Foreign Powers and Intervention in Armed Conflicts 9780804782944

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Foreign Powers and Intervention in Armed Conflicts

Foreign Powers and Intervention in Armed Conflicts Aysegul Aydin

Stanford Security Series An Imprint of Stanford University Press Stanford, California

Stanford University Press Stanford, California © 2012 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Aydin, Aysegul, author.   Foreign powers and intervention in armed conflicts / Aysegul Aydin.   pages cm   Includes bibliographical references and index.   ISBN 978-0-8047-8281-4 (cloth : alk. paper)   1. War—Economic aspects.  2. Politics and war.  3. Intervention (International law)— Economic aspects.  4. International relations.  I. Title.   HB195.A95 2012  355.02—dc23 2011052147 Special discounts for bulk quantities of Stanford Security Studies are available to corporations, professional associations, and other organizations. For details and discount information, contact the special sales department of Stanford University Press. Tel: (650) 736-1782, Fax: (650) 736-1784 Typeset by Thompson Type in 10/14 Minion

CONTENTS



1. Introduction

1



2. Bringing Foreign Powers Back In

18



3. Defending Economic Interests Abroad

41



4. In International Conflicts

60



5. The Critical Test: U.S. Interventions

92



6. In Civil Wars

123



7. Conclusion

142

Appendix:  Measurement and Research Design

151

Notes

155

Index

195

v

TABLES AND FIGURE

Tables



1.1 In strangers’ conflicts

3



1.2 Explaining intervention

6



2.1 Military intervention in international conflicts, 1816–2001

21



2.2 Diplomatic interveners

33



2.3 Coalitional diplomacy in civil wars

34



4.1 Economic interests and the decision to intervene

82



4.2 Substantive effects of economic variables (Model 3)

83



4.3 Economic interests, political institutions, and the decision to intervene

86



4.4 Substantive effects of institutional variables (Model 4)

88



4.5 Economic interests and choice of strategy

90



6.1 Economic interests and intervention in civil wars

127



6.2 Economic interests and interveners’ choices in civil wars

129



A.1 Matching belligerents and interveners, Libya–Chad (Initiation: February 3, 1983)

152

Figure



vi

2.1 The time horizon of intervention

25

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

scholars have long searched for the economic determinants of intervention behavior in the economic theories of imperialism. In this endeavor, few considered economic liberalism as a venue. Intervention studies, on the other hand, systematically lacked a conceptual and theoretical framework that discusses explicitly what intervention is and why states build interest in strangers’ conflicts. This book takes over this task. Its approach to liberalism as a paradigm that can explain several forms of state behavior, including forceful and peaceful ones, will be an unusual starting point for some of us. Yet the book’s ability to bring together several different literatures in international security and international relations theory in a new model of intervention will pose compelling questions for a new generation of security scholars. These pieces would not come together if it was not for the outstanding scholarship of several people whose work has profoundly influenced this book. Prominent among these is Patrick Regan. Many aspects of the book, including its title, were inspired by Pat’s Civil Wars and Foreign Powers. Pat’s mentorship throughout these years remained a tremendous force in my professional development and my understanding of intervention. I am truly indebted to him for all his encouragement in this project as well as in others that I have engaged in my career. Benjamin Fordham was instrumental in the formulation of the ideas presented here and provided invaluable feedback in the project’s initial stages. I wish I could write this book with the skill that he has written “Revisionism Reconsidered.” David H. Clark’s work on foreign policy substitution played a major role in the multinomial choice models adopted in this book. I also took vii

viii  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

several methodology courses with Dave that he taught with supreme clarity and rigor. I hope the quantitative chapters will live up to his expectations. I owe special thanks to my colleagues who contributed to this project at various stages. Steve Chan was a constant source of support at the University of Colorado. He graciously commented on several drafts of this book. Most importantly, his belief in my scholarly skills never wound down. Timur Kuran was too generous with his time in reading this book as well as my other projects. I am most indebted to him for taking an interest in my research. His professional support remains an invaluable asset in my career. This book’s empirical chapters benefited immensely from the data efforts of my colleagues. Renato Corbetta’s data on interventions in interstate conflicts form the backbone of the quantitative work undertaken here. Renato also kindly read Chapter 2 and provided very helpful feedback. The analysis of preferential trade arrangements would not be possible without the help of Moonhawk Kim, who answered my questions and guided me through the data. Jessica Weeks shared her impressive data on political institutions. Andrew Kerner shared his dyadic FDI data, which helped me to navigate through the IMF statistics. I am grateful to my editor, Dr. Geoffrey Burn, for his support and enthusiasm throughout the review and production process. His continuing interest in the project allowed me to cross the finish line. Jessica Walsh of the Stanford University Press worked very hard to keep the review process up and running. I also want to thank the anonymous reviewers, particularly R2, whose constructive comments motivated a much more comprehensive, yet focused and succinct, framework on intervention. I prepared the final manuscript while residing at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies of the University of Notre Dame. I want to thank my colleagues, especially Peter Wallensteen, Christian Davenport, and Scott Appleby, and the staff at Kroc for giving me the opportunity to complete the manuscript in an environment that observes the highest academic standards. My family, Gulumser and Halil, endured the troubles of this long and treacherous road. I am hoping that they will also have the opportunity to enjoy the victory. Cem substantially challenged my understanding of security studies with his exceptional analytical skills and commitment to the profession. I owe him a professional and a personal debt. Aysegul Aydin South Bend, IN

Foreign Powers and Intervention in Armed Conflicts

1

INTRODUCTION In the growth of a general war, the entry of additional nations was often like the fisherman who intervened while the waterbirds fought or waterbirds who pounced while the fisherman slept.1

major wars in the history of nations have been characterized by the involvement of foreign powers. In the nineteenth century, the two deadliest conflicts involved external states as interveners. Great Britain, France, and Italy entered the Crimean War (1854–1856) on the side of the Ottoman Empire against Russia. Russian claims as a protectorate over the Ottoman Greeks and its insistence on the neutrality of Istanbul to great powers strengthened the Concert of Four Powers, leading to a consensus on the possible responses to Russian aggression. British government claimed that “nothing is more calculated to precipitate [a Turkish catastrophe] than the constant prediction of its being close at hand.”2 Napoleon was prepared to declare war against the Russian offensive in the Near East: “France, as well as England, will be compelled to leave to the fate of arms the fortune of war that which might now be decided by reason and justice.”3 A decade later, Uruguay and Argentina built the Triple Alliance with Brazil (1866) against an expansionist Paraguay and defeated the Paraguayan dictator Francisco Solano Lopez in the deadliest war in Latin America. The unmatched military and economic power of the Brazil–Argentina alliance inflicted tremendous economic costs and human casualties on Paraguay, wiping out half of its population.4 Similarly, in the twentieth century, much ink was spilled on wars such as the Balkan wars, two world wars, the Korean War, and the Gulf War, which had an undeniable but mostly overlooked international dimension. While the shadow of Turks united Balkan states against the Ottoman Empire in the First Balkan War (1912), they were soon to be divided on territorial issues, giving 1

2  INTRODUCTION

the Ottomans a chance to double the territory that they had retained with the Treaty of London (1913). In the Second Balkan War, the Ottoman Empire intervened against Bulgaria and accrued the highest casualties of the war to secure the return of Kirk Kilisse, Lule Burgas, and Adrianople, which Bulgarians had previously captured with the help of the Balkan alliance.5 The wars that characterized American foreign policy in the twentieth century mostly involved the United States as an external intervener. The United States entered the Korean War on June 27, 1950, to support South Korea, two days after the North Korean troops crossed the thirty-eighth parallel and poured southward.6 Similarly, in the world wars, Woodrow Wilson decided to intervene on behalf of the Allied Powers against the Central Powers on April 6, 1917, and Congress declared war against the Axis Powers on December 11, 1941, only four days after the attack on Pearl Harbor.7 Foreign powers have systematic impact on the evolution and termination of armed conflicts and play crucial roles in shaping belligerents’ capabilities and resolve.8 By understanding external intervention, we can shed light on several riddles of conflicts and gain purchase on questions related to important conflict processes with implications for international peace and security. How long states and nonstate actors fight and whether they terminate fighting with negotiated outcomes or battlefield victories mostly depend on the role that foreign powers play. American military strategists had little doubt in 1991 that Iraq would wipe Kuwait off the map if the United States did not enter the conflict to change the situation. American aerial bombing reversed the fate of a conflict by tipping the balance of power and securing a victory for Kuwait in an astonishingly short period of time.9 External intervention was also a crucial element in grasping the course and outcome of the world wars. In World War I, U.S. involvement on the side of the Allied Powers, driven by a combination of economic and security interests, determined the winners and losers of a long and expansive war in the power core of the international system. In World War II, U.S. intervention dwarfed the military ingenuity of German and Japan strategists with technological superiority and facilitated the unconditional surrender of the Axis Powers. The concept of intervention remains a central one in world politics: Intervention lies at the boundary of peace and war. It also defines the outer limits of sovereign control. It is this liminal character of the concept that makes it a useful vantage point from which to inquire about the role and purpose of force in international society.10

INTRODUCTION 3

Table 1.1. 

In strangers’ conflicts.

Opportunities Strategies

Civil wars (1944–1999)

International conflicts (1946–2001)

Diplomacy

513 1283

Economic intervention Military intervention

130 942

113 413

source: Data on international conflicts come from Renato Corbetta and William J. Dixon, “Danger beyond Dyads: Third-Party Participants in Militarized Interstate Disputes,” Conflict Management and Peace Science 22, no. 1 (2005): 39–61. Civil war interventions are adopted from Patrick M. Regan and Aysegul Aydin, “Diplomacy and Other Forms of Intervention in Civil Wars,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 50, no. 5 (2006): 736–756. note: The number of interventions is reported in the table. Data cover all intervener types such as states and organizations. International conflicts include wars as well as militarized interstate disputes.

Intervention is an integral part of armed violence in the international system. It is also full of riddles that await attention from scholars and policymakers. Defining opportunities to intervene is the foremost task (Table 1.1). The realist research program traditionally focused on states’ reaction to conflicts between nations and put international conflicts at the forefront of intervention research.11 The competing logic and predictions of offensive and defensive realism mostly emanated from the disagreement among scholars on how states respond to powerful and threatening states in the international system. Yet there are other important intervention opportunities that have rarely been explored in the same framework with international conflicts. Civil war intervention is a new form of interventionism. Civil wars and irregular warfare where modern armies, trained for conventional warfare, confront elusive enemies in forests, mountains, and urban areas are a post–World War II phenomenon, whereas conflict between states is as old as the modern state system.12 Violent nonstate actors are unequivocally emerging among the key players in the international system and are becoming a systemic factor in many ways. Insurgents and terrorist groups are obvious candidates, though there are more obscure examples, such as the increasing piracy in Nigeria’s waters, along Somalia’s long coastline, and in Indonesia, a crime thought to be an archaic one until recently.13 Although most of these actors operate in the periphery of the international system, their influence is disproportionate to their location. Changing dynamics of violence in the international system require that violent nonstate actors become the foci of conflict management and the study of external intervention. While U.N. peacekeeping operations were

4  INTRODUCTION

mainly directed at wars between nations in the 1980s, one can see that intrastate violence stole the scene from its interstate counterpart. Mayall quotes from the Supplement to an Agenda for Peace: Position Paper of the SecretaryGeneral on the Occasion of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the United Nations (1995): Of the five peace-keeping operations existed in early 1988, four related to interstate wars . . . Of the 21 operations established since then, only 8 have related to interstate wars . . . Of the 11 operations established since January 1992, all but 2 . . . related to intra-state conflicts.14

Strategy is another key dimension of intervention. Instruments of statecraft that interveners adopt to influence the course of a conflict take several forms. An intervener can respond to armed conflicts in several ways, including coercive strategies, economic pressure or incentives, and international diplomacy (Table 1.1). States would differ in their responses to violence in the international system and react only after a careful examination of all available options in relation with their interests in the belligerents. As Baldwin suggests, “Policymaking involves making decisions, and decision making involves choosing among alternative courses of action.”15 External interveners commit themselves to a particular course of action that is commensurate with their interests and consider a variety of factors when assessing the resources they are willing to allocate for intervention. These factors include a nation’s material capabilities, previous political or economic relations with the belligerents, perception of security threats, and the location of the conflict. The stakes of intervention are strategically chosen: Just as interveners carefully select their level of commitment, they also select themselves into certain conflicts and avoid others. External states to conflicts commonly choose to stay on the sidelines and watch when others fight. When Russian forces poured into Georgia in August 2008 to support the separatist movement in South Ossetia or when Israel responded to Hezbollah’s barrage of rockets in August 2006, the international community, including the United States, preferred waiting to intervention. Among those states that do intervene in strangers’ conflicts, motivations are mixed. Some external interveners are pulled into conflicts to please international audiences or their major power allies, such as smaller powers joining U.S. efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Other interveners may pursue their national interests in the war environment. As the United States became increasingly concerned with Al-Qaeda influence

INTRODUCTION 5

in poor Africa, it tacitly supported an Ethiopian attack on the Islamic Courts Union rebels in Somalia in July 2006. Surprisingly, why and how interveners enter militarized conflicts between or within countries have attracted little systematic inquiry. Despite the centrality of external actors in armed conflicts, the academic fields of international relations (IR) and security studies have invested heavily in examining why states and nonstate actors start fighting in the first place. States’ decisions to become involved in armed conflicts have largely remained a peripheral and finally outdated area of security studies until interest in the management of civil wars was revived in the late 1990s. The effectiveness of external states in shaping the fate of these conflicts as latecomers as well as the specific objectives that informed their decisions did not lead to broader research questions about the causes and implications of external involvement. Yet, “who intervenes?” is equally central with “who fights?” in international security and requires addressing the specific objectives that motivate interveners to step into strangers’ conflicts. This book makes a theoretical and empirical effort to bring external interveners back into the study of armed conflict. Foreign Powers and Intervention in Armed Conflicts constructs a coherent research program of intervention based on the economic liberalism variant of the liberal paradigm. Using statistical analyses and case studies, the book tests hypotheses about why and how external states become involved in international conflicts and civil wars. Informed by the liberal IR theory, it crosses the traditional boundaries between economics and security studies by developing a theoretical framework that places economic interests and domestic political institutions of external states at the center of intervention decisions. THE DEBATE

Structural realism claimed to explain historical trends in states’ behavior by heavily referring to systemic elements. In the realist debate, states’ policies aim to maintain the distribution of power through alliances. When balancing fails and alliances fail to deter armed conflict, external states are expected to wind up on the weaker side. Contemporary realist scholarship went beyond the capabilities of belligerents and emphasized perceived threats, shared interests, and risk calculations in explaining intervention (Table 1.2).16 Work on alliance reliability, extended deterrence, and war expansion has dealt directly

6  INTRODUCTION

Table 1.2. 

Explaining intervention.

Debates

Key variable

Selected works

Realism

Borders Siverson & Starr, The Diffusion of War Alliances Leeds, Alliance Reliability Power Schweller, Unanswered Threats Threats Walt, Origins of Alliances Interests Altfeld & Bueno de Mesquita, Choosing Sides

Liberalism

Economic interests Democratic institutions

Fordham, Revisionism Reconsidered Reiter & Stam, Democracies at War Werner & Lemke, Opposites Do Not Attract

Constructivism

International norms

Finnemore, The Purpose of Intervention

Institutionalism

Organizational decision making

Doyle & Sambanis, Making War Fortna, Does Peacekeeping Work?

or indirectly with the behavior of external actors in violent international settings.17 Extension of realist claims in bargaining models of conflict suggested that interdependent decision making between adversaries and external states plays a central role in initiation and intervention decisions.18 Institutionalist and constructivist approaches to intervention have similarly argued that pressures on states mostly originate from systemic processes. Institutionalism debated the role of organizational decision making and design in structuring belligerents’ preferences in armed conflicts, whereas constructivism emphasized changing norms and behavioral patterns in the international system to explain the evolution of intervention. While potential or actual use of force in response to conflicts plays a central role in major theoretical debates of international relations, “a liberal view of international affairs suffers from a complete misunderstanding of the role of force in world history.”19 A utopian belief in the harmony of nations and obsoleteness of war in liberal thought can be traced back to early scholars. In this approach, force is less predictable from the lenses of the liberal scholarship, whereas the realist paradigm remains as the sole systematic study of force in international relations. Yet the liberal approach, like its realist competitor, is a positive theory that explains a wide variety of state behavior in the international arena. It does not make any normative or moral claim about the superiority of peaceful state strategies over coercive ones, nor does it expect to see coercion become obsolete in world politics. Moravcsik powerfully argues that liberal IR theory is not less empirically valid than realism in explaining international outcomes.20 With its emphasis on state preferences (interests)

INTRODUCTION 7

and the domestic context from which such preferences originate (institutions), a reformulation of the liberal theory overcomes an artificial duality between this scholarship and the study of force. It was particularly difficult for the economic liberalism variant of liberal IR theory to establish a link between economics and coercion. Scholars commonly associated protection of economic interests abroad through forceful strategies with imperialism and argued that this practice has died with the change in the economic environment and international norms. Coup d’état attempts to punish the nationalization policies of a hostile government or overt uses of force against ideologically incompatible trading partners appeared in the foreign policy repertoire of powerful states in a few instances during the Cold War.21 Increasing economic competence of the Third World in protecting property rights and regulating foreign investments, the changing nature of overseas economic activity from primary to industrial production, and financial transactions and evolving norms of the international system reduced the effectiveness of military force or the threat of it to achieve economic ends.22 These changes, however, opened up other avenues of influence between states. The role of force has been transformed in the new global order, though this observation should not lead to the overarching assumption that force has become obsolete. What is obsolete in the post-1945 global economy and world politics is the context in which force is applied but not the goals that states seek to achieve with forceful policies. Following this logic, transition from European imperialism to good neighborliness is about strategy and not about the motivations behind states’ attempts to influence others’ policies.23 In an era where international legal sovereignty and border fixity have been triumphed by the United States and are widely accepted and monitored by nations, use of force to control other governments and impose alien policies in a colonialist fashion may no longer be on the menu of state policies.24 Yet the motivation to defend economic interests abroad by adopting security measures continues, and it takes other contemporary forms that mostly escaped scholarly attention. Important among these contemporary forms is that states intervene in a conflict environment to protect their economic interests against the negative externalities of intra- and inter-state violence without exercising direct political or military control of the target. International norms in the post–World War II period do not allow states to forcefully meddle with other states’ affairs to collect sovereign debts or protect foreign capital as in earlier days but allow

8  INTRODUCTION

intervention in armed conflicts, mostly in a collective fashion, to protect “international peace and stability.” International rules are loose and open to reinterpretation, especially by powerful states that can endure the costs of naming and shaming by international institutions and audiences. When states act to protect their significant economic partners in the context of conflicts, it is not clear whether international law is breached. Yet, in a system where borders are closely observed, violating international sovereignty to achieve similar goals would invariably lead to coalitions of states aimed at restoring the rights of international ownership. The Gulf War is a typical example of this case. Both Iraq’s attack on Kuwait and U.S. intervention on behalf of Kuwait could have been driven with a combination of motives that includes economic ones in the mix. Yet Iraq’s strategy to annex Kuwait triggered coalitions of states on the defense side, whereas the international community approved U.S. strategy as an act to preserve peace and stability in the volatile Middle East. The United States established the post-1945 order and vehemently pursued its rules. Therefore, its behavior is further illustrative of what is acceptable and what is not in the new international order. Despite the low international and military costs of imperial intervention to a hegemonic power, it is highly infrequent in American foreign policymaking. The United States, on the other hand, played an active role in exerting its influence as an external intervener in conflicts in Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East. In an overwhelming majority of these conflicts, the United States stood up against the attacker on behalf of the target state and attempted to preserve the status quo to the favor of its significant economic and political partners.25 Considered from this perspective, contemporary liberal scholarship offers valuable insights to understand intervention from a political economic perspective. This book argues that intervener states’ security considerations and economic interests in the belligerents drive their decisions. It begins its analysis with important insights from the realist scholarship that dominated the study of wartime coalitions and alignment patterns. The book then provides an account of intervention that combines the realist paradigm with contemporary liberalism. Most and Starr write that involvement of outside actors in conflicts have generally been “explained by some . . . extra-societal phenomena.”26 Foreign Powers and Intervention in Armed Conflicts points to this “liberal” deficit in the study of intervention that overemphasizes forces external to the intervening state and devalues interveners’ internal dynamics.

