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1. Buying Allies: Payment Practices in Multilateral Military Coalition-Building

Author:
Marina Henke
Publication Date:
04-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Many countries serving in multilateral military coalitions are “paid” to do so, either in cash or in concessions relating to other international issues. An examination of hundreds of declassified archival sources as well as elite interviews relating to the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Iraq War, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization operation in Afghanistan, the United Nations–African Union operation in Darfur, and the African Union operation in Somalia reveals that these payment practices follow a systematic pattern: pivotal states provide the means to cover such payments. These states reason that rewarding third parties to serve in multilateral coalitions holds important political benefits. Moreover, two distinct types of payment schemes exist: deployment subsidies and political side deals. Three types of states are most likely to receive such payments: (1) states that are inadequately resourced to deploy; (2) states that are perceived by the pivotal states as critical contributors to the coalition endeavor; and (3) opportunistic states that perceive a coalition deployment as an opportunity to negotiate a quid pro quo. These findings provide a novel perspective on what international burden sharing looks like in practice. Moreover, they raise important questions about the efficiency and effectiveness of such payment practices in multilateral military deployments.
Topic:
Security, National Security, Regional Cooperation, International Security, Military Strategy, Military Affairs, and Alliance
Political Geography:
United States, Iraq, Kuwait, Vietnam, Korea, and Somalia

2. Military Primacy Doesn't Pay (Nearly As Much As You Think)

Author:
Daniel W. Dresner
Publication Date:
10-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
The 2008 financial crisis dramatically worsened the fiscal future of the United States. In the first five years of the Great Recession, the debt-to-gross domestic product ratio of the United States more than doubled, and multiple bond-ratings agencies downgraded U.S. federal government debt. The inevitable debate in Washington is where and how much to cut federal spending. The national security budget is a natural target for fiscal conservatives. Their logic is clear-cut: defense and war expenditures are not the primary culprits for the parlous fiscal state of the United States, but they acted as accessories. For the 2013 fiscal year, the U.S. federal government has budgeted more than $685 billion in defense expenditures. Tacking on budgeting for intelligence and nuclear forces raises that figure to more than $725 billion. With the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan winding down and al-Qaida's top leadership decimated, the security threats to the United States have also declined. At the same time, the country possesses an unparalleled lead in defense assets and expenditures. Given its unchallenged military supremacy, targeting cuts toward defense spending after a decade of dramatic budgetary increases is a natural ambition.
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, United States, Iraq, and Washington

3. Why States Won't Give Nuclear Weapons to Terrorists

Author:
Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press
Publication Date:
10-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
For the last two decades, U.S. leaders have focused on the possibility of nuclear terrorism as a serious threat to the United States. In the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, those fears grew even more acute. In his State of the Union Address four months after the attacks, President George W. Bush warned a worried nation that rogue states “could provide [weapons of mass destruction] to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred.” Both Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice amplified the president's warning in order to justify the war against Iraq. According to Rice, “Terrorists might acquire such weapons from [Saddam Hussein's] regime, to mount a future attack far beyond the scale of 9/11. This terrible prospect could not be ignored or wished away.” Such fears continue to shape policy debates today: in particular, advocates of bombing Iran's nuclear facilities often justify a strike based on the idea that Iran might give nu-clear weapons to terrorist groups. Even President Barack Obama, who as a senator opposed the war against Iraq, declared, “The American people face no greater or more urgent danger than a terrorist attack with a nuclear weapon.” For U.S. leaders, the sum of all fears is that an enemy might give nuclear weapons to terrorists. But are those fears well founded?
Political Geography:
United States, Iraq, America, and Iran

4. States Will Not Give Nuclear Weapons to Terrorists

Author:
Daryl Press and Keir A. Lieber
Publication Date:
09-2013
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Nuclear terrorism is often described as the single biggest threat to U.S. national security. The fear is that a hostile state could surreptitiously transfer a nuclear weapon or fissile material to a like-minded terror group, thus orchestrating a devastating attack on the United States or its allies while remaining anonymous and avoiding retaliation. This fear served as a key justification for the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and it helps drive current arguments in favor of a military strike against Iran's nuclear program.
Topic:
Conflict Prevention, Security, Arms Control and Proliferation, Nuclear Weapons, Terrorism, and Weapons of Mass Destruction
Political Geography:
United States, Iraq, and Iran

