- David A. Lake
- Publication Date:
- 12-2010
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- International Security
- Institution:
- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- The Iraq war has been one of the most significant events in world politics since the end of the Cold War. One of the first preventive wars in history, it cost trillions of dollars, resulted in more than 4,500 U.S. and coalition casualties (to date), caused enormous suffering in Iraq, and may have spurred greater anti-Americanism in the Middle East even while reducing potential threats to the United States and its allies. Yet, despite its profound importance, the causes of the war have received little sustained analysis from scholars of international relations. Al-though there have been many descriptions of the lead-up to the war, the fighting, and the occupation, these largely journalistic accounts explain how but not why the war occurred.
- Topic:
- Cold War
- Political Geography:
- United States, Iraq, and America
153. The Rise of Muslim Foreign Fighters: Islam and the Globalization of Jihad
- Author:
- Thomas Hegghammer
- Publication Date:
- 12-2010
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- International Security
- Institution:
- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- A salient feature of armed conflict in the Muslim world since 1980 is the involvement of so-called foreign fighters, that is, unpaid combatants with no apparent link to the conflict other than religious affinity with the Muslim side. Since 1980 between 10,000 and 30,000 such fighters have inserted themselves into conflicts from Bosnia in the west to the Philippines in the east. Foreign fighters matter because they can affect the conflicts they join, as they did in post-2003 Iraq by promoting sectarian violence and indiscriminate tactics. Perhaps more important, foreign fighter mobilizations empower transnational terrorist groups such as al-Qaida, because volunteering for war is the principal stepping-stone for individual involvement in more extreme forms of militancy. For example, when Muslims in the West radicalize, they usually do not plot attacks in their home country right away, but travel to a war zone such as Iraq or Afghanistan first. Indeed, a majority of al-Qaida operatives began their militant careers as war volunteers, and most transnational jihadi groups today are by-products of foreign fighter mobilizations. Foreign fighters are therefore key to understanding transnational Islamist militancy.
- Topic:
- Intelligence
- Political Geography:
- Afghanistan and Iraq
154. Who Lost Vietnam? Soldiers, Civilians, and U.S. Military Strategy
- Author:
- James McAllister
- Publication Date:
- 12-2010
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- International Security
- Institution:
- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- Scholars have long argued about why the United States pursued a conventional military strategy during the Vietnam War rather than one based on counterinsurgency principles. A recent article in this journal by Jonathan Caverley presents a bold challenge to the historiography of the Vietnam War. Rejecting the standard historical focus on the organizational culture and strategic perspective of Gen. William Westmoreland and the U.S. Army, Caverley argues that the roots of the United States' strategy in Vietnam can be traced to the direct influence of civilian leaders and the strong constraint of public opinion. Caverley's main arguments are a welcome challenge to the established wisdom, but they are not supported by the historical evidence.
- Topic:
- Counterinsurgency
- Political Geography:
- United States
155. Explaining U.S. Military Strategy in Vietnam: Thinking Clearly about Causation
- Author:
- Jonathan D. Caverley
- Publication Date:
- 12-2010
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- International Security
- Institution:
- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- Cost distribution theory suggests that the costs to the median voter in a democracy of fighting an insurgency with firepower are relatively low compared to a more labor-intensive approach. Therefore, this voter will favor a capital intensive counterinsurgency campaign despite the resulting diminished prospects of victory. Primary and secondary sources show that President Lyndon Johnson and his civilian aides were very much aware that, although they considered a main force-focused and firepower-intensive strategy to be largely ineffective against the insurgency in South Vietnam, it was politically more popular in the United States.
- Topic:
- Military Strategy and Insurgency
- Political Geography:
- United States
156. Strange Bedfellows: U.S. Bargaining Behavior with Allies of Convenience
- Author:
- Evan Resnick
- Publication Date:
- 12-2010
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- International Security
- Institution:
- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- Despite the ubiquity of the term "alliance of convenience," the dynamics of these especially tenuous alliances have not been systematically explored by scholars or policymakers. An alliance of convenience is the initiation of security cooperation between ideological and geopolitical adversaries in response to an overarching third-party threat; they are conceptually different from other types of alliances. Neorealist, two-level games, and neoclassical realist theories all seek to explain the outcome of intra-alliance bargaining between the United States and allies of convenience since 1945.
- Topic:
- Security
- Political Geography:
- United States
157. Correspondence: Life Sciences and Islamic Suicide Terrorism
- Author:
- Mia Bloom, Valerie M. Hudson, and Bradley Thayer
- Publication Date:
- 12-2010
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- International Security
- Institution:
- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- Mia Bloom responds to Bradley Thayer and Valerie Hudson's Spring 2010 International Security article, "Sex and the Shaheed: Insights from the Life Sciences on Islamic Suicide Terrorism."
- Topic:
- Islam and Terrorism
158. Editors' Note
- Publication Date:
- 04-2009
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- International Security
- Institution:
- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- We recently received the Thomson Reuters Journal Citation Reports 2007 rankings of more than fifty journals of international relations by Impact Factor. The Impact Factor measures the average number of citations in a year of articles published during the preceding two years. Thus a journal's 2007 Impact Factor is calculated by dividing the total number of citations in 2007 of articles published in that journal in 2005 and 2006 by the number of articles published over those two years. We were pleased to see that International Security tied with International Organization for the highest 2007 Impact Factor. IS ranked first in 1996, 1997, 2001, 2004, 2005, and 2006, and has been in the top five every year since 1995. Thomson Reuters also ranks journals by two other measures: Cited Half-Life, a measure of whether older articles are cited, and Immediacy Index, a measure of whether articles are often cited shortly after publication. We were particularly pleased to see that International Security's Cited Half-Life has almost tripled since 1996 and that IS consistently ranks in the top five international relations journals by this measure. IS also ranks highly for its Immediacy Index. The trend suggests that IS articles attract attention soon after publication and that they continue to be read and cited for many years. Given that the journal aspires to publish a mix of articles on policy-relevant theory, sophisticated policy analysis, and conceptual and theoretical aspects of international security, we are delighted that IS has an Immediacy Index comparable to journals of contemporary foreign policy and a Cited Half-Life similar to leading scholarly journals.
- Topic:
- Security
159. "How Smart and Tough Are Democracies? Reassessing Theories of Democratic Victory in War"
- Author:
- Alexander B. Downes
- Publication Date:
- 04-2009
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- International Security
- Institution:
- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- The argument that democracies are more likely than nondemocracies to win the wars they fight— particularly the wars they start—has risen to the status of near-conventional wisdom in the last decade. First articulated by David Lake in his 1992 article “Powerful Pacifists,” this thesis has become firmly associated with the work of Dan Reiter and Allan Stam. In their seminal 2002 book, Democracies at War, which builds on several previously published articles, Reiter and Stam found that democracies win nearly all of the wars they start, and about two-thirds of the wars in which they are targeted by other states, leading to an overall success rate of 76 percent. This record of democratic success is significantly better than the performance of dictatorships and mixed regimes.
- Topic:
- War
160. "The Social Market Roots of Democratic Peace"
- Author:
- Michael Mousseau
- Publication Date:
- 04-2009
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- International Security
- Institution:
- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- Democracy does not cause peace among nations. An analysis of conflicts from 1961 to 2001 shows that the absence of war between democratic countries depends on domestic economic factors-such as a contract-intensive economy-rather than on democracy. Because China and Russia lack this type of economy, an economic divide will define great power politics in the coming decade. Democratic leaders of nations with contract-intensive economies would do better to support global economic opportunity than to promote democracy abroad.
- Political Geography:
- Russia and China