INTRODUCTION 9

Emphasis on external stimuli as agents of intervention downplays state preferences and domestic imperatives in decision making. Yet conflicts redistribute the risks and costs for domestic constituencies exposed to their adverse effects. Changes in its international environment may, therefore, affect a state’s behavior indirectly through their impact on domestic preferences. We do not yet know much about these dynamics. Several important trends in foreign powers’ behavior are still unexplored and present empirical puzzles that wait to be solved with systematic theorizing and empirical testing. In doing so, intervention literature needs to catch up with the progress achieved in contemporary liberalism and its reflection in security studies. INTERVENERS MAKE A COMEBACK

The political economic model of intervention brings together separate literatures on civil wars, international conflicts, and conflict management with major theoretical debates in IR scholarship. The two components of this model are closely intertwined. First, international trade motivates a wide range of security policies. States create a security umbrella for trade through regional integration arrangements, defensive alliances, economic sanctions, and coercive diplomacy. At the intersection of economics and security, states also adopt intervention strategies to defend economic interests abroad against externalities of conflicts and to signal their commitment to the stability and territorial integrity of a significant economic partner. Policymaking in these cases involves private economic actors that carry cross-border economic transactions. These groups will attempt to influence policies that protect trade, financial links, and investments. This book develops this bottom-up view of political decision making as the second component of the intervention model. It identifies the circumstances under which national leaders are likely to protect interests of economic actors in belligerent economies and argues that political institutions play an important role in the conversion of economic interests into actual policy. Motivation

Empirical views in economic liberalism research have demonstrated a strong link between economic stakes and security policies. Scholars and practitioners alike have acknowledged that economic integration and shared democratic institutions reduce incentives to fight and help states maintain peace with each other. Economic integration through international trade has broader impacts on national security that go beyond the “do interdependent states fight?” question.27 Interdependent states form a network that shields trade not only

10  INTRODUCTION

against conflicts within the community but also against external threats that might come from outsiders.28 International trade energizes several security policies that aim at managing armed conflict because political stability and peace provide the essential infrastructure to maintain the efficient level of trade and to fulfill economic expectations. Economic ties that bind states in a pacific manner may at times require foreign policy choices that involve coercive tools to protect them against possible disruptions. Conflicts between and within nations not only destabilize belligerents’ economies but also affect external states that have economic stakes in these economies. There are several processes through which violence in the international system should affect important economic indicators for external states.29 Most conflicts remain dormant for a long period of time or terminate before militarized hostilities escalate to destroy infrastructure and drain productive factors in belligerent economies. Yet economic externalities are usually not related to the intensity of fighting and resulting damage. Speculative behavior, loss of confidence in the foreign market, and increasing transportation and insurance costs or expectation of these externalities make it difficult for traders and investors to realize economic goals without incurring unusual risks and costs. A cursory look at recent history reveals the magnitude of economic losses that conflicts cause, independent of the intensity with which belligerents confronted each other. When Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, oil prices almost doubled and led to a tight production market as a result of the Iraqi aggression against the oil fields in Kuwait. A few months later, after successful American air campaigns, prices fell back to their prewar levels.30 Fluctuation in markets and price instability affected not only the belligerents but also the economies of energy-dependent foreign powers, such as the U.S. and Western economies, which decided in favor of military intervention. In addition, location of the conflict in an economically strategic region for an external state can lead to intervention independent of its direct interests in belligerent economies and/or the severity of fighting. U.S. interventions in a series of international and civil conflicts in which Yugoslavia was the aggressor were aimed at the protection of its political and economic interests in Europe. The U.S. diplomatic recognition of the Yemeni rebels (1962) and military intervention in the border skirmishes between Oman and Yemen (1982) also aimed to preserve the stability of the Persian Gulf and the interests of its key allies, including Saudi Arabia and European countries.

INTRODUCTION 11

Conflicts, therefore, have broad economic consequences and affect external states with economic interests in belligerent nations or the conflict region. It follows from this argument that states can be expected to defend their economic interests abroad against the externalities of violence. This, however, is not the complete story. An important part of the puzzle is the traders and investors who carry cross-border exchange and directly benefit from economic transactions. These private economic actors are exposed to the costs and risks of changing circumstances in foreign markets. Accounting for their possible influence in foreign policymaking suggests that economic integration between states is indeed a source of constraint on state behavior in foreign policymaking. Constraint

Political leaders answer to domestic constituencies and satisfy groups that support their incumbency with public and private goods. The link between domestic politics and foreign policy has strong theoretical tenets. Second-image-reversed arguments have modeled international factors in states’ decisions through their impact on domestic politics.31 Similarly, democratic peace arguments voiced by both scholars and top decision makers in the United States illustrate that people from a variety of backgrounds see domestic politics as a central issue in foreign policy.32 The state–society dimension of policymaking is particularly relevant for economic liberalism research. International trade is, most of the time, a private activity and involves certain segments of the society, which requires the study of trade’s political consequences through domestic processes. The constraint perspective points to the domestic dimension of international trade. Opening up the black box of state challenges the implicit assumption in economic peace research that states are the primary actors in economic exchange. States do not directly benefit from trade; similarly, they are not directly exposed to the risks and costs of political instability in foreign markets. When gains from trade are high, trade creates societal groups with a vested interest in the continued growth of trade relationships. Changes in the international economic environment redistribute the costs and benefits to economic actors.33 Trade externalities of armed conflicts have a direct effect on the welfare of these groups, while external states are indirectly affected through domestic political pressures. With the outbreak of conflicts in profitable markets, individuals, firms, and privately organized groups that carry the exchange would register their grievances with policymakers for policies that protect the efficient level of trade and ameliorate the consequences of armed conflicts. Investors’ political risk insurance claims to the Overseas

12  INTRODUCTION

Private Investment Cooperation (OPIC) illustrate the obstacles that they face in foreign markets as a result of domestic and international conflicts.34 OPIC, established by the U.S. government in 1971 to manage risks in new and developing markets, has paid forty-six political violence claims and $32 million in compensation of these claims since its inception. The majority of these claims relate to insurgent violence such as the Philippine Geothermal, Inc., versus the Philippine government in 1987 and the Haitian Tropical Management, S.A., versus Haiti in 1991. There are also claims related to international violence such as F. C. Shaffer & Associates versus Eritrea in 1998.35 Security policies that aim at defending economic interests abroad inevitably involve domestic constituencies that are agents and beneficiaries of significant trade relationships. Economic interest groups may ask for security policies that defend their position in foreign markets in which armed conflicts break out. Such incentives can be read in the foreign policy announcement by business representatives: What is most important is that the United States employ its influence to sustain responsible, orderly governments and to oppose the expansion of revolutionary regimes. Southern Africa is the mineral treasure house of the Continent. It is very much in the national interest of the United States to maintain access to the gold, uranium, coal, chrome, copper, platinum and other strategic materials in the subcontinent. Access will be denied if Marxist regimes extend their sway . . . the United States has a special interest in the Cape of Good Hope. . . . It is essential that the [tanker] traffic not be interrupted or threatened by the growing Soviet fleet in the Indian Ocean . . . A common sense solution for the United States [to protect its security interests in the Indian Ocean] would be to seek permission from South Africa to establish a missile-handling facility at the Simonstown naval base near the Cape.36

The distribution of trade benefits within a society and beneficiary groups are central elements of a liberal approach to state behavior.37 A bottom-up view of foreign policymaking, where political leaders respond to economic imperatives, requires more than simply acknowledging the role of domestic constituencies in economic interdependence. It is perhaps more important to understand the factors that transmit domestic demands to policymakers and shape the latter’s responsiveness. The political power of domestic constituencies with trade interests in foreign markets hinges on the institutional features of the political environment

INTRODUCTION 13

in which they operate and put demands on the political system. Disruption of trade conducted by private actors should have a small effect on the political survival of elected officials unless traders and investors convert their economic power into political power. Though policymakers have domestically oriented concerns, they do not simply respond or succumb to external pressures. They have little interest in what happens in foreign markets unless changes in the international economic environment are likely to have domestic percussions such as losing the support of a key constituency. If political institutions occupy a central place in states’ relation to their societies, then how do they transmit domestic demands to policymakers? What is their role in redistributing power in a society? In which institutional environments would states be more responsive to the protection demands of economic agents? Milner writes, “Certain institutions privilege particular actors, and hence policy choices reflect their preferences more.”38 Interactive effects of international trade and political institutions are rarely accounted for in security studies. This book provides a theoretical and empirical assessment of political systems in terms of their responsiveness to economic agents’ demands for protection in foreign markets. It particularly investigates which political systems may have a representational bias toward economic actors and are susceptible to producing security policies for their protection through usurpation of public funds. In doing so, the theoretical framework disaggregates political systems on the democracy–autocracy distinction and relies on the most recent developments in comparative politics to develop this framework.39 Power between key decision makers is distributed quite differently in democratic and autocratic regimes. I particularly highlight that democratic states face a crowded bargaining table with intersectional and competing interests. The gridlock engendered by political institutions undercuts the power of political actors in catering to private economic actors and other specialized interests with private goods. Because democracies would be reluctant to produce security policies that benefit the few, democratic institutions put a break on intervention aimed at protecting economic agents abroad. OVERVIEW OF THE BOOK

Foreign Powers and Intervention in Armed Conflicts illustrates the sophistication and rigor of economic liberalism in explaining real-life outcomes. The book advances a causal framework that explicitly addresses the domestic dimension of economic interests and the institutional environment in which

14  INTRODUCTION

privately organized groups, individuals, and firms that carry out trade interact with their government. It applies this framework to understand the causes behind intervention in international and civil conflicts and formulates and tests hypotheses around these predictions. In proposing a theory of intervention, it provides scholars, students, and other interested readers of IR the tools to compare and combine various approaches to intervention. Chapter 2, “Bringing Foreign Powers Back In,” presents a conceptual assessment of intervention. Conceptual ambiguities have inhibited a straightforward application of existing theories to understand intervention. The term intervention has been adopted to refer to a diverse set of cases, including interventions in civil wars, military coups, and other overt or covert operations that target another country’s government by force. This chapter engages in a classification effort that discusses intervention in a wide variety of international settings and across forms of political violence in the international system. It clarifies the concept of intervention as states’ military and nonmilitary response to conflicts between and within other nations. Reactive interventions, undertaken as a response to ongoing conflicts, represent the conventional approach in the literature. Chapter 2 goes beyond this framework. In the second section, it discusses interventions in the preconflict and postconflict stages and combines literatures on preventive interventions and postconflict reconstruction. In the following sections, the chapter examines a critical element of intervention: interveners. International law heavily emphasizes collective action in reacting to conflicts and considers unilateral actions as illegitimate. Yet intervener types, even when external actors react collectively, show a substantial variation. States, intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) undertake unilateral efforts in conflicts. They can also act in concert and form coalitions outside an organizational framework. The “Coalitional Intervention” section examines various forms of coalitions and attempts to identify the possibilities for coordination in ad hoc coalitions formed among external states. Chapter 3, “Defending Economic Interests Abroad,” develops a comprehensive theoretical framework for understanding the liberal dynamics of intervention and brings a theoretically coherent and empirically testable approach to the link between economics and security policies. The chapter theoretically assesses the role of force in liberal IR theory in general and its economic liberalism variant in particular. Scholarly work limits the theoretical power of economic liberalism to the “does trade inhibit war?” question.

INTRODUCTION 15

Instead, liberalism is a positive theory that can explain a wide range of security policies, including forceful and peaceful ones. Drawing on Andrew Moravscik’s reformulation of the liberal IR theory, this chapter’s framework approaches liberalism as a paradigmatic alternative to the realist scholarship. Instead of compartmentalizing types of state behavior that can be explained with specific paradigms, it identifies the causal mechanisms that differentiate liberalism from its competitors. Liberalism’s explanatory power lies specifically in providing insights into the domestic sources of state preferences and the derivation of domestic constituents’ demands from the exigencies of the international context. Crossborder economic exchange is undertaken by private economic groups, and states have little direct interest in the security of international trade. This approach requires emphasizing private preferences in the formation of state preferences and their translation into policy through representative institutions. Chapter 3 builds on this liberal framework to explain intervention behavior around the core relationship of economic interests and their reflection in foreign policy through domestic political processes. Based on the theoretical assessment in Chapter 3, Chapters 4 and 6 evaluate hypotheses about external states’ choice of sides and strategy in international conflicts and civil wars. Adopting quantitative data, these chapters expand on the empirical work in economic liberalism by changing the outcome of interest from conflict onset to intervention. The chapters redefine the explanatory variables in this body of work to account for the interests and expectations of traders and investors. The form and magnitude of international trade is central to measure domestically oriented economic interests in foreign markets. Chapters 4 and 6 examine trade and foreign direct investment to account for the current stream of benefits and preferential trade agreements to account for the future expectations of economic agents in intervention decisions. Empirical findings show that, even after controlling for plausible alternative political factors, external states intervene to protect economic stakes of their nationals against the repercussions of armed conflicts. To do so, they prefer military forms of statecraft in international conflicts and diplomacy in civil wars. To explain how economic agents’ demands are filtered and translated into foreign policy, I examine economic interests in belligerent economies in conjunction with the representative institutions of intervening states in Chapter 4. The empirical framework elaborates on the responsiveness of policy­makers to private economic groups in democracy and autocracy subtypes, including

16  INTRODUCTION

presidential and parliamentary democracies and autocracies with personal rule. Macrolevel results show that the most significant variation in policymakers’ incentives to protect international trade with intervention can be observed on the basis of the democracy–autocracy distinction. Highly complicated relations among political, economic, and military actors in autocratic regimes may not allow for a clean causal mechanism that links intervention and pressures from economic agents in these cases. On the other hand, the diversity and volume of societal demands in democracies increase the burden on the system to the point at which a public goods provision is the only attractive option for rulers and therefore reduce their responsiveness to the protection demands of private economic groups. While political institutions seem to play into states’ decisions to pursue economic interests of their nationals in international conflicts, trade has the same effect on the probability of intervention in civil wars for democracies and nondemocracies. Qualitative evidence in Chapters 5 and 6 evaluates the relative importance of security considerations and economic interests in intervention decisions. It draws attention to the similarities in U.S. interventions observed by prominent scholars such as Kurth, Lowenthal, Gilpin, and Krasner in other international contexts. It also suggests previously unnoticed patterns and unveils the linkages between U.S. interventions in different historical epochs. Most importantly, it shows that neither the liberal nor the realist framework alone can explain intervention decisions: Instead, a subtle combination of economic and security imperatives has driven U.S. decision making. Chapter 6 examines a contemporary case, that of Ethiopia and Somalia, to illustrate the dual role that the United States has played in international conflicts and civil wars that are linked through transnational rebellion. On the other hand, Chapter 5 presents the first systematic account of U.S. interventions in the international conflicts that took place in less-developed areas such as Latin America, North Africa, and the Middle East. A historical account of U.S. intervention in international and civil conflicts delineates that, throughout the twentieth century, the United States acted to resist foreign interference and strengthen regional allies against outside subversion even when allies had no political or economic significance other than being a buffer zone against dissident regimes. In these intervention decisions, long-term interests in belligerents and their region rather than short-term hegemonic calculations and economic determinism guided American policymakers. Few scholars would deny that there was a strong economic

INTRODUCTION 17

undercurrent to the U.S. security policies in less-developed areas, which this chapter also emphasizes. However, historical evidence suggests that there is no compelling portrait of policymakers being driven by the protection demands of investors and traders. Washington frequently allowed economic actors to register their grievances and concerns about the political situation in a foreign market, but, in the end, U.S. policy was based on a careful calculation of long-term strategic interests that accounted for regional and international dynamics. Broad economic objectives mostly related to the stability and security of a region, and safe access to land and sea routes for economic activity played into these decisions. In doing so, U.S. actions indirectly benefited economic agents and created a public good for the security and continuity of international trade. Chapter 7, “Conclusion,” draws the analysis together by presenting the hypotheses and findings in previous chapters. It discusses the conditions under which states intervene, militarily or nonmilitarily, in foreign conflicts within or between nations. In doing so, this chapter particularly suggests that applying the liberal paradigm to a complex phenomenon like intervention, which has been exclusively approached through the lenses of realist, normative, and legal thought, can contribute to a deeper understanding of armed violence and its management in the international system.

2

BRINGING FOREIGN POWERS BACK IN Aggressors are more often punished than rewarded. Even successful aggression offers few benefits. Moreover, aggression seldom succeeds. Aggressor states usually are constrained or destroyed.1

how do states react to threats? Do states actually respond to armed conflicts and take action to constrain aggressors? Defensive realism has purported that aggression does not pay off because aggressors provoke coalitions of states on the side of their targets that attempt to preserve the status quo.2 The international system forces states to be cautious about their military adventures. Contrary to this claim, offensive realists suggest that offensive policies may at times contribute to the security of the aggressor: States may bandwagon with the stronger or threatening powers, or aggression may go unchecked as states tend to pass the buck to others.3 Most security studies that discuss the realist framework to explain how alliances form inside armed conflicts do so by drawing on popular historical cases. They rarely take advantage of the broad evidence and behavioral patterns that this evidence suggests. Importantly, few studies provide an empirical evaluation of the competing theories on intervention in a comparative framework. Empirical evidence suggests unexpected patterns once intervention is closely examined from within the realist framework. There are two important trends that run counter to the defensive claim and support offensive realism in the intrarealist debate. Interventions that scholars often refer to have aimed at denying an adversary the fruits of aggression, such as British intervention on behalf of Poland and U.S. intervention on behalf of Britain in World War II. Yet aggressors may at times successfully get away with their actions. Powerful attackers are rewarded rather than punished by external actors. Conflicts that they initiate generate a bandwagoning effect rather than balancing behavior: Most interveners in post–World War II conflicts chose to take sides with great 18

BRINGING FOREIGN POWERS BACK IN 19

powers.4 Importantly, U.S. militarized actions in this period predominantly led to coalitions of interveners supporting its adventures abroad.5 An initial glance at the COW Project MID Data also seems to defeat the defensive realist posture: States that aim to change the status quo are not necessarily punished when the historical behavior of the international community is considered. External states are equally likely to support attackers with revisionary goals (aggressors) and their victims. Second, states choose to stay on the sidelines and watch when other states fight. Scholars have long argued that states are reluctant to enter strangers’ conflicts. A decade ago, Gartner and Siverson made the “prosaic observation” that wide wars between nations are rare phenomena in history: “A few wars expand, but most do not.”6 Jones and his coauthors reached similar conclusions: “Most disputes begin and end as one-on-one confrontations,” while some expand to include external states as joiners.7 So did Blainey, when he observed that “most wars in every generation since 1700 were not general wars or world wars.”8 Richardson suggested that one-on-one confrontations between nations were the most common form of conflict and illustrated his finding with an interesting analogy: “Amidst the unorganized activities in the playground of a Scottish elementary school, fights of one versus one were observed to be more frequent than other types.”9 Powell also pointed to the fact that waiting is a common behavior for external states when they have to decide whether to rescue a target.10 Historical evidence supports the claim that most cases of armed conflicts, including international conflicts and civil wars, remain limited to the belligerents. Generally speaking, states prefer to wait rather than take action on either side of an ongoing conflict. Interventions are rare phenomena in the history of nations and conflicts remain small in their lifetime. Quite contrary to the expectations of defensive realists, the international community does not rush to contain aggressors; neither do they rush to save states whose survival may be threatened by aggression. This empirical puzzle brings to the fore important questions about intervention behavior: When do states intervene in armed conflicts? Which outside states would become interested in an ongoing conflict? How do states choose the conflicts that they are going to influence with intervention strategies? This chapter will lay out the problems with the study of intervention. Both the realist debate and international law draw heavily from the experience of world wars that began as one-on-one confrontations between minor states and turned into hegemonic wars as a result of external intervention. Does

20  BRINGING FOREIGN POWERS BACK IN

this implicit consensus between realist and legal scholars on the definition of intervention echo in the recent literature? The following sections define and clarify what the term intervention stands for in security scholarship and discuss its several important aspects. The final section will conclude. INTERNATIONAL CONTEXT OF INTERVENTION

The definition of intervention contains several ambiguities that stand in the way of unifying scholarly studies around a common conceptual and theoretical core.11 It is not clear what intervention means and in what type of international contexts it might take place. Scholars and practitioners alike have sharply limited their attention to military interventions that take place in wars, the most intense form of international conflict.12 This approach leaves open the issue of how well their frameworks generalize beyond wars to lowerscale conflicts between nations.13 Concentrated on war-fighting coalitions that external states build with belligerents, this literature also rarely investigated outside involvement in other forms of conflict such as civil wars. Wars that receive no response from the international community, minor skirmishes between nations, and civil wars that attract external actors diminish the value of studying wartime coalitions to understand external intervention. Wars are rare cases of militarized confrontations in the history of nations, whereas lowscale conflicts and civil wars are common experiences. With the decline of wars in the post–Cold War period, war-fighting coalitions are soon to become a historical phenomenon no longer illustrative of intervention behavior. The entangling coalitions of world wars will be remnants of the past unless nations risk paying the price of another major war. Recent approaches have mostly abandoned studying expansion of wars to external actors, and because interest in this particular form of intervention has died, there has not been enough impetus to reconsider the concepts. An overview of the existing work shows that the international context in which intervention takes place has not yet attracted much scholarly attention. A diverse set of forceful actions by states has been studied under the rubric of intervention. The term intervention frequently became adopted to refer to a wide range of policies that include military involvement in civil wars, overt or covert operations aimed at destabilizing foreign governments, and initiation of hostile actions against other nations that fall within the study of the causes of conflict. This loose definition of intervention makes it impossible to come up with a coherent set of cases because any interstate influence attempt can be included in this cluster.14 This leads to an artificial divide between conflict

BRINGING FOREIGN POWERS BACK IN 21

r­ esearch and a diverse body of work that dwells on intervention despite the fact that some of these cases are closely related to armed conflicts. Then, in which contexts does intervention take place? Historical evidence illustrates that external states also see low-scale conflicts as opportunities to intervene and have undertaken various forms of strategies to influence these conflicts. Some of the conflicts between nations that fail to escalate to the level of full-blown war can still pose a threat to external actors with interests in the belligerents and may prompt outside intervention. Hence, international contexts that present states with an opportunity to intervene are much more heterogeneous than wars with respect to their intensity level. Accounting for lesser forms of armed conflicts that may include only threats or displays of force exchanged between belligerents widens the scope of the empirical approach and identifies other relevant opportunities for external intervention. Lower-scale conflicts are indeed central to the legal contention on external intervention because these cases can be argued by states to fall under the doctrine of preemption. For instance, the Bush administration’s National Security Strategy of the United States of America stated that “legal scholars and international jurists often conditioned the legitimacy of preemption on the existence of imminent threat—most often a visible mobilization of armies, navies, and air forces preparing to attack.”15 This is an important interpretation that effectively expands the right to use force abroad to conflicts involving low-scale militarized action, perhaps legitimizing earlier interventions within this spectrum. Hence, a more contemporary account of intervention needs to go beyond and “below” wars when intervention is considered. Table 2.1 shows the distribution of wars and lower-scale conflicts by external involvement from 1816 to 2001. The data suggest that approaching external Table 2.1. 