5. "Fueling the Fire: Pathways from Oil to War"

Author:
Jeff D. Colgan
Publication Date:
12-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
What roles do oil and energy play in international conflict? In public debates, the issue often provokes significant controversy. Critics of the two U.S.-led wars against Iraq (in 1991 and 2003) charged that they traded "blood for oil," and that they formed a part of an American neo-imperialist agenda to control oil in the Middle East. The U.S. government, on the other hand, explicitly denied that the wars were about oil, especially in 2003. U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld argued that the war "has nothing to do with oil, literally nothing to do with oil," a theme echoed by White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer.
Political Geography:
United States, Iraq, and Middle East

6. Giving the Surge Partial Credit for Iraq's 2007 Reduction in Violence

Author:
Stephen Biddle, Jacob N. Shapiro, and Jeffrey A. Friedman
Publication Date:
09-2012
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Why did violence decline in Iraq in 2007? Many credit the "surge," or the program of U.S. reinforcements and doctrinal changes that began in January 2007. Others cite the voluntary insurgent stand-downs of the Sunni Awakening or say that the violence had simply run its course after a wave of sectarian cleansing. Evidence drawn from recently declassified data on violence at local levels and a series of seventy structured interviews with coalition participants finds little support for the cleansing or Awakening theses. This analysis constitutes the first attempt to gather systematic evidence across space and time to help resolve this debate, and it shows that a synergistic interaction between the surge and the Awakening was required for violence to drop as quickly and widely as it did.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Foreign Policy, War, and Counterinsurgency
Political Geography:
United States, Iraq, Middle East, and Arabia

7. Israel's War in Gaza: A Paradigm of Effective Military Learning and Adaptation

Author:
Benjamin S. Lambeth
Publication Date:
10-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Assessing major combat experiences to help rectify errors made in the planning and conduct of operations has enjoyed a long and well-established tradition in the fields of military history and security studies. In particular, since Operation Desert Storm against Saddam Hussein's Iraq by U.S. and coalition forces in 1991, the pursuit of "lessons learned" from major combat has been a virtual cottage industry within the defense establishments of the United States and its principal allies around the world.
Topic:
Security and War
Political Geography:
United States, Iraq, and Israel

8. The Long and Short of It: Cognitive Constraints on Leaders' Assessments of 'Postwar' Iraq

Author:
Aaron Rapport
Publication Date:
12-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Why did the administration of George W. Bush hold so many mistaken beliefs about the costs of establishing a transformed Iraqi state after the removal of Saddam Hussein? Relatedly, why did the president and senior officials devote so little attention to plans for the postconflict phase of the war, referred to as Phase IV? According to the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR), the administration had "no established plans to manage the increasing chaos" in Iraq, adding "when Iraq's withering post-invasion reality superseded [officials'] expectations, there was no well-defined 'Plan B' as a fallback and no existing government structures or resources to support a quick response." Numerous analyses of the administration's assumptions and preparations for the postwar phase of the conflict have argued that leadership in the White House and the Department of Defense grossly underestimated the cost of securing peace in Iraq. President Bush, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and other key administration figures failed to foresee the rise of sectarian violence and ignored officials working on potential postwar problems or left them under - resourced, without the necessary time or guidance necessary to plan effectively.
Political Geography:
Iraq

9. "China's Century? Why America's Edge Will Endure"