Military intervention in international conflicts, 1816–2001.

Lower-scale Wars conflicts Defensive intervention Offensive intervention Both sides are supported Intervention, no aggressor No intervention Total

17 (15.9) 11 (10.3) 7 (6.5) 13 (12.1) 59 (55.1) 107 (100)

62 (2.8) 46 (2.1) 16 (0.7) 55 (2.5) 2046 (92) 2225 (100)

source: Data come from the Correlates of War (COW) Project; Ghosn et al., 2004. note: Column percentages are reported in parentheses. Percentages may not add up to 100 due to rounding.

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involvement exclusively as becoming a party in a high-profile conflict and fighting on one side of a deadly confrontation unrealistically limits intervention opportunities to the most violent form of an armed conflict between states. Intervention also happens in low-intensity hostilities between nations illustrating the relevance of these cases. There is, however, a good reason why previous studies have disproportionately focused on the deadliest confrontations in the international system. Interveners overwhelmingly respond to wars, whereas they play a waiting game in lesser conflicts: Forty-five percent of wars experience involvement of external actors in their life cycle, whereas only 8 percent of remaining conflicts attract intervention. When we consider the rarity of wars in the international system, it is striking to see that more than half of these cases expand to include external actors. This observation does not mean that lower-scale conflicts are less relevant to the study of intervention. The fact that these conflicts still attract outside attention, though not necessarily threatening the security of other nations, warrants further research into the causes of intervention. While researchers need to widen the empirical scope by redefining the opportunities to intervene, they also need to set the conceptual boundaries of intervention. The international context in which states adopt intervention strategies is particularly important in defining and explaining intervention simply because this is the context that intervention attempts to influence. Decision makers who respond to a civil war between a state and an armed domestic group under its jurisdiction clearly respond to different international stimuli than do those who respond to a conflict between two or more nations. For instance, U.S. interventions in world wars fall within the latter category, whereas, in Somalia and Kosovo, U.S. military action came as a response to ongoing civil wars. Besides, states that aim to change the political system of another state by force are clearly not intervening in an ongoing conflict as an external state but are simply considering force as an appropriate tool of statecraft. Resort to force for the purpose of exerting control over foreign governments or as a response to aggression within or between states takes place in distinct contexts in which external actors formulate a response to varying stimuli in their environment. Despite the divergence in their characteristics, it is not unusual in scholarly circles to lump together interventions in international conflicts and civil wars with military operations to meddle with the domestic affairs of other nations. There has been an apparent tendency to focus on high-profile cases and force them into the category of intervention. Scholars have used that term

BRINGING FOREIGN POWERS BACK IN 23

quite broadly without much concern for the type of the conflict in which intervention takes place or the type of intervention strategy that is adopted. For instance, Feste examines interventions undertaken by major powers in civil wars during the Cold War such as those in Greece, Lebanon, and Angola.16 The Ethiopia–Somalia war and the Gulf War also appear among Feste’s cases, though both of these cases are international wars. In another prominent study on intervention, Taliaferro examines three historical cases: “Germany’s initiation and escalation of the 1905–06 Morocco crisis; Japan’s decisions for war in 1940–41; and the United States intervention in and escalation of the Korean War in 1950–51.”17 Among these cases, U.S. intervention in Korea and Japan’s involvement in World War II on the Axis side qualify as military interventions in an international conflict because both states entered these wars with the aim of supporting or resisting a particular side of an ongoing conflict. Yet Germany’s role in the Moroccan crisis points to a different form of statecraft. It involved intense diplomatic pressure to break up the French–British alliance: Germany avoided military action in the Moroccan crisis despite its interest in showing French leaders that they had few friends in their quest for dominance in northern Africa.18 Similar conceptual ambiguities on intervention can also be observed in the study of American foreign policy. Scholars focus on uses of force abroad in which the United States acted without a conflict in the background. U.S. involvement in Latin America and the Middle East has attracted much debate. Military operations to overthrow left-leaning leaders in the Dominican Republic (1965), Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Cuba (1961), Chile (1973), Grenada (1983), and Panama (1989) have been examples of use of force abroad that left their mark on American foreign policymaking in the twentieth century.19 Yet most of these decisions were not formulated as a response to an armed conflict at the time of U.S. involvement, and only in Guatemala, Grenada, and the Dominican Republic could the United States possibly be argued to have taken military action within the context of an ongoing civil war. 20 U.S. uses of force have generally been undertaken as bilateral exercises of great power hegemony aimed at controlling a client state’s regime, similar to Russian interventions in Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan. Given the divergence in these cases, which include a variety of international settings and tools of statecraft, it is doubtful whether they can all be studied under the rubric of intervention. There is no doubt that the form and dynamics of violence in the international system are changing. This profound change should not lead to an

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amalgamation of cases but instead to greater attention to their specific characteristics for several reasons. Most important is the history of the international relations field: Most influential models of interstate relations have predominantly originated from realist thinking that prioritizes states as the main actors of world politics even when they did not exist in the system in the contemporary sense.21 As the discipline evolved in the twentieth century as a response to the world wars, international conflicts became a well-­established topic of study, whereas theoretical and empirical models of civil wars are relatively new, gaining momentum in the late 1990s. Yet the motives behind interventions in this wide variety of cases may at times be similar. While states’ responses to aggression between other states are particularly important to the realist research program, several high-profile cases of intervention in academic and journalistic accounts are civil war interventions, where external states attempted to influence an armed conflict fought between a state and an insurgent group.22 Bosnia, Somalia, and Haiti are examples of civil war intervention that have preoccupied public debates for a long time and involved the most prominent actors in the international system.23 How conflicts between and within nations start and evolve over time and whether external actors take action inside these conflicts are emerging questions in security studies, and scholarly research can pay more attention in a classification effort to the international context in which intervention takes place. RESPONDING TO CONFLICTS

An important issue with defining the opportunities to intervene is the timing of external participation: External states that enter a conflict after the outbreak of initial hostilities and aim to support or resist one side can be defined as interveners. While belligerents are involved on the first day as originators of a conflict, interveners are “late-comers” that become participants after the belligerents have begun the hostility.24 Existing theories on intervention are tailored to explain states’ reactions to militarized incidences taking place between other nations or within states in which an ongoing conflict is the necessary condition. In the 1990s, most of the literature was concerned with reactive interventions; that is, the entry of external states into interstate or intra­state wars. The COW project, as the foremost data source on international conflicts, looks exclusively at militarized actions undertaken by external states inside conflicts. Further indicative of the dominant approach, available data on civil war intervention only consider intervention cases that take place in an

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o ­ n­going conflict.25 In the same vein, theoretical models approach intervention as a forceful act within a conflict aiming to influence belligerent behavior.26 From a legal perspective, as will be discussed in the following section, international law puts disproportionate emphasis on the legality of intervention undertaken as a response to hostilities already underway. Scholars and practitioners alike tend to see interventions more as an integral part of conflicts and less as a preemptive measure or as an attempt to manipulate the terms of a war-terminating agreement. Conceptual clarity and synergy with previous research are important to generate cumulative knowledge. This book’s framework follows the dominant approach in intervention studies and examines external interventions inside conflicts. This approach, however, describes an ideal-typical case of intervention. Intervention defined in terms of the timing of participation can only take place inside a conflict, which requires that the conflict is formally initiated. This is a simplification of external intervention in several aspects. External interveners may play an important role in different phases of the conflict. The time horizon that external actors to ongoing conflicts consider in their policies is much more expansive than intervention research may suggest. Intervention within the conflict context aims to influence the course of events and is central to the evolution and resolution of armed conflicts. In the pre- and postconflict stages, interveners are most likely to be driven by incentives to prevent armed hostilities, avoid recurrent ones, or secure a favorable agreement for one side of the conflict (Figure 2.1). Corbetta and Dixon find that 19 percent of interventions, including military interventions, economic sanctions and incentives, and diplomatic support or opposition, are actually those that surround the conflict and occur before or after it.27 Regan counts 230 military, 109 economic, and 110 diplomatic interventions in countries that experience political instability that carries a future risk of civil war.28

Phases of conflict Preconflict phase: Preventive interventions

Figure 2.1. 

Conflict phase: Reactive interventions

The time horizon of intervention.

Postconflict phase: Reconstructive interventions

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While researchers have an interest in specifying an exact day for the initiation of hostilities, mostly ignoring the preconflict stage, external actors might be on the watch for the forthcoming aggression with a plan to be employed when hostilities ensue. There are instances in which external states stepped into the fray on the first day of a conflict right after or simultaneously with the initial hostilities.29 U.S. intervention in the Korean War is perhaps the foremost example of such an exception to the timing issue.30 In another major intervention, the United States threatened to use force against Iraq if Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, which is illustrative of influence attempts in the preconflict stage.31 Diplomatic exchange between belligerents before they resort to military strategies can inform potential interveners about the likelihood of future conflict and prompt them to consider possible responses, leading to shorter reaction times. It is unrealistic to believe that states would limit their influence attempts to the conflict context if they have important stakes to protect against the externalities of aggression. In most cases, external states wary of the coming aggression take precautionary measures such as preventive diplomacy and early intervention that may reflect their future role. Researchers have paid due attention to preventive actions that organizations, states, and influential individuals (former heads of states, high-ranking diplomats, and spiritual leaders) undertake before conflicts start or escalate to unmanageable violence.32 Most agree that preventive efforts by the international community require significant investment, which involves long-term presence of and commitment by external actors. Leadership by major powers and the United Nations is crucial in an environment where instability between or within states is likely to erupt into violence with substantial costs. Some scholars suggest that economic incentives in the form of expanded trade, preferential trade agreements, support for emerging markets, and technology transfers can create domestic groups that have a strong incentive in keeping the peace.33 Long writes that such incentives can most credibly be offered by states given that their success depends on an existing or potential bilateral exchange relationship.34 Similarly, Cortright suggests that external states have a certain advantage over coalitions in making such incentives work because of their ability to commit themselves to a coherent policy over time.35 Yet states’ tangential interests in countries at risk of violence hold them back.36 States are commonly reluctant to take preventive actions until they perceive an imminent threat to their interests, which is commonly the case in widespread conflicts that engulf a region. In addition to lack of motivation, there are

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also effectiveness issues. While waiting is costly for external actors, preventive efforts do not always promise successful outcomes. For instance, 39 percent of eighty mediation efforts in the preconflict stage of civil wars have failed, whereas 15 percent led to some moderation of combatants’ demands, 32 percent to partial settlement, and only 5 percent to full settlement.37 States’ reluctance inevitably puts the burden on IGOs and NGOs. The United Nations has a leading role in preventive diplomacy, and secretaries-general, starting with Trygve Lie, have worked with Article 99 of the U.N. Charter to head off conflicts, especially in cases where the General Assembly and the Security Council were held back by bureaucratic inertia or internal disagreements.38 To gather information and develop effective strategies at the “lowest effective level,” the Secretariat works closely with regional and subregional institutions that have neighborhood responsibilities in preventing and managing regional conflicts.39 When states’ presence in the preconflict stage is limited by ambiguous outcomes and lack of motivation, NGOs’ role also comes to the forefront of prevention. Their acquaintance with societies that are susceptible to violence and access to local actors give them a certain advantage over other external parties in designing prevention strategies that respond to the needs of the individual situation. According to Hackett, NGOs strengthen indigenous institutions and contribute to building a civil society that “can be a stabilizing force, acting as a buffer and providing the possibility for civil dialogue to de-escalate local tensions.”40 Disparate literatures attempt to understand the involvement of external actors in the preconflict stage. Theoretical and empirical models of conflict demonstrate that singling out a certain conflict stage may at times conceal the dependency between interveners’ and combatants’ decisions in the preconflict stage. Most strategic treatments of international conflict, including deterrence studies, powerfully show that belligerents and foreign powers are entangled in a complex web of relations: States might begin fighting or preserve the status quo depending on their expectations of external support to their victim. Deterrence studies, particularly, emphasize the role of threats and military alliances rather than political and economic incentives in deterring interstate conflict. Gartner and Siverson illustrate that aggressors avoid nations with allies and prefer lone states, which are less likely to receive outside support.41 Hence, expectation of intervention leads attackers to avoid certain targets. Some bargaining models of conflict explicitly account for this strategic setting and the sequential behavior of the attacker and intervener largely as extensions of standard realist expectations. Smith shows how aggressors’ and targets’

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expectations about external intervention affect their respective decisions to challenge and to resist.42 In a theoretical model, Werner argues that conflict initiators can strategically scale their demands during a conflict so as to avoid triggering intervention from external states.43 Signorino and Tarar offer a strategic model of extended immediate deterrence and show that a challenger’s decision to initiate a crisis against a target is strategically related to potential defenders’ future reaction.44 While rigorous theorizing and empirical application of strategic interaction among states in a conflict or crisis situation are recent attempts, the idea is not new. For instance, Blainey argues that “every decision to wage war is influenced by predictions of how outside nations will affect the course of war.”45 Together, the idea that aggressors strategically select their targets or calibrate their demands and avoid multilateral confrontations points to the important role that external actors play in the preconflict stage. External states may also intervene in the postconflict stage to preserve the peace or secure a favorable agreement for a particular combatant, suggesting another issue with the limitation of intervention to the conflict context.46 U.N. peacekeeping, which is a form of postconflict intervention by an IGO, has been the subject of a voluminous literature that delineates the conditions under which outside involvement can successfully rebuild wartorn societies.47 Most authors agree that providing economic incentives to countries emerging from interstate or intrastate violence is likely to produce effective results in keeping the peace if external assistance is provided on a long-term basis that consistently rewards peaceful and cooperative behavior. For instance, del Castillo suggests that conflict parties are much more receptive to economic and political incentives in the postconflict stage than before the conflict: Foreign assistance, along with foreign troops to support rule of law and political involvement of external actors, can help with stabilization.48 Similarly, Collier and Hoeffler show that postconflict aid can facilitate recovery and growth after civil wars and find that aid absorption is exceptionally high between the fourth and seventh year of peace.49 Yet Collier and Hoeffler also point to the difficulty of rebuilding postwar societies.50 They argue that the timing of foreign aid is inconsistent with the goals of assistance: It arrives too soon and tapers out too early, a situation that points to the importance of long-term commitment of external actors to postconflict reconstruction. Press-Barnathan’s work is especially useful in understanding when and how economic incentives by external actors can transform combatants’ interrela-

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tions from conflict to peace.51 In The Political Economy of Transitions to Peace, Press-Barnathan argues that external actors can facilitate the peace process by practicing economic statecraft and creating domestic constituencies in combatants that become vested in pursuing bilateral economic exchange. Most importantly, the author suggests that external states and organizations should refrain from providing economic incentives once and for all with the signing of a peace treaty.52 Instead, economic statecraft should be tailored to support the normalization of relations by linking the emergence of direct bilateral cooperation between conflict parties to additional economic incentives. INTERNATIONAL LAW AND INTERVENTION

How does the international community approach intervention in armed conflicts? Intervention in armed conflicts is at the center of a major controversy in international law that has attracted attention from both scholars and practitioners. While the noncoercive nature of international mediations bestows an easy legitimacy on them as conflict management exercises, forceful actions by external actors present a legal problem for the rule of law. The military involvement of external states in conflicts between other nations is a muchdebated issue in international law because intervention is closely related to U.N. security functions. As Claude succinctly argues, international organization is “a reaction to the problem of war,” and legal arrangements approach militarized conflicts as a concern for the international community, which requires the “mobilization of strangers” for their peaceful settlement.53 International law puts special emphasis and also limitations on external intervention. The U.N. Charter regards civil wars as domestic problems that are outside the domain of intervention unless there are compelling humanitarian concerns such as a refugee crisis and the systematic targeting of civilians by their government. Drawing from the devastating experiences of the world wars, the United Nations is concerned with the collective mobilization of its members for the prevention or settlement of a particular type of violence in the international system, one that takes place between two or more nations.54 Intervention by external states is legal in international conflicts.55 It requires Security Council authorization under Chapter VII unless use of force by the external state is aimed at its self-defense under Article 51 of the U.N. Charter. Second, the Charter allows external military response to conflicts as “collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the

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suppression of acts of aggression” and explicitly requires that such military response be organized as a multilateral intervention described in Article 43(1).56 International law strongly emphasizes collective decision making and requires institutional authorization for intervention. It also prioritizes its conflict management aspect and supports “benevolent” interventions aimed at maintaining international peace and security. These conditions are still debated by legal scholars and practitioners. While the international legal regime prioritizes a multilateral response to international conflicts, organizational authorization is a rare occurrence. In a breach of international law, states’ responses to conflicts mostly involve unilateral action in practice. Intervention frequently takes place without U.N. authorization and is arguably an act of self-defense recognized by international law: “The greatest problems regarding the legitimacy of uses of force arise when they are neither authorized by the Security Council nor a straightforward case of self-defense in response to an armed attack.”57 Legal controversy over external intervention is further deepened when we examine the behavior of the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. The most frequent interveners in conflicts are major powers, which are endowed with the right to bestow legitimacy on interventions.58 Because the majority of their actions are unilateral endeavors, states that establish and represent the laws of the international community themselves breach the rules of external engagement in strangers’ conflict. Historical evidence suggests that most interventions lack the multilateral framework and institutional authorization that international law requires. The United Nations has rarely engaged in collective use of force in international conflicts, leaving their management to regional organizations and unilateral attempts.59 The Council has authorized the use of force within the context of an international conflict in only two instances after its inception: the Korean War, with Resolution 83 in 1950; and the Gulf War, with Resolution 678 in 1990.60 Interestingly, U.S. intervention in the Korean War is still disputed as a legitimate action authorized by the Council. According to Fisher, Truman’s decision to commit air and sea forces to support South Korea on June 27, 1950, came a few hours before the United Nations passed the second resolution calling for military assistance from its members.61 Secretary of State Dean Acheson later admitted that “some American action, said to be in support of the resolution of June 27, was in fact ordered, and possibly taken, prior to the resolution.”62 Hence, the timing of Truman’s decision, which cast doubt on its

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conformity with international law, is further indicative of strong unilateralism in states’ response to conflicts. U.S. interventions also present an ideal case to illustrate the controversy about the design of and drive behind intervention decisions. Most general accounts of American foreign policy deliver the United States as a belligerent nation, contrary to the common belief among policymakers and the American public that the United States has not been an advocate of use of force as a solution to international problems.63 The United States frequently intervened on the defense side and aimed to protect the status quo against offensive nations that stirred up strategically important regions. Though breaching international law by going it alone, decision makers perceived American actions as fully compatible with its hegemonic role in bringing about peace and stability for other nations.64 U.S. policy targeted Libya, Yugoslavia, Syria, Iran, and Nicaragua as the lead antagonists of regional conflicts in which diplomacy was not considered as a viable option. Their targets were mostly insignificant actors for the United States, such as Chad, Sudan, Albania, and Honduras, and were mostly regarded as a buffer zone against subversive forces. While Sudan’s numerous conflicts with its neighbors, including Ethiopia, Chad, and Uganda, did not concern U.S. policymakers, the threat was perceived to be significant enough to motivate action when Sudan’s adversary was Libya. Similarly, Honduras’s conflicts with Nicaragua dropped from the agenda in the 1990s, whereas conflicts with El Salvador could not even make it to the U.S. list of interventions. Selective interventionism coexisted with noninterventionism in U.S. policy.65 One can dispute whether bringing peace at turbulent times was a universal drive given that the United States simply chose to stay on the sidelines where the threat was greater than what a minor contender, such as Nicaragua or Libya, could pose to U.S. grand strategy. Russia’s invasion of Georgia in August 2008 to support the separatist movement in South Ossetia exemplifies this point: While Russian forces poured into the Georgian soil, reaching Gori, and stopped short of taking over the capital T’bilisi, the international community, including the United States, preferred to wait for the aggression to be over. Though Georgia has been a close ally that sent troops to support the war in Iraq, the United States did not go further than declaring its opposition to Russian aggression and asking for immediate troop withdrawal. Together with its silence in the Russia–Chechnya conflict, the United States tacitly recognized Russia’s monopoly of force and sphere of

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influence in the Caucasus and refrained from overextending itself in military adventures on unfamiliar and distant terrain.66 Despite the general tendency in American foreign policy to stand up against aggression, geopolitical calculations precluded any action on the defense side. Hence, whether standing up against aggression was a universal drive for interveners in general and the United States in particular remains an open question that warrants further inquiry into the motivations behind intervention decisions. COALITIONAL INTERVENTION

International law’s emphasis on organizational involvement and multilateral action brings to the fore an important aspect of interventions: the type of external actors. In classifying interveners by their type, scholarly work mostly focuses on states and IGOs. Commensurate with the economic liberalism theory that specifically emphasizes state-to-state relations, this book’s theoretical and empirical framework also examines state interventions, which have received less attention than organizational interventions in quantitatively oriented research. On the other hand, interventions may take the form of multilateralism intended to enforce peace and provide humanitarian relief, as in Haiti and Somalia. Authorized by international organizations, these cases reflect international consensus on the level of threats posed by intrastate or interstate violence, both of which build up pressure on states to manage the threat.67 The state versus IGO dichotomy is an intuitive one that nicely captures actual trends in external interventions. Interventions by states and organizational interventions are the most common forms we observe in conflict settings. Yet this dichotomy is not sufficient to fully grasp the empirical milieu of intervention in armed conflicts. Some researchers recognize that interveners “also include ad hoc coalitions of states, regional organizations, one or both of superpowers, and even neighboring states.”68 Interventions that involve some form of coercion outside the framework of international regimes can also be undertaken by coalitions of the willing that act with humanitarian considerations. Unable to secure an authorization from organizations due to heavy bureaucracy or political struggles between rival networks, states may form ad hoc coalitions to overcome such inefficiencies and contain a resilient and expanding conflict. In practice, external actors consider building coalitions to aggregate capabilities and influence as well as to share burdens of action within the context of an ongoing conflict or crisis.69 There are several important aspects of these

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Table 2.2. 



Diplomatic interveners. Civil wars (1944–1999)

International conflicts (1946–2001)

IGOs 29.7 27.7 NGOs 6.8 1.3 Ad hoc coalitions 5 4.4 States 49.5 66.6 source: Patrick M. Regan, Richard Frank, and Aysegul Aydin, “Diplomatic Interventions: A New Dataset,” Journal of Peace Research 46, no. 1 (2009): 135–146. note: The percentage of diplomatic interventions by intervener type in the total number of diplomacy is reported. Of diplomatic interventions in civil wars, 8.9 percent, not reported here, are undertaken by hybrid types including state–IGO/NGO or IGO coalitions.

coalitions studied in different literatures that are yet to be explored in a unified framework. Among these aspects are the specific instruments on which coalitions can reach a consensus. Coalitions may choose to engage in diplomacy (Table 2.2) or resort to more coercive policies, such as military interventions and economic sanctions.70 Beyond ad hoc formations among states, such coalitions may take other important forms that present a multilateral framework involving IGOs and NGOs as partners. For instance, specific forms that evolve within the context of civil wars and coexist with other coalitions as well as unilateral interventions illustrate the complexity of conflict environments (Table 2.3). Most of the time, these coalitions have an organic relation to organizations and attempt to facilitate the latter’s mission. Led by the United Nations or a major power, the set of coalition partners commonly includes regional states and IGOs that have an intrinsic interest in building influence and establishing peace in their region. Major powers, commonly the lead states in these coalitions, involve regional powers, former colonizers of the civil war state, and the United States as the global hegemon. NGOs have a certain preference to build coalitions with regional states. As Aall suggests, NGOs become embedded in communities, which allows them to work closely with local actors, including regional states, local leaders, and civil society organizations.71 Perhaps most importantly, coalitions present a conundrum for research in analyzing the effectiveness of and motivations behind interventions. Comparing unstructured interventions to coordinated ones has rarely been undertaken in existing work. Coalitions of the willing that act outside the formal setting of institutions especially present highly ambiguous structures of which little is known.72 Identifying such coalitions and the extent of their operational

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Table 2.3. 

Coalitional diplomacy in civil wars.

Civil war

Type of coalition

Yugoslavia

Ad hoc coalition US, Britain, France, Italy, Germany, and Russia IGO coalition UN and OAU Ad hoc coalition Zambia and South Africa Ad hoc coalition US, Mexico, Argentina, and Panama Ad hoc coalition Britain and Russia NGO–state coalition Carter Center and Tanzania Ad hoc coalition Sudan, Iraq, and Morocco IGO–state coalition UN and US; UN and Britain IGO–state coalition UN and Friends of the Peace Process IGO–state coalition UN and US IGO–state coalition OIC and Indonesia Ad hoc coalition Zambia and South Africa; US and Britain Ad hoc coalition US, Guatemala, and Dominican Republic Ad hoc coalition Kenya and Zimbabwe; Zimbabwe and Botswana NGO–state coalition Catholic Church, Kenya, and Zimbabwe Ad hoc coalition Canada, Netherlands, and Norway Ad hoc coalition Egypt and Libya IGO–state coalition IGADD, Uganda, Ethiopia, and Eritrea; IGADD and Kenya Ad hoc coalition Ghana and Nigeria IGO coalition UN and ECOWAS IGO–state coalition Tanzania and UN; OAU, US, and France Ad hoc coalition US and Britain IGO coalition UN and EC Ad hoc coalition US, France, Germany, Russia, and Britain IGO–state coalition CSCE and Russia IGO–state coalition UN, Russia, and Iran Ad hoc coalition Saudi Arabia and Pakistan IGO–state coalition OIC, Iran, and Pakistan; UN and Pakistan; UN and US Ad hoc coalition Japan and Thailand

Congo Zaire Costa Rica Laos Ethiopia Yemen Arab Republic Cyprus Guatemala Lebanon Philippines Zimbabwe Nicaragua Mozambique Sri Lanka Sudan Liberia Rwanda South Africa Bosnia Moldova Tajikistan Afghanistan Cambodia

Identity (intervener)

Key to Abbreviations: UN, United Nations; EU, European Union; OAU, Organization for African Unity; OIC, Organization of the Islamic Conference; CSCE, Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe; ECOWAS, Economic Community of West African States; IGADD, Inter-Governmental Authority on Drought and Development.

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coordination is a difficult task in many respects with existing quantitative evidence. There is no easy way to introduce multilateralism outside organizations into the analysis unless we are willing to identify the complex web of relations among intervener states and its evolution over time. When states act with authorization from regional and international institutions, the multilateral characteristics of intervention and a shared command structure are rather obvious elements. Groups of states that attempt to overcome the structural inefficiencies of organizations (as in El Salvador and Kosovo) are mostly a post–Cold War phenomenon. They are at best brought together by the precarious similarity in their preferences, and their motivations are hardly obvious from the specific actions they undertake in the war environment. In these coalitions, complex goals might be at work. Strategic incentives related to reputational issues such as fulfilling commitments to an organization or to a major power ally may affect coalition partners’ decisions. Some interventions are simply symbolic, such as smaller powers joining NATO efforts in Bosnia and Afghanistan, and have little effect on battlefield outcomes. States without any political and economic interest in the war country may be pulled into these coalitions or organizational endeavors to please international and domestic audiences. Besides organizational or coalitional involvement, several states enter conflicts unilaterally to destroy or enhance other interveners’ influence on the combatants and affect the course of events in their favor. Even those states that have a joint preference for the victory of one side of the conflict rarely have convergent preferences regarding the distribution of benefits at the conflict’s end. The alliance patterns among interveners we have observed in civil wars in Angola, Congo, Laos, and Indonesia are illustrative of the competition between global and regional actors for influence over the combatants. Hence, unilateral interventions, while seemingly unstructured, may exert a cumulative impact on conflicts even when they are not undertaken in concert.73 There are, however, ways to identify the cumulative effect of ad hoc formations and other unstructured interventions. States that have shared interests in general would also converge on their choice of stakes in intervention efforts. Most prominent among this group would be democracies. Kantian peace researchers have argued that, sharing national interests, democracies form a security community and tend to band together in conflict times against common threats.74 Doyle argues that democratic states bandwagon with other democracies in interstate conflicts “when states are forced to decide on which side of an impending world

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war they will fight.”75 Walt also provides evidence that democracies perceive security threats in a similar fashion and align against threatening states, as in the democratic response to Hitler after the Polish invasion and the democratic alliance around the United States in the Cold War period.76 Democracies do not always favor identical solutions to international problems but may have greater success in minimizing their differences given the unique characteristics of their institutions. Democratic states are much more transparent in foreign policymaking and its implementation, which would facilitate communication among themselves, avoid misunderstandings, and help with finding a common ground to bring armed conflicts to an end. When democracies initially differ in the outcomes that they prefer, transparency and the resulting credibility in signaling their true preferences help overcome these differences. Lipson’s contracting explanation of democratic peace illustrates this important aspect of shared democratic institutions. Democracies’ “special capacity to make and sustain promises with each other” suggests that, though not necessarily having similar interests all the time, they can find bargains that endure.77 Similarly, Fearon’s analysis of audience costs in democracies suggests that these regimes have an advantage over authoritarian states in generating costly and binding signals of resolve, which further suggests that democracies can agree on a consensus strategy to security issues that concern them.78 Hence, in a group of interveners where democracy is the dominant regime type, there will be greater agreement. Democracies will effectively signal their true preferences to other interveners and clarify the terms on which they can accept negotiation and settlement. Democratic states can also credibly communicate to the combatants that there is a solution that they jointly prefer and that this is the only outcome for which they will provide assistance. There is, however, limited work that sheds light on the strategic calculations of democratic interveners. For instance, Bueno de Mesquita and Downs suggest that, though citizens in democratic regimes value their institutions, they do not prioritize promotion of democracy abroad as a policy goal. In cases where democracies have a preference for intervention, their hands would be tied by domestic constituencies at home.79 Thus, democratic leaders refrain from ambitious intervention efforts to unseat autocratic governments and revise the status quo. Not having a strong presence in wars as external interveners, their impact on belligerents may remain limited. Hence, the effect of coalitions that form among democratic interveners in a conflict setting seems to be a twoway street. Democracies can generate a cumulative effect toward settlement

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given that their interrelations allow them to unify their signals to the combatants and convince the latter to take their offer. On the other hand, democratic audiences do not favor costly and expansive attempts to revise the status quo, and, therefore, democratic interveners are halfhearted in their interventions. How these competing mechanisms play out in armed conflicts is yet to be explored. Most recent example of democratic coalitions can be observed in Libya’s civil war. Authorized by U.N. Resolution 1973 (March 17, 2011), the United States, France, and Britain coordinated their interventions in support of the rebel side. Such concerted action presents a real-world experiment to identify the impact of democratic coalitions: Whether they can successfully impose their will on the incumbent side by unifying their signals or can be wearied by the costs of fighting a resilient incumbent will answer a critical question about democratic coalitions’ contribution to conflict management.80 There are also institutional sources of reinforcing interventions. While IGO interventions have been debated extensively in the literature, this is not the complete story about institutions and armed conflicts. Institutional interconnectedness may play an indirect role in conflict management given that IGOs themselves might be frequently held back from interventionist policies due to bureaucratic struggles and feuds among their members. States connected through IGOs may at times choose to work outside the organizational framework, but their institutional ties are not less likely to facilitate their ability to pursue joint outcomes in wars. States that frequently interact with each other through several institutional settings build and sustain cooperative relations. In these settings, states develop gestures and communication skills enabling them to find a common ground to the problems that relate to both. As in shared democratic institutions, states “ensure compliance with international commitments” and “create and implement community values and norms” through IGOs.81 Being less likely to perceive each other’s actions as threats to their interests, interveners with institutional ties would find it easy to cooperate on yet another issue. By contrast, an intervener’s weak institutional ties to other external actors will lead to disagreement and constrain the cumulative effect that coalitions may generate. As with democracies, institutionally connected states would have rigid alignment patterns where combatants are less likely to attach to one of the interveners against their adversary. Combatants are less likely to rebuff interveners’ offers when they receive unified signals and will be hard pressed to shape their demands on the basis of the outside offer.

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In identifying the impact of coalitions, mediators form another important group of interveners in armed conflicts. Mediators, through their involvement in the conflict, have a strong preference for a certain form of conduct. These actors make attempts to bring combatants to the negotiation table.82 But whether they do so out of shared interests in a particular outcome is not so obvious from their emphasis on negotiations. Do mediators favor compatible outcomes in the negotiations? Can they make compatible offers to the combatants and act as a united front? The evidence that mediations are only 30 percent successful in international conflicts blurs their cumulative impact in this particular setting.83 Yet mediation in civil wars seems to have a more successful record.84 An initial look at the evidence on mediators’ interrelations in civil wars may shed light on this favorable impact. Mediations in the civil war setting are overwhelmingly undertaken by states without long-running disagreements. For instance, in the post–WWII period, no two mediators were involved in an enduring rivalry at the time of their intervention in a civil war. Mediators’ overall effect is further enhanced by the fact that their rivals mostly refrain from intervening in the civil war coercively to reduce mediators’ role in negotiations. Besides, mediators are highly unlikely to enter the same conflict that they mediate using coercive strategies and supporting opposite sides of the conflict. It is also interesting to see that mediators seldom support a particular side with coercive interventions and reveal their preferences before offering mediations to the combatants. To give more specific examples, there is only one case in which a mediator’s rival intervened coercively in the same civil war. In the Lebanese civil war (1975–1990), Israel intervened militarily multiple times, and Syria mediated the conflict; the two were rivals in this time period ­(1968–1992). Among 430 mediator dyads in 153 civil wars, only eight mediator dyads jointly supported the same side with military and/or economic interventions before offering mediations in Mozambique, Sudan, Liberia, and Rwanda.85 Overall, mediator dyads present a unique sample of interveners composed of states that are less likely to have chronic disagreements and that mostly refrain from opposing each other in the war environment. In this respect, mediators’ interrelations are a question of the degree of cooperation rather than a matter of conflict and cooperation, which is likely to enhance the impact of coalitional diplomacy as opposed to coercive interveners. Yet the strategic environment in which interveners step into the fray is more complicated than their interrelations. Groups of states that have a specific relationship with each other through shared democratic institutions,

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IGOs, economic exchange, or their joint preference for the peaceful settlement of conflicts are not alone in these settings: In the multinational environment of wars, they have to influence the preferences of combatants who are also under cross pressures from interveners with divergent preferences. Interveners therefore operate in an environment where combatants receive mixed signals from outside states competing with each other to manipulate the war outcome. The presence of interveners with conflicting preferences may especially constrain the favorable impact that coalitional diplomacy and democratic coalitions can have in an armed conflict and spoil their efforts for successful negotiations. Rival interveners and states that support opposite sides by providing military assistance complicate the bargaining process to the detriment of peaceful solutions. Hardening combatants’ positions by providing material assistance and supporting their causes, such interventions make it difficult for concerted efforts to convince the war parties to stop fighting and to take their offer. How do coalitions form inside armed conflicts? What forms can they take? When do coalitions of interveners create a favorable impact on wars? The next generation of intervention studies will find these questions compelling. Understanding the formation and effectiveness of coalitions will require an examination of coalition partners’ agreements on the distribution of benefits at the war’s end based on their preferences over possible outcomes. One way to do this is to draw on existing theories in IR scholarship and look at the structural characteristics of interveners’ interrelations, such as power distribution, economic interdependence, IGO membership, and shared democratic institutions, as discussed in this section. Such an approach is likely to be most useful in the case of ad hoc coalitions formed between states. Little is known about the supply-and-demand dynamics that pull NGOs into armed conflicts as external interveners.86 Hybrid coalitions that include more than one type of intervener—that is, coalitions in which states choose to work with IGOs and NGOs—present a setting in which neither state-to-state relations nor the decision processes in IGOs alone are a sufficient explanation. Hence, coalitional intervention raises several important questions that also present new avenues of research as scholars search for more accurate ways to model the multinational environment of armed conflicts. CONCLUSION

In this chapter, I have engaged in a conceptual assessment of intervention in the form of external involvement in armed conflicts. How states respond to conflicts and the nature of wartime coalitions that external actors form have

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been at the center of discussion in security studies as well as in international law. Yet scholars have not yet engaged in efforts to elaborate on the cumulative knowledge generated by the voluminous theoretical and empirical efforts in security studies. As Rosenau (1969: 150) succinctly put it: “There is an abundance of specific detail, but no general knowledge [of intervention].”87 Four decades after Rosenau’s influential study, this book elaborates on the systematic knowledge of intervention. Often in a neglected area in international relations like intervention, several aspects of the topic remain to be addressed. Identifying the causal mechanisms behind intervention is as important as defining it. On the theory side, however, the state of our knowledge on intervention has not been profound. Intervention studies have a long tradition of being monopolized by the realist scholarship.88 Early studies mostly looked for the causes of such behavior in realpolitik-type explanations. Scholars commonly argued that defensive alliances with belligerents pull external states into conflicts because of the shared policy preferences and security considerations of allied states. Geographical factors have also been considered as agents of “diffusion” with neighboring states to the belligerents being involuntarily drawn into these conflicts. While a variety of objectives might inform interveners’ decisions, prominent views of “who intervenes” have suggested strictly realist predictions and overestimated the impact of borders and alliances on intervention behavior.89 The political economy of intervention that will be discussed and empirically assessed in the following chapters also builds on this framework but expands it by introducing economic and domestic factors into existing models of intervention.