Author:
Michael Beckley
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
According to the Global Language Monitor, which tracks the top 50,000 media sources throughout the world, the "rise of China" has been the most read-about news story of the twenty-first century, surpassing the September 11 terrorist attacks, the Iraq War, the election of Barack Obama, and the British royal wedding. One reason for the story's popularity, presumably, is that the rise of China entails the decline of the United States. While China's economy grows at 9 percent annually, the United States reels from economic recession, costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and massive budget deficits. This divergence in fortunes has produced two pieces of conventional wisdom in U.S. and Chinese foreign policy debates. First, the United States is in decline relative to China. Second, much of this decline is the result of globalization-the integration of national economies and resultant diffusion of technology from developed to developing countries-and the hegemonic burdens the United States bears to sustain globalization.
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, United States, China, Iraq, and America

10. Testing the Surge: Why Did Violence Decline in Iraq in 2007?

Author:
Stephen Biddle, Jacob N. Shapiro, and Jeffrey A. Friedman
Publication Date:
07-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
From 2004 to mid- 2007, Iraq was extremely violent: civilian fatalities averaged more than 1,500 a month by August 2006, and by late fall, the U.S. military was suffering a monthly toll of almost 100 dead and 700 wounded. Then something changed. By the end of 2007, U.S. military fatalities had declined from their wartime monthly peak of 126 in May of that year to just 23 by December. From June 2008 to June 2011, monthly U.S. military fatalities averaged fewer than 11, a rate less than 15 percent of the 2004 through mid-2007 average and an order of magnitude smaller than their maximum. Monthly civilian fatalities fell from more than 1,700 in May 2007 to around 500 by December; from June 2008 to June 2011, these averaged around 200, or about one-tenth of the rate for the last half of 2006.
Political Geography:
United States and Iraq

11. Attacks on Nuclear Infrastructure: Opening Pandora's Box?

Author:
Malfrid Braut-Hegghammer
Publication Date:
10-2011
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Advocates argue that air strikes against the nuclear infrastructure of a targeted state can deny it the option of producing nuclear weapons or at least create delays in its nuclear weapons program. Critics counter that such attacks may intensify the state's determination to acquire nuclear weapons and make a difficult problem more challenging in the long term. Despite the apparent appeal of targeted strikes, states rarely resort to them.
Topic:
Arms Control and Proliferation, Nuclear Weapons, and Weapons of Mass Destruction
Political Geography:
United States and Iraq

12. Crossing the Rubicon: The Perils of Committing to a Decision

Author:
Dominic Tierney and Dominic D.P. Johnson
Publication Date:
09-2011
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
When Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon River in 49 B.C., he broke an ancient law forbidding any general to enter Italy with an army-thus making war with Rome inevitable. Ever since, "crossing the Rubicon" has come to symbolize a point of no return, when the time for deliberation is over and action is at hand. When decisionmakers cross the Rubicon, or stop debating which of several options to pursue and start implementing a chosen policy, the psychological effects can shape the political world in powerful ways-including the outbreak of war.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, Diplomacy, Politics, and War
Political Geography:
Iraq

13. The Right to Be Right: Civil-Military Relations and the Iraq Surge Decision

Author:
Peter D. Feaver
Publication Date:
05-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
On January 10, 2007, President George W. Bush announced in a televised prime-time address to the nation a bold, even risky, new strategy in the Iraq War. The United States' military and political fortunes in the war had eroded so sharply over the preceding year that President Bush had authorized a thorough internal review to deter - mine why the current strategy was not succeeding and what, if anything, could be done about it. The review had concluded that the United States was on a trajectory that would end in defeat unless the president authorized a new strategy and committed new resources to it. Bush used the televised address to describe in broad strokes the results of the review and the new strategy, which the media quickly dubbed the “surge strategy,” because its most controversial provision involved sending have new brigade combat teams (BCTs) to Iraq, a commitment that grew to a total of nearly 30,000 additional troops—this at a time when public support for the Iraq War was strained to the breaking point.
Topic:
Intelligence
Political Geography:
United States and Iraq