3

DEFENDING ECONOMIC INTERESTS ABROAD Humanity in general is not like the Irishman who is said to have asked: “Is this a private fight, or may anybody join?”1

what are the factors that make states intervene in an armed conflict? Why do states perceive some conflicts as threats to their interests and others not? Contemporary realism offers powerful answers to these questions. Power considerations and threats are at the core of intervention decisions. Yet this is not the complete story behind states’ decisions to step into the fray in strangers’ conflicts. Instances of intervention where foreign powers had economic as well as political interests in the belligerents abound. There are two closely related aspects of intervention, motivation and constraint. In the motivation component, conflicts adversely affect the economic interests of external states and motivate intervention to protect those interests. Yet such effect is indirect through the role that domestic constituencies, exposed to the economic externalities of conflicts, play in foreign policymaking. Domestic political pressures to defend economic interests abroad act as a constraint on policymakers, depending on the institutional configuration of the state. This chapter presents a theoretical assessment of economic liberalism based on this causal framework and its application to intervention in armed conflicts. LIBERAL ORIGINS OF FOREIGN POLICY

What relationship connects a political phenomenon with an economic phenomenon? In international relations theory, security studies and international political economy have progressed rather independently.2 With the end of the Cold War, this division of labor became less clear as different areas of inquiry 41

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emerged at the crossroads of economics and security. Most, however, focused on explaining whether and how states adopt economic tools of statecraft to realize political goals or on how political relations among states affect crossborder economic exchange.3 Among these research programs, whether states adopt security measures to protect economic interests abroad has remained rather underexplored and was reduced to the classical “does trade reduce conflict?” question in economic peace research. The liberal theory of international relations overcomes some of these problems and brings a theoretically coherent and empirically testable approach to the role economics may play in security policies. Unlike neoliberal institutionalism, liberalism is not a new paradigm: While its theoretical origins date back to Kant, its status as a positive theory with testable empirical implications remained ambiguous until a revived scholarly interest in its economic and republican variants in the 1990s. This ambiguity is the consequence of liberalism’s historical burden. Realism has pushed normative analysis to the periphery of the international relations field long ago, whereas liberalism, including its more recent formulations, embraced untestable claims from its earlier versions to capture the economic and domestic dynamics of foreign policy. The intellectual legacies of economic liberalism suggested an indefinite link between the dynamics of economic life and states’ preferences in the international arena. Before we demand an explanation of foreign policymaking from economic liberalism, we should orient it around the fundamental premise that states defend their economic interests abroad by formulating a wide range of economic and security policies. Abstaining from aggression with their important economic partners, as economic peace research has commonly argued for, is one of these tools of statecraft that states can adopt. This is a particularly useful departure point to reformulate economic liberalism around explicit assumptions and theoretical claims with empirical content. With the burgeoning interest in the quantitative analyses of the Kantian tripod, scholars have failed to follow this trajectory. Research became exclusively concerned with the contribution to peace of economic interdependence and shared domestic institutions. Yet there is no reason to believe that liberalism can explain only peaceful outcomes, whereas aggression in any form counters liberal expectations. It is this implicit assumption, among others, that stands in liberalism’s way of being a “paradigmatic alternative” to realism and institutionalism.4 This chapter digresses from a voluminous literature that emphasizes the peace-

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ful legacy of liberalism on foreign policy.5 Instead of compartmentalizing the types of state behavior that can be explained with specific paradigms, identifying the causal mechanisms that differentiate liberalism from its competitors is the starting point of this book. To reformulate economic liberalism, I adopt Moravcsik’s approach to liberal international relations theory. In this approach, a major objection to liberalism is overcome; that its propositions do not logically follow from the assumptions.6 Moravcsik bases the liberal IR theory on three main assumptions, which are reflected in the intervention model that this book presents: primacy of societal actors, interdependence among state policies, and representation of societal interests in the state. First, neorealism and neoliberal institutionalism take the state as a black box that responds to systemic stimuli. In contrast, liberal theories emphasize the variation in states’ preferences and their origins in domestic politics.7 The emphasis on domestic politics with causal importance distinctively separates liberalism from realism, which sees domestic politics and organized interest groups as nuisances that hinder national leaders from formulating adequate responses to exogenous threats.8 Second, the primacy of domestic politics does not imply that systemic influences are redundant in the liberal theory. Realism assumes weak interstate ties, whereas both liberalism and institutionalism acknowledge and model the interdependence among states in political and economic issues.9 States are constantly subject to international pressures to synchronize their policies with others. Such pressures can originate from domestic politics, as in liberalism, and international institutions, as in institutionalism, but neither paradigm denies the interdependency among states’ decisions. The interaction of domestic and international politics in shaping the way that states deal with interdependence brings international politics back into the liberal analysis. As Gourevitch writes, “In using domestic structure as a variable in explaining foreign policy, we must explore the extent to which that structure itself derives from the exigencies of the international system.”10 It is therefore necessary for liberal theories of state behavior to look for the sources of domestic preferences in international politics and acknowledge the possibility of change in domestic demands as a response to international factors.11 Third, the state has interests and preferences independent of domestic political groups. “Societal preferences transmitted by representative institutions and practices alter state preferences,” which suggests that states respond to domestic demands as allowed by the institutional framework.12 Policy interdependence

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and domestic demands constrain states’ autonomy, but the state keeps coming back as a central unit of analysis in the liberal paradigm of world politics. This approach embraces the basic idea in the domestic politics and bargaining literatures in international relations that elected officials formulate policies that they believe will solidify their hold on political power.13 Decision makers’ responsiveness is therefore a matter of the political institutions within which they operate. An institutional analysis sheds light on the strategic calculations of leaders without reducing their role to the representative of dominant domestic groups. Domestic institutions may, however, privilege one group versus the other. Representational bias is perhaps easier to discern in autocratic regimes, which are based on the exclusionary rule of the few, whereas democratic systems claim to represent every segment of the voting public. It is therefore important to use an institutional approach to identify how domestic groups relate to their state in particular institutional frameworks. There is not supposed to be a winner in the battle of paradigms. Liberalism and realism in international relations prioritize obviously different causal mechanisms in understanding state behavior, though each brings valuable insights to the table that scholars should take advantage of. The importance of the realist paradigm in explaining international outcomes is almost undisputable, and realist theories are the indispensable departure point in understanding the role force plays in world politics. This is not because realist assumptions and hypotheses are superior in explaining force. Yet realist scholars accumulated immense knowledge on conflict and stability in the international system and have already started to apply their frameworks to understand outcomes that are not traditionally associated with realism.14 This continuing power of realism does not need to refute alternative paradigms. While security interests are central to foreign policymaking, two decades of theoretical and empirical research on the liberal theory—despite being highly unstructured and scattered in different research programs— suggest plainly that security policies states formulate are not less likely to be affected by economic interests and domestic political considerations. Liberalism as a positive theory does not seek to eliminate force from international relations but seeks to understand the circumstances under which use of force is more or less likely. In particular, economic liberalism can explain a wide range of issues, including war and peace, around the core relationship of economic interests and their reflection on foreign policy through domestic political processes.

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ECONOMICS AND FORCE IN WORLD POLITICS

Successive generations of writers have argued that the benefits of trade and development would quell aggression and lead to peace in world politics. In The Economic Consequences of Peace, Keynes described the immediate post– World War I era as a total economic breakdown with long-term consequences on the economic survival of both the victors and losers of the war.15 Among these consequences, Keynes stressed the dramatic decline in productivity in the industrial and agricultural sector, destruction of the transport system, and the crisis of the European currency, which seriously disrupted overseas trade. In his classic book The Great Illusion, Angell claimed that a major war would be commercially suicidal because the emerging economic order tied economic survival of nations to each others’ well-being.16 This new order required that states maintain external and internal peace to protect the stream of economic benefits from increasing levels of trade. For Angell, World War I was an unexpected incidence in the economic and power core of the international system, paralyzing the economic life in Europe. A similar debate was also taking place before World War II. Contrary to the expectations of the liberal camp, not only were trade levels steadily increasing but also the tensions in the international system. The Great Depression and the restlessness of Germany due to its dependence on the United States, Britain, and France for raw materials were harbingers of a major war.17 The alleged triumph of security considerations and territoriality against increasing levels of economic interdependence in the world wars silenced the liberal camp. In the 1970s, economic integration reached another height, and scholars started to devote more attention to the role of market forces in peace and cooperation between nations. Keohane and Nye powerfully argued that interdependence bound states’ political and economic interests tighter than ever.18 Rosecrance wrote about a new kind of nation that valued trade more than territorial expansion and conquest.19 Voluminous quantitative research, starting in the 1990s, took the economic liberalism debate to another height. This extensive body of work emphasized several aspects of economic interconnection between states: bilateral trade, trade regimes, financial markets, regional economic organizations, and other preferential trade agreements. Skepticism about the role of international trade in bringing about peaceful political relations has not necessarily died. Some prominent critics have been from the realist tradition. Waltz argued that what kept nations in awe and

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prevented the domination of one over the other was balance-of-power politics during the first 300 years of the modern state system.20 In the Cold War period and its aftermath, order and stability was kept through the overwhelming political and economic dominance of the United States and the resulting hegemonic characteristics of the international system.21 This skepticism was also shared by other scholars. Some argued that trade asymmetries and national vulnerabilities to dependence on other nations generate tensions that may explode into wars.22 Keohane and Nye similarly argued that economic interdependence can lead to conflict between states, depending on the distribution of economic benefits between partners.23 Others showed that pacifism between trade partners is independent of the role of economic interests because “trade follows the flag,” and states trade with their political allies.24 In this expanding debate, there has been less attention to the causal mechanisms that link economics and politics. The core mechanisms through which economic motives would transform states’ preferences for war and peace have been taken for granted. Mansfield and Pollins pointed to the need to be explicit about this causality: “As long as scholars focus primarily on establishing whether these factors are systematically related, there will be various theories to fit the results of any empirical study” (italics in original).25 Attempts to identify why and how trade should be related to political relations among states have been scarce. Most studies have assumed that conflicts disrupt trade relations between hostile nations to overcome this problem but have not theoretically or empirically demonstrated this relationship. Those that do attempt to understand whether conflicts reduce the current stream of benefits from trade suggest mixed findings. Between trading states, evidence is indeterminate in concluding whether states reduce trade during wartimes.26 On the system level, wars have been shown to lead to significant price increases in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries compared to the pre-1648 or 1648–1815 periods, and systemic trade had been much lower during major power wars.27 Importantly, an emphasis on the adverse effects of armed conflicts on trade as the main causal mechanism in economic liberalism fails to develop the liberal paradigm substantially to address different security issues. Instead, it distracts attention from theory to methodological problems such as the simultaneous relationship between trade and conflict, which does little to identify what differentiates liberalism from alternative paradigms.28 Armed conflicts may or may not harm trade, depending on their intensity and duration: Each conflict may contain in it the seeds of destruction, but many conclude without leading to trade disruption.29 Potential externalities of conflicts on economic

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transactions cannot be properly read from hard data in these cases. Instead, conflicts may have a role to play in policymaking through the rational expectations of private economic actors operating in foreign markets and may not be registered in the national balance of payments.30 Hence, expectations of disruption rather than actual fluctuations in economic exchange may explain the changing incentives facing policymakers. How states form such incentives is perhaps a more relevant question. Decision makers are unable to monitor each foreign market in which their domestic constituencies have economic stakes and would rely on economic actors to provide such information. Trade flows may roughly indicate the value of economic transactions with the market in which an armed conflict is taking place. They are less likely to predict whether states will act to protect these interests unless causal mechanisms that link international trade and security policies are properly identified. Doing so requires that we go beyond the “does trade lead to peace?” question, which limits the theoretical power of economic liberalism to an arbitrary choice between war and trade for economically connected states. Economic interests can result in a wide range of security policies that aim at protecting such benefits in foreign markets. At the intersection of economics and security, international trade can function as a security umbrella that includes a menu of choices for states, including keeping peace, building alliances, and establishing regional institutions with security functions with economically important partners.31 Most importantly, states can adopt forceful security policies based on the same logic of defending economic interests abroad. Economic interests also interact with security concerns in a highly complex way. Neither set of factors drives intervention decisions alone, but, in a unified framework, they provide valuable insights. Despite the complexity and variety of goals behind intervention decisions, it is almost impossible to find any scholarly work based on this economic perspective. There are only limited insights, which present strong evidence that international trade does motivate states to undertake interventions in support of their important economic partners in armed conflicts.32 Basic assumptions and findings reported in these studies point to the multicausal character of intervention decisions, which have exclusively been the material of the realist research paradigm. Acknowledging the role of international trade in intervention is a first step in expanding economic liberalism beyond its current application in the mainstream IR theory, though it requires greater attention to the causal mechanisms that link trade benefits with a wide range of security policies.

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THE DOMESTIC COMPONENT

In a liberal theory of international relations, national leaders have domestically oriented concerns. As suggested by Moravcsik, the core assumption of any strand of liberal thought is that individuals and private groups are the “fundamental groups in international politics.” These groups promote their private interests through different channels, including politics. The state– society dimension of liberalism also resonates in Keohane’s work: First, liberalism focuses not merely on states but on privately organized social groups and firms. The transnational as well as domestic activities of these forms and groups are important for the liberal analysts, not in isolation from the actions of the states but in conjunction with them. Second, in contrast to realism, liberalism does not emphasize the significance of military force but rather seeks to discover ways in which separate actors, with distinct interests, can organize themselves to promote economic efficiency and avoid destructive physical conflict.33

This bottom-up view of political decision making is especially relevant to economic liberalism. It is commonly assumed in empirical views of trade and conflict that economic and political decisions are made by the same actors. Yet, as Stein suggests, “Trade is, in most places and at most times, carried out by private actors, firms and individuals and reflects societal supply and demand conditions. Conflict is an interstate phenomenon, carried out by governments.”34 A close investigation of early liberal thought shows that liberal philosophers mostly reasoned from the society to the political system and its outputs, which is an idea that recent approaches have largely missed. Some liberals have argued that trade would suppress the passion of conquest by creating goodwill among people and moralizing the society with its contribution to good manners and industriousness. Increasing each people’s knowledge of others and their culture, commercial ties would “soften and polish the manners of men.”35 A civilized public opinion, with exposure to the benefits of commerce, would eventually penetrate the political realm and act as a check on the arbitrary exercise of state power to wage war. This pacification would start at the level of the individual and would have far-reaching implications in foreign affairs.36 A second line of early liberal thought took an instrumental rather than a normative approach and claimed that changing patterns of production and exchange would penetrate every aspect of life, including state affairs.37 The market society would be occupied with productivity, and commercial exchange

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would create “a critical frame of mind” that would rationalize production with modern and cost-effective techniques. The transition from traditional to modern forms of production would also have political implications in the affairs of the state. The market would emerge as a key social and economic institution and would expand its influence in the public domain. The trading state would prioritize domestic growth and industrial expansion, prefer accumulation to frugality, and use its resources for capitalist progress. Armed conflict would be an irrational political activity consuming labor and public revenues for unproductive purposes, which could otherwise be devoted to production and industrialization. Moreover, industrial laborers would present an inefficient army and would have to be replaced by professional standing armies, further increasing the burden of military adventures on people’s welfare. From the irrationality of fighting would follow a natural incentive to tame military aggression and maintain peace with other nations.38 Together, the intellectual legacies of economic liberalism shared the belief that the change in the economic life of societies and domestic preferences would transform state preferences. Yet the “optimism concerning the potential for peace, [and] cooperation,” which was also shared by other variants of the liberal theory, stood in the way of economic liberalism to achieve the status of a positive theory that relates states’ behavior in the international realm to domestic demands.39 The shared weakness of these frameworks is that there is no meaningful way of ranking these causal patterns: the impact of commerce on human nature or the rationalization of thought and governance with the advent of capitalism. The resistance of these mechanisms to empirical testing does not allow reaching a conclusion of any form. While an emphasis on the relationship between the citizen and its state hits the right note in liberalism, a rigorous theory of foreign policy should be built on premises that will lead to empirical content that withstands testing. A causal framework that accounts for the domestic dimension of economic interests and the institutional environment in which domestic groups interact with their state can illustrate the complexity and rigor of economic liberalism in explaining real-life outcomes. Private Economic Interests

“Supporters of economic interpretations generally present laundry list of individuals, firms, or industries that gained from and/or supported imperial expansion . . .” Yet the simple assumption that “state represents the interests of nationals with overseas assets and markets” provides an excellent departure

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point that acknowledges the domestic component of economic exchange.40 It is these privately organized groups that are exposed to the risks and costs of armed conflicts in foreign markets and can be expected to organize so as to influence foreign policymaking to secure their profits. Acknowledging the state–society dimension of international trade should not lead to the unsubstantiated claim that the median economic interest in the society favors protecting the current stream of trade benefits with other nations. Empirical studies in economic liberalism have frequently followed this route to simplify the causal mechanisms that follow from trade to armed conflicts and focused on trade as a source of motivation for policymakers rather than as a source of constraint.41 Yet “neither trade liberalization nor war redistribute income among domestic constituencies significantly and that governments do not have to care about the reactions to these shifts by interest groups.” 42 Different segments of the society benefit from trade exposure in vastly different quantities.43 Some specific segments of the national economy enjoy such benefits disproportionately, whereas capitalists, workers, and rural and urban segments do not always equate their well-being with the efficient level of trade. Depicting societies as classless entities would conceal substantial differences among national economies. Uneven distribution of economic power in the trading society helps explain the relationship between political and economic sources of power. Social stratification and inequality in access to political power are the logical and empirical consequences of this uneven distribution. The capacity to control resources and cross-border exchange, the intensity of interests in a foreign market, and the resulting information privileges all enhance the influence of small and concentrated groups in policymaking. Hence, small and wealthy groups can weigh heavily against a large but ambivalent majority. It is perhaps easier for both scholars and practitioners to see the domestic dimension of trade policies and draw a self-evident link between economic policies and political activities of private economic actors. Trade policy pronouncements are viewed as public policies that directly affect groups exposed to the benefits and risks of international trade and create winners and losers from protectionist or liberal economic measures. The role of domestic groups in the making of economic policies has been the subject of a vast literature.44 Several studies on U.S. foreign policy have offered empirical and theoretical accounts that show the influence of special interests on trade policies. These studies date back to Schattschneider’s groundbreaking work in the 1930s.45 A body of work also investigated the same relationship in other Western democ-

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racies and found that domestic coalitions form as a response to trade exposure to exert influence on policymakers.46 The uneven distribution of trade benefits in the society and their political implications are not limited to economic policymaking. Scholars have shown that congressional decision making on security issues and military spending is not less likely to be dominated by economic interests and the coalitional politics that pursue the protection of these interests at the level of high politics.47 A parallel link between security policies and domestic preferences, however, is not clearly drawn in scholarly circles except for a few studies.48 The role that groups actively involved in cross-border transactions may play in foreign policymaking has been more subtle theoretically and less amenable to large sample empirical analysis, which has been the dominant methodological approach in economic liberalism research. The state–society dimension of economic liberalism presents theoretical questions with empirical complexity. It involves domestic actors that benefit disproportionately from economic exchange with foreign markets despite the empirical difficulty in testing. Benefits from international trade are concentrated, and so are benefits from security policies that aim to protect such interests. “Vested interests with a state in other status quo powers will have a strong interest in supporting and will be influential in pressing for security policies that protect trade, financial links, and investments.” 49 Thus, organized groups aim to influence not only economic policymaking but also security policies. For colonial historians, the use of force abroad by colonial powers to “remove impediments on economic activity in foreign territories” for their nationals was a routine imperial policy.50 Immense capital accumulation in advanced countries, starting with the Industrial Revolution, led to military adventures in the Third World in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to open up markets for capitalist classes or to protect their property rights in less developed markets.51 The metropole also frequently acted to protect the economic stakes of private groups against the externalities of conflicts in turbulent frontiers.52 For instance, in the 1850s and 1860s, the Peruvian guano imported into Britain was used as a fertilizer in agriculture, and its value was greater than any other single national product imported from Latin America. In periods of internal war and interstate wars that Peru fought with its neighbors, consular reports to London described the trade disturbances caused by violence in the region. British diplomats and agents in Peru warned their government

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that the strife would have grave consequences on trade. Peru’s conflicts with Chile and Bolivia especially constituted a major concern for Britain. At home, farmers, traders, and shipowners asked for more aggressive policies to protect trade against an imminent Chilean attack. Britain’s policy in this period combined low-intensity military and coercive diplomatic measures to respond to domestic demands. Most measures proved to be ineffective in controlling a backward market that suffered from poor infrastructure, collateral damage from long internal fighting, and expensive and inefficient transportation.53 Intervention failure led Britain to gradually replace guano with other fertilizers in the long run and avoid the highly unstable Peruvian market. Imperial intervention mostly involves direct political control of the target to establish security for trade. Contemporary forms of intervention in the post– World War II period have ranged from issuing a threat to use force to show support for a significant partner to actual use of force by sending troops to protect it and therefore have not needed to involve significant amounts of force or the imposition of foreign rule on the target economy. In an era of interdependence, military conflict between and internal violence within nations have emerged as the most serious impediments to economic activity and have adversely affected the profits of economic agents, most specifically in primary production economies. Low-scale interventions for limited goals, which are hard to distinguish from states’ responsibilities toward stability originating from international law, have allowed states to respond to economically oriented groups when necessary without provoking popular dissent or international outrage. While interests of national leaders and those of private groups in a belligerent may coincide in some cases, they have different origins. To put the case bluntly, economic interest groups aim to protect and enhance their ties to foreign markets, whereas elected officials are simply concerned with staying in power. It is perhaps more important to identify the circumstances under which decision makers are more likely to accommodate private demands for protection. When do economic groups have the ability to convert their economic power to political power and penetrate policymaking? Which institutional environments are more conducive to such penetration? This is the set of questions that the next section attempts to answer. POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS AS CONSTRAINT