14. Chronic Misperception and International Conflict: The U.S.-Iraq Experience

Author:
Charles A. Duelfer and Stephen Benedict Dyson
Publication Date:
06-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Why did the United States and Iraq and themselves in full-scale conflict with each other in 1990–91 and 2003, and in almost constant low-level hostilities during the years in- between? We suggest that the situation was neither inevitable nor one that either side, in full possession of all the relevant information about the other, would have purposely engineered: in short, a classic instance of chronic misperception. Combining the psychological literature on perception and its pathologies with the almost unique firsthand access of one of the authors— Charles Duelfer—to the decisionmakers on both sides, we isolate the perceptions that the United States and Iraq held of each other, as well as the biases, mistakes, and intelligence failures of which these images were, at different points in time, both cause and effect.
Topic:
Intelligence
Political Geography:
United States, Iraq, and Soviet Union

15. Attacking Iran: Lessons from the Iran-Iraq War

Author:
Annie Tracy Samuel
Publication Date:
12-2011
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
This policy brief seeks to contribute to and inform the debate concerning a possible attack by the United States and/or Israel on Iranian nuclear and military facilities. The presumed aim of such an attack would be to weaken the Islamic Republic, particularly by hindering its ability to build a nuclear weapon. However, the history of the Iraqi invasion of Iran in September 1980 calls into question the contention that an attack will weaken the regime in Tehran. This policy brief examines Iran's reactions to the Iraqi invasion in order to shed light on Iran's possible reactions to a U.S. or Israeli attack. It will assess how the Iranian people responded to the invasion and its effects on Iranian politics and the position of the new regime. It will also explore the nature of the policies adopted by the Islamic Republic in waging the Iran-Iraq War that carried on for eight years after the Iraqi invasion.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Islam, and War
Political Geography:
United States, Iraq, Iran, and Middle East

16. Status Seekers: Chinese and Russian Responses to U.S. Primacy

Author:
Deborah Welch Larson and Alexei Shevchenko
Publication Date:
04-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Since the end of the Cold War, scholars and foreign policy analysts have debated the type of world order that the United States should strive to create—a hegemonic system, a multilateral institutional system, or a great power concert. Initially, a major issue was whether attempts to maintain U.S. primacy would stimulate counter - balancing from other states. But since the 2003 Iraq War, a new consideration has emerged—how to persuade other states to cooperate with U.S. global governance. States that do not oppose efforts by the United States to maintain stability may nonetheless decline to follow its leadership. This is a matter for concern because although the United States can act alone, it cannot succeed on such issues as controlling terrorism, curbing proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), rebuilding failed states, or maintaining economic stability without help from other states.
Topic:
Cold War
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, China, and Iraq

17. 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

18. 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

19. Enhancing Full-Spectrum Flexibility: Striking the Balance to Maximize Force Effectiveness in Conventional and Counterinsurgency Operations

Author:
William D. Anderson, Jr.
Publication Date:
04-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
With the United States currently engaged in difficult and taxing counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, renewed emphasis has been focused upon the country's cap abilities and priorities vis - à - vis this type of warfare. Within the military, the Air Force has been especially and increasingly criticized for being too enamored with a Cold - War era conventionally minded force structure and for not shifting aggressively to meet the threats of COIN - style conflicts that many predict will be pervasive throughout the Global War on Terror.
Topic:
Political Violence, Terrorism, War, and Counterinsurgency
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, United States, and Iraq

20. What's in a Line? Is Partition a Solution to Civil War?

Author:
Nicholas Sambanis and Jonah Schulhofer-Wohl
Publication Date:
10-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
The debate over territorial partition as a solution to civil war is highly politically relevant. At the height of the Iraqi civil war in 2006 and 2007, faced with intensifying violence against civilians, mistrust among the main Sunni, Shiite, and Kurdish groups, and bleak prospects for state building, policymakers and analysts turned to ideas about partitioning the country. War-induced partitions and partition-induced wars continue to be prominent features in international security—two recent examples being the de facto partition of Kosovo from Serbia in 1999 followed by international recognition of Kosovo's independence in 2008, and the August 2008 war between Russia and Georgia following the latter's invasion of the separatist region of South Ossetia.
Political Geography:
Russia, Iraq, Kosovo, Serbia, Georgia, and South Ossetia