Economic interdependence among states creates economic interest groups that favor economic and security policies that protect economic efficiency. In response to the changing circumstances in the international economic envi-

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ronment, privately organized groups that carry trade would seek to defend their interests by relying on their state’s power and influencing policy­makers at home for a range of security policies.54 What is the role of the state in this picture? Is it a passive actor that automatically responds to protection demands by economic actors? Among interest-group theories that trace how such concentrated groups relate to their state and through which channels private interests may translate into foreign policy are the business conflict model and pluralism.55 In pluralist theories, policymaking can be the outcome of logrolling among private demands or the triumph of particular interests among the plethora of others that compete for political power. The business conflict model singles out the relationship between business interests and government officials in driving policy­making and explains outcomes based on cleavages within the business community. Both theories deemphasize the autonomy of the state vis-à-vis societal groups and fail to acknowledge decision makers’ interests. Liberal theory of IR overcomes these problems. The state is under domestic pressures that vary in content and intensity, depending on the specific changes in the international economic and political environment. Private groups or coalitions of groups that are affected by changing circumstances seek access to policymaking with varying success. The state responds—neither ignores nor succumbs to—to these pressures, and in doing so follows its interests, as defined by political institutions. The third assumption of the liberal theory brings the state back into the analysis as a political actor with interests and preferences defined by representative institutions. Whether decision makers will use public funds to cater to private actors or produce inclusive policies that cater to the public is therefore a matter of political institutions. To motivate the theoretical framework, I start with the assumption that, when economic agents that carry important economic exchange face a risky market, they will look for political solutions at home.56 Economic variables, such as the volume and composition of international trade, help proxy the economic stakes of these actors and the extent to which their activity might be affected by armed conflicts. Therefore, the model predicts organized groups’ interests in security policies with some assumptions and relies on political and economic variables to explain the outcomes. This is similar to the approach followed in prominent works in international political economy. Rogowski relies on factor endowments and Frieden on asset specificity of social groups to proxy group preferences for protectionist versus free trade policies, and they hypothesize about the formation of domestic coalitions that pursue these

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interests in the political arena.57 In this framework, attempts to protect traders and investors in uncertain and risky trade environments have private good properties but are funded through public revenues that are limited resources. This brings to the fore age-old questions on public spending. Political institutions are the departure point in understanding the balance between leaders’ incentives to stay in power and societal demands on the bargaining table. Whether policymakers will give priority to diffuse or concentrated interests in public spending “depends, . . . on the distribution of power and interests in the society and on the character of its political institutions.”58 Predicting the relationship between the state and societal interests as a function of the political system has several advantages in generating empirically testable hypotheses. Particularly, an emphasis on democratic versus nondemocratic regimes provides a solid theoretical and empirical basis for analyzing the representational bias toward organized interests in different political systems. DEMOCRATS

A sweeping account of institutions and public spending is the selectorate theory of Bueno de Mesquita and his coauthors, drawing from Olson’s and Riker’s pathbreaking works on the formation of political coalitions.59 Most democratic theories, including the selectorate theory, have a certain consensus that democratic leaders face overwhelming coalitions loaded with intersectional and competing demands. The political system empowers a large segment of the population in policymaking through voting and other forms of democratic participation. The conventional wisdom is straightforward and leads to testable hypotheses. It suggests that democratic leaders are less likely to be responsive to small groups given that none of these groups constitute a significant part of their political support base. The heterogeneity and volume of societal demands in democracies require that decision makers prioritize the public goods provision that redistributes social output to the society rather than prioritizing policies that satisfy narrow demands. Extensive research on political regimes in comparative politics and international relations facilitates analyzing how domestic groups may relate to their state within a particular institutional setting. Surprisingly, such analysis is virtually absent in economic liberalism.60 Studies that base their explanations of foreign policy on domestic actors with economic interests emphasize the role that political institutions play in conversion of private demands into actual policy. Together, limited work on economic interest groups and secu-

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rity policies suggests an apparent scholarly bias toward democracies in promoting public good. Solingen, for instance, explains regional conflict and cooperation by studying the coalitions that political entrepreneurs craft around domestic groups’ preferences for economic openness in different political systems.61 Snyder, in his coalition theory of imperial overextension, argues that democratic systems and unitary oligarchies are less likely to be hijacked by powerful interest groups given that there are multiple political actors to check each others’ political ambitions.62 Unitary systems dominated by a powerful actor and cartelized systems where small groups monopolize power assets lack the countervailing political force to keep the leader in check and are more likely to engage in counterproductive expansionist policies abroad. Similarly, in Papayoanou’s framework, internationalist economic concerns with strong ties to the world economy have a prominent voice in democratic systems.63 In these systems, states are more likely to act to balance threats against their valuable economic partners and protect economic interests abroad. Finally, Gelpi and Grieco show that international trade reduces conflict between democratic pairs of states but has no effect between autocracies.64 They explain this finding as a matter of democracies’ incentives to promote growth by protecting trade against disruption by conflicts. Openness of democratic systems may empower multiple segments of the society, offsetting any particular group’s disproportionate influence in policy­ making. Yet the implication of having “crowded agendas and cluttered bargaining tables” in democratic political systems can be a two-way street.65 It may also tilt the system toward concentrated interests that have the resources and skills to organize as opposed to diffused interests that suffer from a collective action problem. Research shows that democracies are not less likely to produce private goods for organized groups from public funds, which contradicts democratic theories.66 This effect should particularly hold in a new and unstable democracy where old elites continue to exert de facto power and masses are yet to be socialized into democratic norms and institutions. The type of policy requested by private interests may further complicate our understanding of public spending initiatives in new democracies. In these systems, domestic audiences rarely have an opportunity to form an opinion and pressure policymakers for a specific outcome on low-profile policies. When foreign policies do not significantly redistribute income among domestic groups, outcomes may not be decided as a result of political competition and may escape the

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purview of voting publics. This is especially so in an institutional environment where information channels are still premature. Most interventions are in this category of security policies and hence may become more susceptible to the influence of interest groups in young democracies. Compared to autocracies and new democracies, established democratic regimes are more likely to have centripetal tendencies where the political survival of an elected leader largely depends on being responsive to voting publics. Distribution of power in democracy types also has certain implications for public spending. Presidential democracies can be argued to have a tendency to concentrate power in the hands of the executive, as opposed to parliamentary regimes that are designed to share power between the executive and the legislature. In presidential regimes with authoritarian characteristics, political power can be easily exploited and may result in a personal rule that thrives around the cult of a strong leader. The failed democratic experience of many African states and regime instability in the Latin American experience show that there is a fine line between presidentialism and dictatorships and that identifying democratic periods are required in a study of presidential systems.67 In presidential democracies, most essential decisions are made by the executive, and this institutional framework may allow the legislature to spend their energies on fulfilling their constituencies’ demands and to logroll for policies that satisfy narrower groups.68 Policy that is made in the legislature can follow private interests that previously supported legislators’ political bid. Compared to parliamentarism, presidential democracies may therefore be more likely to produce security policies that are in the interest of the few under certain circumstances. On the other hand, parliamentarism increases political competition over legislation by empowering the legislator and therefore contributes to the democratic purview of policymaking by the public. Cross-cutting alliances between policymakers and the public increase the demands on the system to the point at which a public goods provision becomes the winning strategy. Autocrats

How various institutional arrangements distribute power among domestic groups in autocracies and what types of patronage networks form in these settings are important theoretical and empirical questions. Autocracies are based on the exclusionary rule of the few that magnifies the power of certain domestic groups. Blending economic liberalism with an institutional analysis requires a closer look into the dynamics of redistribution in autocracies. “If the regime is to have any permanence, institutions must be created or main-

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tained which . . . regulariz[e] payments to its supporters and . . . provid[e] for the systematic marginalization or elimination of its enemies. These institutions of repression and redistribution define the dictatorship.”69 Hence, autocracies thrive on the distribution of economic and political rents to regime insiders while excluding regime outsiders from the fountain of privilege. The extreme cases of authoritarian government are one-man regimes where rulers “thrive by destroying independent institutions, personalizing all politics, and ensuring that important political decisions are funneled through one supreme leader.”70 Governance structures in monarchies may also provide insights into these autocracy types from a similar perspective. While the role that the ruling family plays in dynastic monarchies leads to some form of power sharing, unchecked and uncontested power of the monarch in nondynastic monarchies renders them as indistinguishable from personalist regimes.71 Nondynastic regimes, as they rule free of any accountability mechanism, can be included in the same category as personalist regimes with respect to their economic systems. In these political systems, there are no demands on the bargaining table with the power to force the leader to choose certain public and security policies over others. Leaders have exclusive control over the fountain of privilege so that societal groups can benefit as long as they remain loyal to the leader. This institutional environment may lead to a symbiotic relationship between the ruler and powerful economic groups. Dictators need economic resources to finance their oppressive machines and retain their power status. Societal groups that have the resources and willingness to provide these funds would wield a disproportionate influence in policymaking. In this vein, rulers may be more likely to identify their well-being with economic groups and formulate policies that protect and enhance their economic ties to important foreign markets. On the other hand, personalist regimes and certain forms of monarchy can be studied as kleptocracies in which rent seeking and redistribution of the social output through a patronage network are the core characteristics of the economy. These systems have an incentive to exploit investors and traders for personal gain and to renege on their commitments to protect property and contract rights. Given that kleptocratic regimes present a poor and risky institutional environment for traders and investors, they also cannot be expected to protect economic interests of their nationals abroad. Hence, association of personalist regimes and nondynastic monarchies with kleptocracy allows a clear expectation that allows empirical testing.

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More sophisticated analysis of state–society relations under personal rule requires accounting for cross-pressures on autocratic leaders from multiple domestic actors. The military is undoubtedly an important one, especially in explaining security policies that involve force. The autocratic peace literature has touched slightly on the relationship of autocratic rulers and the military to explain the likelihood of conflict between autocracies.72 Personalist regimes in which the military is intentionally kept weak and corrupt for coup proofing will be hesitant to use armed forces for military intervention.73 Instead, personalist rulers will have a strong incentive to deny the military sector the taste of glory abroad by abstaining from armed quagmires. Even when economic interest groups may have a role to play in policymaking through clientilistic networks, their influence will be offset by the contention between the autocratic ruler and the military. On the other hand, autocratic leaders who open up the system to share power with other societal groups will need to accommodate allies who may draw their power from a variety of sources including economic in the mix. Single-party regimes are the typical examples of autocracies with a legislature, whereas in military regimes the autocrat needs to share power with a governing body composed of other military officials.74 As the political support base of the autocratic leader expands to include other segments in the society, a variety of influences can work their way up to the ruler through a clientilistic network, and the ruler becomes more susceptible to the influence attempts of a wider domestic audience. Groups constitutionally excluded from decision making, such as investors and traders, may find a political opportunity space in these autocracy types and play an indirect role in policymaking. The ruling elite may build alliances with vested interests in cross-border economic activity and view their protection as a matter of national interest. Power sharing in autocracies may also result in different economic structures. For instance, in the Cold War era, South Africa and Russia were both single-party regimes but happened to have divergent economic characteristics. The apartheid regime in South Africa “operate[d] for the benefit not of a single individual, but of an economic interest group” and therefore could have been expected to produce more private goods for economic interests groups.75 The Soviet economic system was a command economy where decisions were made exclusively by political actors coexisting with a shadow economy governed by free market rules. Despite its mixed economic characteristics, the Soviet system was composed of centralized bureaucracies in which existing

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patronage networks were mostly restricted to members of the political elite.76 Having such a restricted support base, political agents had no incentive to cater to domestic groups that were designated as regime outsiders by political institutions. Therefore, we might have been more likely to see in communist systems that “high politics” rather than “low politics” dominated foreign policy­making. Policymakers were less willing to accommodate economic interest groups that benefit from the expansion of world trade unless disruption of trade with foreign markets would have consequences for the inner politics and domestic standing of the political party. While one-man regimes may present a rather homogenous category with regard to their economic structure, autocracies that built institutions commonly associated with democratic forms of governance, such as legislatures and other ruling bodies, present a conundrum in categorizing regime insiders.77 Political theories overcome the problem of identifying regime insiders in different political systems by relying on the democracy–autocracy dichotomy or on predicting leaders’ preferences from the size of the regime supporters designated by the constitution.78 In this book’s framework, autocracies with personal rule will be compared with other autocracy types to empirically assess the link between kleptocracy and economically minded interventions in armed conflicts. CONCLUSION

Approaching intervention from the perspective of economic liberalism produces several useful insights that have not been fully explored by scholars. The domestic dimension of economic liberalism presents a complex picture in explaining security policies. First, cross-border exchange is undertaken by private economic actors. The form and magnitude of international trade are important to delineate the existence and extent of such interests in foreign markets. Second, economic activity has concentrated benefits. Political institutions and the redistributive policies that they designate suggest important clues about policymakers’ incentives to defend economic actors in foreign markets. Such complexity and the theoretical richness that it offers are hard to fully account for in empirical work and require certain simplifications and assumptions. Chapter 4 will develop specific empirical implications based on this framework and analyze them for the post–World War II period.

4

IN INTERNATIONAL CONFLICTS We are entering an era when foreign policy and national security will increasingly revolve around our commercial interests, and when economic diplomacy will be essential to resolving the great issues of our age. —Jeffrey Garten, Former Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade1

in the imperialist era, great powers frequently resorted to direct military control of a target state to collect sovereign debts or protect their nationals’ economic stakes in foreign markets.2 In doing so, colonial states transformed an interstate interaction that would normally fall under the auspices of international law to a domestic phenomenon by creating dependent status for the host countries through annexation. In the post-1945 world, much has changed from the colonial era. Economic interests are much more varied and are intertwined with security policies in complex ways. So are the strategies with which states maintain and pursue these interests. Regional integration arrangements with security functions (for example, the Economic Community of West African States [ECOWAS], the European Union [EU], the Gulf Cooperation Council [GCC]), defensive alliances, economic sanctions, and coercive diplomacy have been the major instruments that states have adopted in the post–World War II order to create a security umbrella for international trade, signal their interests in a potential target to states considering an attack, and protect their economic stakes against the externalities of armed conflicts.3 What is missing in this contemporary picture are interventions by which states aim to contain and resolve armed conflicts that have the potential to hurt their economic and political interconnectedness to a country or a region. States can resort to strategies varying from diplomacy to use of force within the context of conflicts as a result of a multidimensional decision making. Political and economic interests compete in some cases and complement each other in others to explain the complexity of states’ decisions to become in60

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volved in strangers’ conflicts as external interveners. Considered from this perspective, even interventions undertaken with a humanitarian motive and by multilateral coalitions that are authorized by international and regional organizations involve the national interests of the countries involved.4 National interest is not an amorphous concept that seems to incorporate virtually every motivation that a state has when historical evidence is closely considered. The United States hardly had any interest in Albania in 1998 or in Croatia in 2000, but in both cases it intervened on behalf of these countries because their opponent was Yugoslavia, whose militaristic policies in Europe presented a serious threat to American interests in the power core of the system. Besides the apparent humanitarian goal to contain the threat to human security in Europe, there was also a strategic logic that echoed in policymakers’ accounts. Richard Lugar of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee warned that “there will be devastating economic effects in Europe of spread of war, and, thus, the loss of jobs and loss of income in this country as we try to base a recovery upon our export potential,” whereas William Odom, the former director of the National Security Agency, mentioned that “failure to act effectively in Yugoslavia will not only affect U.S. security interests but also U.S. economic interests.”5 The economic theory of intervention drawing from the liberal research paradigm was the subject of the theoretical assessment in Chapter 3. It is indeed part of a broader and complex picture that requires that states’ security considerations are combined with their economic interests in a unified framework. No model of intervention is complete until a wide range of factors are ­simultaneously accounted for. In this chapter, I test the framework in Chapter 3 against cases of intervention in international conflicts. While the empirical framework draws heavily from economic peace research, I also present the first systematic test of the arguments closely associated with the economic theory of imperialism for the post-1945 period.6 Most of this research reaches a natural end point with the culmination of the imperialist era. I show that economic motivations continue to inform states’ security policies but are pursued with different tools in the global economy. Macrolevel analyses in this chapter suggest previously unrecognized patterns in intervention decisions. Economic interests of external states are closely associated with the decision to intervene, mostly independent of the way that they are measured: States are highly likely to intervene on behalf

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of the belligerents in which their nationals have significant trade and investments. Importantly, empirical findings show that incentives of democratic and autocratic governments in protecting economic interests abroad are different from each other. Institutionalized democracies have centripetal tendencies in public spending and, compared to nondemocracies, are reluctant to formulate security policies for economic goals that benefit private economic actors. EMPIRICAL EXPECTATIONS

Who intervenes? Which states make good candidates for intervention in armed conflicts? When states decide to intervene in a specific conflict, how do they choose sides? How do they choose their level of commitment? In the previous chapter, I have argued that economic liberalism is a paradigm of world politics that explains a wide range of outcomes around the core premise that states have domestically oriented economic interests and pursue these interests adopting economic as well as security measures. This reformulation of economic liberalism opens up the paradigm to the investigation of different forms of state behavior, including external intervention in conflicts, and goes beyond the confines of the conventional view among scholars and practi­tion­ ers that increasing economic exchange between states should correlate highly with a decreasing number of forceful strategies in international politics. Scholars commonly found the liberal argument that states may resort to coercion to protect their economic stakes to be contradictory: “The view that economic interdependence compels American global strategic engagements puts an ironic twist on liberal internationalist arguments about the virtues of free trade, which held that removing the state from international economic transactions would be an antidote to war and imperialism.”7 This approach originates from the heavy scholarly focus on whether trading partners fight each other. It however leaves several questions about the form of economic relations as well as the type of security policies that states adopt to protect these relations in the dark. The present study overcomes these limitations. The decision to intervene within the context of an international conflict is the main outcome of interest of this chapter, and the following sections investigate the motivations behind and constraints on intervention decisions. Motivation

The core argument developed in Chapter 3 stipulated that states with economic interests in the belligerents of an ongoing conflict are likely to step into the fray to protect their stakes against the negative externalities of these conflicts. Such

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externalities might be imminent due to the intensity of the conflict, but they are mostly anticipated, as the majority of conflicts remain low-intensity military acts in their lifetime. In this respect, economic effects of most conflicts are based on rational expectations of private economic actors and cannot be read from the national balance of payments.8 Belligerents’ war strategies can also complicate the situation for external states by increasing the costs of economic activity to their economic agents. For instance, in the Iran–Iraq war, both belligerents attacked merchant ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz to halt shipping serving enemy interests. Iraq mostly targeted tankers carrying Iranian oil, whereas Iran, especially in later stages of the war, began searching neutral merchant ships. Overall, the costs of the war were borne on several outside states due to the belligerents’ exploitation of their strategic location: “Throughout the course of the war the belligerents attacked over 400 merchant vessels, of thirty two different flag states—almost all of them neutral. The total insurance write-off was in excess of 40 million deadweight tons of shipping— almost half of the total tonnage of merchant shipping sunk in WWII.”9 Economically minded external states may adopt coercive strategies in this context as a preventive measure against the escalation of the disagreement. Signaling their commitment to the stability and territorial integrity of a belligerent through intervention, states aim at containing militarized hostilities and shaping the course of events to the favor of their economic partners. The bulk of the economic peace research has relied on the volume of trade to identify economically interdependent states mostly due to the availability of the trade data for the post-1945 period.10 The extent of trade between nations does not provide much insight into the specifics of economic activity in a foreign market and its exposure to armed conflict. Yet this is the departure point for an empirical approach that draws from and expands on this literature. Hypothesis 1 states the relationship between economic interests and intervention as a function of trade volume: Hypothesis 1 (Trade Volume). External states that conduct extensive trade with a belligerent of an ongoing armed conflict are more likely to intervene in this conflict and support their partner. Trade volume captures the current stream of trade benefits and is an indicator of states’ economic interests at the most aggregate level. As a measure of economic interconnectedness, however, it suffers from various limitations. International commerce in a globalized economy involves a diverse array of

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economic transactions.11 Considering this diversity, trade may not be the economic activity that would be most directly affected by violent confrontations between and within nations.12 Historical evidence as well as scholarly work showed that hostile states continue to trade with each other despite their disagreements.13 Real-life examples support this point. The hostage crisis with Iran led the United States to place severe restrictions on trade. However, “news media reports indicate that trade has increased [between the U.S. and Iran], mainly on the basis of American firms trading through their overseas affiliates with Iranian organizations.”14 It is therefore important to identify the economic activity that would be affected by the changes in the international political environment and their market repercussions. There is another important omission in empirical analyses adopting trade volume. In most places, economic activity is undertaken by firms, individuals, or groups of individuals. There is an inevitable societal dimension of economic interconnectedness between states where firm-level decisions are central to understanding the link between international trade and security issues. Trade volume fails to account for the private economic interests that domestic groups have in a foreign market. It relies heavily on ongoing economic exchange, which includes trade conducted by both the formal and informal sector to proxy economic actors’ preferences and expectations. Foreign direct investment (FDI) overcomes this limitation and allows the empirical analysis to examine domestic preferences through certain types of economic interconnectedness with a foreign country.15 Economic actors engaged in foreign direct investment may perhaps represent the sector that is most directly affected by political instability and uncertainty in the host country. Previous research that examined interventionist policies of colonial powers specifically focused on investment flows to examine the type of economic activity that is directly tied to the political conditions of the host country.16 The outcome of interests examined in these studies was colonial control of the host country by the imperial core, and economic explanations of intervention have since been associated with imperialist theories. Economic theories of imperialism have much to offer in understanding the domestic dimension of economic interests because they represent a coherent body of work that explicitly recognizes and theorizes about the societal dimension of economics, forms of private economic activity abroad, and their security implications.17 They are, however, less helpful with unpacking contemporary forms of intervention, which commonly include military and nonmilitary forms of involvement of an external actor in civil war and international conflict.

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There are two specific properties of FDI that overcome the limitations of bilateral trade in examining the role of economics in security policies. FDI is physically attached to the host country, which makes divestment rather difficult and costly. Such transnational ties are vulnerable to political instability given that they are based on “site-specific and easily appropriated rents, such as raw materials extraction and agriculture.”18 Sectors involved in important trade with a foreign market can reduce their activity with the outbreak of political instability, look for substitutes, or continue to trade through their domestic affiliates. This is also true for capital flows, as illustrated in Montesquieu’s “movable wealth” argument: “And through this means, commerce could elude violence, and maintain itself everywhere; for the richest trader had only invisible wealth which could be sent everywhere without leaving any trace.”19 Investors, on the other hand, have limited options. Foreign investment is rather at a disadvantage when faced with political violence, as its profitability is directly associated with market conditions in the host state. Jensen writes, “FDI, unlike portfolio investments, has long time horizons and is generally not done for speculative purposes, but rather to serve domestic markets, exploit natural resources, or provide platforms to serve world markets through exports.”20 Scholars have shown that political conditions of the host country related to property rights and implementation of contracts are important factors that play into investment decisions in the first place. Investors aim to minimize political risks by strategically choosing their host country. In empirical work on which countries receive FDI, political institutions and political instability, defined in terms of intrastate or interstate armed conflict, turn out to be the main determinants of investment decisions.21 Conflicts, therefore, carry great risk for investors. The reasons that investors avoid zones of conflict are specifically the reasons that hurt the profitability of the investment once it is tied to a country. Among several other market repercussions of conflicts, mounting insurance costs, threat of cross-border raids or air attacks targeting foreign assets, difficulty of transportation, and governments’ decisions to reallocate resources from infrastructure to militarization efforts reduce investor confidence in the host country.22 A second central feature of foreign investment is that it is the “largest single source of private capital.”23 This type of economic activity is largely private and is undertaken as a firm-level decision, which separates the profit calculus of traders and investors from the political considerations of states.24 FDI captures the economic activity of multinational corporations in different locations and, hence, the extent of private interests in a particular market.25 “Trade flows alone may

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not be an optimal measure [of economic interdependence],” which is more the case when the domestic dimension of economic liberalism is considered.26 More than any other economic variable, foreign investment separates the formal sector from the informal sector and is a direct measure of the value of foreign assets of a country’s nationals, and therefore domestic interests, in a distant market. Thus, the measurement of economic interests through FDI draws explicitly from the causal mechanisms that particularly emphasize the state–society dimension of economic liberalism. Hypothesis 2 formally states the expected relationship: Hypothesis 2 (FDI). External states whose nationals have significant investments in a belligerent of an ongoing armed conflict are more likely to intervene in this conflict and support their partner. Both trade volume and FDI approaches hinge largely on measuring existing benefits from economic activity, though FDI presents an apparent advantage in theorizing about the extent of domestic interests in a foreign market. Economic actors’ expectations of future benefits are not accounted for in these empirical approaches.27 Mixed empirical findings in economic peace research on how militarized hostilities affect trade levels or vice versa illustrate that economic groups do not simply consider the current value of a foreign market.28 Economic institutions that states build to protect and enhance their commercial relations create certain expectations that may or may not be registered in the national balance of payments. Research on economic peace has increasingly focused on institutions and, more specifically, preferential trade agreements (PTAs) in recent years to account for the institutional environment of international trade.29 As governments establish institutions to credibly commit themselves to reinforcing existing economic ties or creating new ones, they shape the future expectations of economic agents. Conflicts may jeopardize the future gains that economic institutions have made possible. To fully understand the role of economic interests in intervention decisions, therefore, empirical analysis should account for expected benefits as well as existing ones. Hypothesis 3 formulates PTAs’ effect on intervention to test for this link. Controlling for existing economic interests through FDI ensures that PTA and FDI measure different aspects of economic interconnectedness with a foreign market and allows assessing their independent effects. Hypothesis 3 (PTAs). External states that have preferential access to the market of a belligerent of an ongoing armed conflict are more likely to intervene in this conflict and support their partner.

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Constraint

Economic variables discussed in the previous pages speak to the economic relations of external states with the belligerents of an armed conflict. Equally important to the liberal framework are certain characteristics of the decisionmaking process of interveners as a function of their political institutions. Hypotheses 1 through 3 captured domestic preferences related to a particular foreign market by the volume and form of economic activity and future economic benefits. These empirical expectations, however, do not illustrate how economic groups relate to their state at home. Interactive effects of international trade and political institutions are rarely accounted for in the economic peace literature, though such interaction is a crucial test of the state–society dimension of economic interdependence between nations.30 Historical evidence unequivocally shows that traders and investors have a strong incentive to plead with their government to protect their investments against hostile hosts and civil or international conflict. President Cabrera granted the exclusive exploitation of Guatemala’s mineral riches in 1911 to the Guatemala Mining and Development Company, composed mostly of American and French operators. To avoid domestic and international outrage, the Guatemalan government kept most of this transaction hidden from public scrutiny. “When asked . . . what would happen when the people of Guatemala awakened to what had been conceded away,” the president of the company and former governor of Montana, A. E. Spriggs, commented, “Well, the United States will protect our property.”31 Whether governments will act to protect economic agents abroad is a matter of the significance of the market itself as well as the representative institutions through which protection demands are filtered and transmitted to policymakers. Two assumptions have important implications when considering the relationship of economic interests and intervention conditional on the institutional setting. First, the state has interests in security policies that benefit economic actors if such policies have the potential to solidify decision makers’ domestic standing and ensure their political survival in the office. States’ interests are defined by political institutions and are mostly independent of the preferences of powerful societal groups. Second, intervention with economic motives has private good properties because it disproportionately benefits a small group with interests in a foreign market. Such benefits are highly dispersed for the rest of the society, which bears the costs of these policies. Therefore, these policies offer little in return when decision makers need the support of a large electoral base to hold on to power.

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Political survival is defined by the institutional setting, which designs different political strategies for decision makers. While scholars who develop economic theories of state behavior with an emphasis on domestic structure have different departure points, they commonly reach the conclusion that democratic leaders are highly risk averse because they are responsive to voting publics who do not benefit from militaristic policies.32 Democratic leaders carefully select their military adventures abroad. In doing so, they consider a wide variety of domestic pressures besides international factors to maximize their chances of reelection and are, therefore, less responsive to parochial demands of small groups that involve coercive strategies.33 In this context, an important characteristic of democracies is their pluralism. Democratic leaders are under cross pressures from multiple societal groups that seek access to policymaking.34 Given the plethora of demands, public goods that satisfy diverse interests have greater political returns. Broad political support is the key to office, and leaders are concerned more with the distributional implications of their policies on the society and less with the welfare of powerful societal groups that cannot individually guarantee political survival.35 Because decision makers in democracies value inclusive public policies that redistribute the social output to the society more than private goods that satisfy the demands of the few, democratic regimes are less likely to intervene in armed conflicts on behalf of economic actors. Hypothesis 4, stated as follows, reformulates the argument on economic interests and intervention to account for the distinction between democratic and nondemocratic regimes: Hypothesis 4 (Regime Type). Democratic external states whose nationals have economic stakes in a belligerent of an ongoing armed conflict are less likely to intervene in this conflict and support their partner in comparison to nondemocratic regimes. The democracy–autocracy dichotomy bears on the question of how regime type influences leaders’ incentives to cater to private economic actors with security policies. Yet it remains an aggregate approach to the translation of domestic demands into foreign policy and veils important variations within these regime categories. The discussion for Hypothesis 4 can be extended to explain the variation within democracies drawing from the vast literature on the distinction between presidential and parliamentary regimes in comparative politics.36 In this body of work, some scholars argue that democratic institutions are more likely to take root and survive in parliamentary systems as opposed to

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in presidential systems. Some of the features of presidentialism may resemble authoritarian institutions. Progressive concentration of power in the hands of the executive can effectively culminate in authoritarian practices in particular instances. For instance, Bratton and van de Walle argue for presidential regimes in Africa that “personal dictators emerged from either the army or a dominant political party, but they consolidated power by asserting total personal control over formal political structures.”37 As a result of consolidation, presidentialism contributed to the weakening of already frail structures within the military, the judiciary, and the civil service.38 Institutions exert an important effect on public spending initiatives. In most extreme forms of power consolidation, presidentialism is almost indistinguishable from personalist rule and results in a kleptocratic economic system. Based on the cult of a strong leader and personalization of power, consolidation tilts these regimes toward personal rule composed of “clientilist pyramids and factional networks” formed between “strongmen and their acolytes.”39 While clientilism results in private goods that benefit the few, investors and traders that benefit from liberal economic policies are not among these privileged groups and have limited or no access to policymaking. Instead, power holders may predate on these groups through corruption, excessive taxation, and lack of respect for property rights. Presidentialism includes democratic and nondemocratic regimes. Particularly important for the present framework are presidential democracies, which represent a democracy subtype. In these regimes, political power is concentrated in the executive. This leaves room for central policymakers to maneuver and formulate policies that benefit their constituencies in a logrolling fashion. According to Linz, “Not having responsibility for national policy, [congressional parties] would turn to the representation of special interests, localized interests, and clientilistic networks in their constituencies.”40 Linz’s argument finds its reflection in Krasner’s work on American uses of force against dissident governments: In the United States, political leaders have been able to carry out their programs, or at least resist private pressures, if policy was set in the White House or other central executive institutions . . . When decision-making moves from central executive agencies to the Congress, however, US political leaders confront a far more difficult situation. They are unlikely to be able to implement state preferences over the objections of the private sector.41

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Similarly, Tsebelis argues that the president’s central role in decision making and legislative veto power may reduce political competition over legislation and therefore voters’ control over their representatives.42 As democratic purview wanes, decision makers become more likely to distribute rents to interest groups in cases where foreign policy is decided by the legislator and not by the executive. Conversely, parliamentary regimes constrain the executive by empowering the legislature through a set of institutional mechanisms. The political system usually includes a number of political parties with different support bases and opens up the possibility of coalition governments.43 Dispersion of decision-making authority empowers a wide range of constituencies in the policymaking process and provides incentives to political actors in parliamentary regimes to account for diverse interests.44 It forces cooperation on political actors through “vote of no confidence,” unlike presidentialism, and therefore cuts the power of any political actor in distributing privileges to powerful societal groups.45 In this institutional environment, there are several cross-cutting alliances between office holders and domestic groups that increase the burden on the system to the point at which a public goods provision is the only attractive option. Likewise, accountability mechanisms in parliamentary regimes are designed such that they empower the citizen through “comprehensive and exclusive” rights, unlike presidentialism, and increase democratic purview in legislative decision making.46 Together, this discussion reformulates Hypothesis 4 by arguing that, while some characteristics of the presidential democracies may lead to logrolling in the legislator and result in policies that benefit a narrow constituency, parliamentary regimes (all else being equal) are less likely than presidential democracies or mixed executive types to be responsive to interest group demands for protection abroad. Hypothesis 5 formulates this expectation: Hypothesis 5 (Democracy). Parliamentary democracies whose nationals have significant economic stakes in a belligerent of an ongoing armed conflict are less likely to intervene in this conflict and support their partner in comparison to other democracy types. Autocracies, however, present a more complicated regime category than democratic systems. Heterogeneity of their regime characteristics and highly complicated relations among political, economic, and military actors in au-

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tocratic regimes may not allow for a clean causal mechanism that links intervention and pressures from private economic actors in these cases. It is an overarching claim to argue that a particular type of autocracy is more prone than all other types to cater to protection demands with security policies. Instead, it is the goal of the present framework to capture some variation among autocracy types commonly studied in the existing literature. Chapter 3 has explicated that single-party and military regimes present a mixed category of economic systems, whereas personalist regimes and nondynastic monarchies have rather homogenous characteristics because they are overwhelmingly associated with kleptocracy.47 The personalist ruler distributes pervasive rents to corrupt each segment of the society and establish a coup-proof regime to continue her rule unchallenged.48 The ruler can buy off the opposition with these rents or gang up on it with her clients. The latter is an effective divide-and-rule strategy that eliminates coordination between societal groups and deliberately creates a collective action problem that destroys the chances of effective opposition. While this environment may at first seem to be highly conducive to the influence of powerful interest groups, such influence is not straightforward. A corrupted economic and political system also adversely affects investors’ and traders’ relationships with their home government. As already discussed for presidential regimes with authoritarian characteristics, kleptocrats are highly likely to exploit and abuse capitalist classes for their personal gains. This argument is also complementary with the discussion already presented for Hypothesis 2. FDI is attracted to friendly environments, and democratic regimes attract investment with their respect for property and contractual rights. Kleptocrats rank the lowest in terms of such respect and, based on the same logic, cannot be expected to protect investors and traders as either the host or the source country. The influence of interest groups in political systems based on personal rule is also conditional on the type of the private good requested. Intervention to protect economic agents against the repercussions of armed conflicts sometimes requires the involvement of the military. Personalist rulers deliberately corrupt the military and keep it weak to consolidate their grip on political power. The command structure in the military is replaced by a clientilistic network that reduces its battlefield effectiveness.49 As such, a close look into the ruler–military relations, together with the clientilistic economic structure

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of these regimes, suggests that personal rule should in fact be the regime type that is least likely among autocracy subtypes to protect its nationals’ economic interests abroad. Hypothesis 6 formulates this expectation: Hypothesis 6 (Autocracy). Regimes based on personal rule whose nationals have significant economic stakes in a belligerent of an ongoing armed conflict are less likely to intervene in this conflict and support their partner in comparison to other nondemocracies. Choice of Strategy

Research on intervention has often focused on explaining the conditions under which intervention terminates hostilities in an armed conflict. Scholars have placed limited attention on how interveners choose from available intervention strategies. Specific types of conflict management techniques with which external states attempt to influence violent conflicts have often been treated separately and independently. How states decide on the extent of involvement and the resources that they commit to influence others’ conflicts are important questions. Three decades ago, Pearson described the common definition of intervention as “inadequate” and argued that scholars “treat military interventions as a single phenomenon, ignoring the fact that interventions differ greatly in circumstances and consequences.”50 Specific types of intervention and levels of involvement are interdependent with each other in policymakers’ decision calculi. In reality, states consider a wide range of policy options before deciding on a certain action and compare the costs and benefits of one strategy over another. States would differ in their responses to an armed conflict in the international system and react only after a careful examination of all available options in relation with their interests in the belligerents. Given that states consider a certain type of intervention as opposed to others, including the “abstain” option, the factors that explain why states intervene might be used to explain “how leaders choose the policies they implement from an inclusive toolbox.”51 Interveners’ interests in conflict parties affect not only whether there will be an intervention but also the amount of coercive pressure that they would be willing to bring into the conflict. Lumping together different levels of involvement neglects this choice aspect. An improved model of intervention behavior that models external states’ security concerns, regime type, and economic interests in analyzing their specific responses to conflicts could capture other important dynamics in states’ decision making.

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This approach underlines the simultaneity of two decisions in intervention behavior: (1) whether or not to respond and (2) how to respond to armed conflicts. Analyzing different levels of outside involvement in armed conflicts as a range of foreign policy options that leaders can substitute among indicates that these alternatives are considered simultaneously: States choose a certain path of action because of the infeasibility of all other policies available at the moment that the intervention decision had to be made. The policy tools that decision makers chose not to adopt are unobservable behavior to the analyst and are usually aggregated in the “abstain” category. Yet outcomes that scholars seek to explain are linked to unobservable choices. Causal mechanisms that explain an observed structure can also be used to explore the conditions under which states decide not to choose a certain path of action. A limited number of studies explored intervention decisions within a substitution framework in which states choose a course of action according to a set of structural factors. For instance, Regan examined U.S. interventions in civil wars between 1945 and 1995 and showed that political factors, such as alliances and the number of other interveners, media coverage of the conflict, and trade interests in the civil war state, substantially affect the type of intervention policy the United States chooses to manage a civil war.52 The most fundamental difference in interveners’ strategies emerges on the lines of military and nonmilitary forms of influence. Scholarly findings show that the effect of military intervention in bringing wars to an end is mostly indeterminate.53 Economic sanctions are a less costly alternative than military interventions,54 yet they share a similar fate. Previous research has shown that either they are ineffective or they work under limited conditions.55 Literature on international diplomacy and mediation also suggest mixed findings on their effectiveness. Some scholars show that external actors’ mediation attempts do not necessarily facilitate war settlement.56 Others find that mediations can be effective tools of conflict management.57 In addition to their benefits, strategies to influence the course of armed conflicts also entail different costs to the intervener. Military courses of action can be considered as the riskiest strategy when compared to nonmilitary strategies such as economic and diplomatic forms of influence. While their conflict management effects are still debated, the costs involved in military interventions can work as a powerful signaling mechanism for external states that have vested interests in the belligerents. This is a particularly relevant argument for interveners with strong economic ties to conflict parties. As

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Altfeld and Bueno de Mesquita argued, the decision to intervene is conditional on the value of the belligerent state, among other factors.58 As the level of economic interdependence increases, so too does the amount of resources that an economically minded intervener is willing to expend to manage the conflict and avoid disruption of economic exchange. The costs that an external state is willing to absorb would constitute an observable component of its resolve in influencing the conflict. Coercive and costly methods can effectively demonstrate resolve in defending important economic partners and signal a state’s reservation values to its partners’ adversaries. This framework holds especially in international conflicts. Most international conflicts remain as low-scale skirmishes in which belligerents aim to clarify uncertainty about the relative power and resolve of the opponent. Most dispute cases are not even relevant to international intervention. For instance, one-day disputes do not present enough decision-making time to external states. Indeed, among 439 disputes that lasted one day, only one of them involved an external state as an intervener. When these cases are excluded, the total number of disputes falls from 1,458 to 1,019. A related point is that not all disputes are state-to-state phenomena: In some cases, coercion is directed against nonstate actors such as fishing trawlers or terrorist groups.59 External states are also rarely concerned with conflicts that do not escalate beyond attacker’s initial hostility. In the population of interstate disputes for the post–World War II period (1,458 total), there is a 53 percent retaliation rate (775 reciprocated disputes). Of 124 disputes that expanded to strangers in the same period, 119 are reciprocated conflicts where the victim responded to the attack by force. Hence, belligerents commonly engage in a limited conflict that presents few opportunities for external states to engage in expansive interventions. Because of the short window of opportunity that international conflicts pre­sent, the most attractive options would be strategies that instantly demonstrate resolve to assist one’s significant partner. In this strategic setting, intervention attempts function more as a signaling mechanism and serve the purpose of preventing the conflict from escalating to a level where trade is foregone and investment is destroyed. Interveners adjust their level of involvement and select their demands to influence the bargaining taking place between belligerents. Significant trade ties of its opponent to external actors effectively reduce potential attackers’ uncertainty about interveners’ resolve and the likelihood of a multilateral conflict in the future, making ex ante bargains

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possible. Hypothesis 7 states the relationship between interveners’ economic interests and their level of involvement in armed conflicts: Hypothesis 7 (Strategy): External states that have important economic ties with a belligerent of an ongoing armed conflict are more likely to adopt military forms of intervention than nonmilitary forms in this conflict. Security Considerations

In this section, I tackle central debates in realist scholarship by considering the role of power and threats along with other traditionally recognized factors that play into intervention decisions. These theoretical claims present a voluminous literature in security studies. Most claims also compete with each other in explaining alignment patterns but have rarely been examined by scholars comparatively. It is therefore important to contribute to this debate by examining competing claims in a unified framework. I borrow from the rich theoretical framework of contemporary realism to illustrate some of the most important security considerations in intervention decisions. “Do states ally more often with the weaker or with the stronger side in a conflict? . . . do states tend to balance against or bandwagon with a rising state or coalition?”60 Application of the realist framework to intervention should start with an emphasis on power as the core concept of this research program. While economic incentives play a significant role in interventions, interventions are by no means a monolithic set of cases driven by economic determinism. Power considerations in terms of the capabilities that conflict parties hold are also important components of intervention. External states acting outside international regimes may aim at maintaining a local balance of power or forestall an adverse shift of power against their ally. U.S. intervention in Afghanistan was driven by an incentive to strengthen the Northern Alliance against the Taliban regime and tip the balance in favor of its moderate political allies in the region. Waltz’s formulation of realism suggests that states tend to assist the weaker side to balance the power of the stronger. Limited empirical research on intervention has similarly tested the conventional realist approach by analyzing outside support for the weaker combatant.61 In this body of work, distribution of power between the belligerents has failed to be a robust explanation of intervener behavior. While defensive realism has argued that external states join forces against the stronger side within the context of international conflicts, macrolevel analyses suggested that interveners may wind up on the stronger side of a conflict.

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This evidence points to the possibility that there is more to the intervention and power story that the aggregate capabilities belligerents hold may fail to capture. The global power status of a belligerent significantly changes our inferences by generating a substantial bandwagoning effect. Participation of major powers in conflicts leads to ad hoc coalitions of interveners that support their side.62 This argument draws from the offensive realist claim that aggression may indeed contribute to the security of the aggressor. Contrary to the neorealist foundation that states respond to powerful aggressors and act to contain them to preserve the status quo, states may not appear to be security maximizers that tend to balance against strong and threatening states. The power that belligerents hold is not the sole explanation of external actors’ decisions. Recent studies have extensively criticized power as the drive behind state behavior. The bargaining model of war substantially refines the power perspective and claims that the distribution of power becomes a concern for states when the distribution of goods does not match the relative capabilities that states hold.63 Refined versions of neorealism also suggest that pressures of international anarchy force states to prioritize their interests. In a prominent theory of the realist research program, Schweller argues that states care less about power and more about the opportunities that alignments may offer.64 In this respect, balancing is costly and happens less often than scholars have argued for. Instead, states seek benefits through alignments and may frequently be observed to bandwagon on the threatening side depending on their interests. Then, are states intervening in conflicts on the side of the belligerent with which their interests are most similar? In one of the first empirical studies of external intervention, Altfeld and Bueno de Mesquita find that interveners do closely follow their interests and support belligerents with whom their positions on international issues are most similar.65 Combined with the finding that states are equally likely to take sides with the stronger or the weaker belligerent, this suggests that power is a secondary concern to foreign policy goals. When external actors have similar security interests with a belligerent, they are more likely to wind up on its side regardless of the power that the latter holds. The contemporary realist debate has extensively assessed the role threats play in states’ alignment patterns. The balance-of-threat theory formulated by Walt argues that alliances that result from this dynamic involve coalitions of the willing that respond to the state that poses the greatest threat to others.66 It is important to specify the conditions under which balance-of-threat theory might operate. The significance of the threat as perceived by external actors is

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perhaps a more relevant factor in their decision calculi than belligerents’ role or power. The level of threat posed by an attacker is a matter of its claims on its opponent or of its certain characteristics, such as ideological orientation or possession of deadly weapon systems. Aggressive intentions present a particularly useful and intuitive analytical point in identifying threats. The specific demands that a belligerent puts on its opponent may provide insights into its intentions.67 States that initiate a militarized action and are dissatisfied with the distribution of benefits, which I define as aggressors, can trigger a response from states with a preference for the status quo. For instance, attackers that have territorial demands may be viewed as threatening states because armed conflicts fought over one of the core issues of the international system are more likely than others to draw the attention of external states: “States that are dissatisfied with the territory that they possess, even if for defensive reasons, are, by definition, revisionist, not status quo powers.”68 Lieber and Alexander suggest that it is the “focused enmity” of U.S. aggression targeting rogue states and transnational terrorist networks that makes it appear as less threatening to other states.69 Layne contends that the United States is a “benevolent hegemon” whose command in security and economic affairs is accepted by other states despite its power status and independent of its role in a conflict.70 The Iraq War is illustrative of these ad hoc formations that supported the U.S. side, though the United States was the initiator of militarized hostilities in this particular conflict. Both approaches suggest that powerful belligerents should have a disproportionate advantage in attracting coalitions of interveners on their side when their actions are not perceived as threatening for others. When power is combined with aggressive intentions, as in revisionist states, such consensus may not form among external actors. States’ status quo bias, as predicted by defensive realists, is most likely to lead to action in conflicts initiated by states that have both the strength and the intention to change the world order. In these cases, power becomes a concern for dominant states as well as for minor ones that owe their survival to the current order. External states may wind up on the weaker side to avert possible changes. Hence, when revisionism is controlled for, power should have little effect on intervention: Defensive realist posture is most likely to hold water when power and aggression are combined.71 Other factors may shape external actors’ perceptions of the degree to which an attacker nation, if becomes successful, can threaten other states in

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the system. States may perceive nuclear attackers as more threatening than others and may be compelled to take action against them. The potential power that nuclear states hold may allow them to easily subdue their targets without great effort and, unless contained, may encourage them for a military crusade. Yet it is important to identify the individual effect of nuclear weapons independent of the special role that major powers, which are also nuclear states, play as belligerents in intervention decisions. A first-cut empirical demonstration suggests that, unless the nuclear state is a major power, external actors act to constrain them when they initiate a militarized conflict. Of forty-seven cases of intervention in international conflicts in the post-1945 period where the attacker was a nuclear state but not a major power, interveners supported the attacker side in only three cases. At this juncture, perception of threats again emerges as an important explanation of alignment choices. To put the case bluntly, nuclear states such as India, Israel, and Pakistan do not enjoy the same leverage in the international community that central actors of the international system do as initiators of conflicts. These three states are also de facto nuclear states, whereas major powers are declared nuclear states.72 Such nuclear ambitions may have the additional effect of increasing external actors’ sensitivity to threats posed by belligerents that secretly develop deadly weapons. Together, states’ calculations of threat change in the shadow of nuclear weapons. When a nuclear attacker is a minor state, interveners overwhelmingly oppose it in a conflict setting, whereas major powers are immune from these calculations. Also important in determining the level of threats is the ideological orientation of the attacker. This argument is especially important in the case of democracies, which have been claimed by scholars and policymakers alike as being reliable partners in war and peace times. Evidence on democratic interventions is, however, mixed. Walt does not find overwhelming evidence for ideological solidarity in alliance formation.73 Walt’s analysis is limited to the Middle East during the Cold War. As Walt rightly suggests, strategic considerations dominated regional powers’ choice of outside patrons; most aimed to benefit from the superpower competition by appealing to their ideological sentiments. In addition, pan-Arab nationalism, rather than institutional configuration, played a major role in the formation of coalitions in the region. Other studies on democracy and intervention have also suggested mixed patterns. Kaufman argues that democracies fail to balance adequately against threats as domestic constraints delay their timely response to emerging threats.74 Simi-

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larly, Reiter and Stam find that democracies are not particularly likely to shed blood for each other, though their sample is limited to international wars.75 Despite mixed findings, the heavy emphasis in democratic peace research on cooperation and trust between democracies requires that we look closer into the possibility of democratic fraternity. Empirical views of intervention have put strong emphasis on shared institutional characteristics of belligerents and intervener states and provide a departure point to consider this relationship empirically.76 If democracies are less likely to align on opposite sides of an international conflict, then democratic attackers should have a disproportionate advantage in attracting outside allies. Despite the fact that they escalate an underlying disagreement with their opponent to the level of militarized hostilities, they should still fare better in receiving outside support. Similarly, targeting democratic states would be a strategic mistake because democratic targets would be assisted by their institutional counterparts. Hence, external states are less likely to view attackers as threatening if they share similar domestic institutions and will wind up on the side of their regime counterpart. FINDINGS

The framework developed in this chapter is tested against intervention cases in international conflicts. Statistical tests show that a comparative framework that simultaneously accounts for the political and economic interests of external states presents the most comprehensive understanding of their decisions. Due to the limitations of data on economic variables required to test the key arguments of the theoretical framework, the analysis mostly covers the post– World War II period (1945–2001). FDI data adopted from the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) statistics are further limited to the post-1978 period.77 The first set of factors (H1 through H3) tests for the role of economic interests in intervention decisions and interveners’ choice of sides in armed conflicts. Trade Volume is measured as the natural logarithm of the ratio of bilateral trade between State A (belligerent) and State B (potential intervener) to B’s total trade. It therefore accounts for the importance of B’s trade with A to B’s trade with the world. Trade data are adopted from Gleditsch.78 I have added 0.2 ($200,000) to bilateral trade to accommodate zeros and missing information on this variable. FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) is measured as the natural logarithm of FDI outflows from State B to State A. This variable accounts for the value of private economic actors’ assets in the belligerent economy. Data are adopted

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from OECD’s International Direct Investment statistics and are limited to FDI outflows from OECD countries (home countries) to host countries around the world. Missing data and zeros are a greater problem for FDI flows that also include negative values. To account for these data problems, I follow Kerner’s approach, which logs the absolute value of FDI flows multiplied by 1,000,000 and adds 1.79 PTA (Preferential Trade Agreement) is a dichotomous measure of economic agents’ expectations through economic institutions that states build to establish and develop trade relations. This variable is coded as 1 if belligerent A has given a reciprocal or nonreciprocal PTA to potential intervener B. Data are adopted from Goldstein et al., which presents the most comprehensive list of trade agreements in the post-1945 period.80 In the first stage of analysis, the outcome of interest is a three-category unordered variable that ranges from 0 to 2. In an AB dyad where A is the state in conflict and B is a potential intervener, cases in which B abstains from intervention are coded as 0.81 If B intervenes to support A, the case is coded as 1; and, if B intervenes to support A’s opponent, the choice of sides variable takes on a value of 2. Intervention refers to cases in which potential intervener B threatens, displays, or uses military force after the first day of the conflict against one of the original participants.82 This definition follows the COW Project MID data criterion to generate results comparable to previous studies and includes conflicts at all hostility levels. I examine how external interveners choose sides using a multinomial choice model.83 This model estimates the effect of each explanatory factor on the intervention for and against A categories relative to the base category where B abstains from intervention. The multinomial choice model takes into account the possibility that B’s choices are not independent. On the contrary, policymakers consider these options simultaneously. For this reason, examining them in separate regression models unrealistically assumes that the correlation of unobservable factors between these models is zero or constant. Statistical findings suggest strong empirical support for the motivation component of intervention defined in terms of economic interests, and such support emerges mostly independent of the way that motivation is measured. Model 1 expands on the economic peace literature by measuring economic interests in the form of bilateral trade. Trade Volume tests for H1, suggesting that an external state is more likely to intervene and support a belligerent if its trade with the latter constitutes an important part of its total trade with the

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world. Compared to earlier findings in economic peace research, the highly significant and positive finding on trade volume illustrates that international trade has far-reaching security implications that go beyond the limited emphasis on whether trading states fight each other. States undertake a wide range of security policies to protect economic interests abroad, which warrants further research into the impact of economics on high politics. Important in this framework is identifying the economic activity that is adversely affected by armed conflicts and most directly represents private interests. While trade volume provides results comparable to the findings in economic peace research, FDI (H2) presents a direct test of the liberal framework and also of economic theories of imperialism that heavily emphasize the domestic dimension of economic interconnectedness between states. In models 2 and 3, FDI has a consistently significant and positive impact on the decision to intervene in support of a belligerent (Table 4.1). This finding suggests that exposure of private economic interests to international conflicts powerfully affects intervention decisions: Significant FDI flows (seventy-fifth percentile value) from an external state to a belligerent increase the likelihood of assistance from the home country by 11 percent and decrease the probability that it intervenes against this belligerent by 91 percent (Table 4.2). The effect of FDI on intervention might seem to be at odds with previous findings that stress the insignificant role economic interests have played in U.S. interventions.84 While this issue will be discussed extensively in Chapter 5, it is important to note that the cases included in the “intervention” category adopted in these studies are highly diverse in terms of the international environment in which intervention took place.85 This chapter has ­adopted a coherent set of cases, international conflicts, in which an external state intervened in a militarized conflict taking place between two or more nations. Chapter 6 tests the same framework in the context of civil wars. This approach permits a systematic comparison of intervention decisions across similar international settings. It is important to standardize the systemic stimulus that we expect states to react to. As variation in the cases increases, so do the confounding factors that the model needs to account for so that analysis results are not driven by the international setting. Analysis of economic interests in the form of future expectations that traders and investors develop in the context of a PTA lends support to H3. Economic actors not only consider the ongoing current stream of benefits but also future benefits that may result from trade agreements in asking for security

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Table 4.1. 

Economic interests and the decision to intervene.

Independent variables

Model 1. Trade volume Model 2. FDI Model 3. PTAs (1948–2001) (1978–2001) (1945–2001) For A

Against A

For A

Against A

For A

Against A

Economic interests Trade volume (H1) .154** −.229** (.040) (.036) FDI (H2) .106** −.067** .084** −.067** (.011) (.010) (.011) (.007) PTAs (H3) .757** −.092 (.182) (.417) Realist claims and control factors Belligerent is the −.951* −1.071** −1.090* −1.356* −.913* −.959** weaker side (.417) (.327) (.498) (.535) (.356) (.323) Major power .147 −.252 .690** −1.726* .273 −.802 belligerent (.190) (.554) (.226) (.739) (.172) (.521) Agreement of −2.498 −1.580 −4.188* −2.102 −3.267 −1.334 interests (1.689) (.863) (2.058) (1.323) (1.900) (.754) Aggressor −1.801* .078 −2.320** .028 −1.815** .083 (revisionist attacker) (.703) (.322) (.797) (.481) (.661) (.312) Nuclear attacker −.327 1.295* −.873** 1.812** −.317 1.335* (.382) (.568) (.333) (.664) (.407) (.563) Jointly democratic 2.968** −2.386** 3.425** −2.667** 2.773** −2.487** with the attacker (.828) (.527) (.812) (.622) (.779) (.545) Major power 1.852** 2.802** 1.260** 2.808** 1.637** 2.909** intervener (.326) (.214) (.297) (.290) (.298) (.200) Defensive alliance 1.484 1.524* 1.924 2.203 1.889* 1.001 (.820) (.639) (1.015) (1.257) (.853) (.558) Neighbor −1.630** .895* −1.480** .030 −1.673** .991* (.238) (.417) (.258) (.699) (.285) (.410) Log distance −1.124** −1.005** −1.315** −1.411** −1.088** −.879** (.206) (.188) (.176) (.195) (.172) (.181) Constant 3.098 −.885 3.173* 3.897 1.660 −.208 (1.609) (1.743) (1.421) (2.019) (1.387) (1.741) Number of observations 267757 169208 276214 Log pseudolikelihood −4477.5993 −2912.6914 −4520.8265 note: (1) No intervention is the base outcome; (2) Huber/White robust standard errors are reported in parentheses and clustered within each conflict year and the state in conflict to account for the possible linkage between the decisions of potential interveners; (3) ** p ≤ .001; * p ≤ .05; two-tailed tests.

policies that protect their economic stakes in foreign markets. In the presence of a PTA that benefits the external intervener, the likelihood of intervention increases by 112 percent (Table 4.2). Because Model 3 tests for the effect of PTAs controlling for FDI, the effect of future expectations of economic agents is independent of the role of existing benefits in intervention decisions. Hence,

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Table 4.2. 

Substantive effects of economic variables (Model 3).



Percentage change Independent variables

Value

For A

FDI Mean − 1 s.d. −15.94 Mean + 1 s.d. +11.69 PTA 1 +112.56

Against A −88.87 −91.14 Not significant

note: Dichotomous variables are held at 0 and continuous variables at their mean to calculate baseline probability.

PTAs and FDI account for different aspects of economic interconnectedness with foreign markets. Major Power Belligerent, Agreement of Interests, Nuclear Attacker, and Defensive Alliance provide limited insights into interveners’ choice of sides.86 However, other control variables suggest important findings. Three decades ago, Altfeld and Bueno de Mesquita found in a pioneering study of war expansion that states are equally likely to take sides with the stronger or the weaker belligerent.87 Extension of Altfeld and Bueno de Mesquita’s timeline to 2001 similarly points to external states’ reluctance to support the weaker side of conflicts. The Belligerent Is the Weaker Side variable, which measures whether a particular belligerent is the weakest among all belligerents, usually has a negative association with interveners’ choice of sides (Table 4.1). The role of power in driving states’ alignment choices is important to the present framework from another dimension. Powerful interveners may have more freedom of action and worry less about naming and shaming by international institutions when their actions fail to comply with international law. They may also have strategic interests in both local and foreign wars and hence are more likely to be active interventionists, unlike smaller states whose influence attempts would be confined to their region. The Major Power Intervener variable presents evidence for this argument and shows that major powers have been active interveners in conflicts throughout the 1948–2001 period. Aggregate behavior of interveners does not show any signs of benevolence toward states threatened by attackers that have an incentive to overturn the status quo. Interveners’ perceived level of threat does not seem to change dramatically when the demands of the attacker involve some of the core issues in the system (Aggressor). Aggressor is negatively related to the “intervene for A” category, which suggests that external states are less likely to support belligerents that have an incentive to alter the status quo. Yet this variable also has a null association with the “intervene against A” category, which means that external

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states do not necessarily stand up against aggressive nations. In a global order where international legal sovereignty and border fixity are accepted and monitored by nations, one would expect to see that interveners would have a strong status quo bias.88 Yet interveners do not rush to save states from aggressors, and, in some cases, initiation of a militarized action by a revisionist state goes unchecked without any response from the international community. The regime type of the attacker plays the most important role in shaping third parties’ perception of threats. Findings show that external states overwhelmingly bandwagon on the attacker side if they share democratic institutions with this belligerent and abstain from opposing their regime counterparts. That is, whereas democracies are less likely to be driven by small group interests, they are motivated by assisting other democracies in international conflicts. Findings on Log Distance and Neighbor are in line with earlier ones in the war expansion literature, where scholars commonly emphasized their central role in intervention.89 Log Distance is a robust indicator of the decision to intervene: States are concerned with nearby conflicts rather than distant ones and intervene to affect the course of events in their own regions. Yet the role that neighborhoods play in intervention decisions (Neighbor) is more complex. States oppose their neighbors in international conflicts, which suggests that interveners may view conflicts as a window of opportunity to settle their long-running disagreements with their neighbors. The second set of factors (H4 through H6) builds on this economic model to test for the role that external states’ political institutions play in economically minded interventions. In the conversion of economic agents’ interests into foreign policy, the form and magnitude of these interests is an important part of the explanation. Equally important are the political institutions that shape leaders’ priorities in terms of public spending. Scholars commonly argue that democracies are less responsive to private demands in policymaking and instead formulate policies that benefit a wider audience. Following this logic, the hypotheses stipulated that democracies are less likely to intervene to protect their nationals’ interests in belligerent economies compared to nondemocratic regimes. While the theoretical framework points heavily to the interaction of FDI and regime characteristics, available data on FDI from OECD statistics do not allow this type of analysis for two main reasons. First, except for a few cases that experienced single-party regimes or transitional periods, such as Turkey, the Czech Republic, Spain, Hungary, Korea, Mexico, Poland, Portugal, and Slovakia, all OECD countries have continuous

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democratic experiences. Second, most of these countries have parliamentary systems. Only the United States has a presidential system, whereas Finland, France, Greece, Mexico, Korea, Poland, and Portugal have mixed executive types. Both characteristics of the FDI data inhibit the analysis of economic incentives across democratic versus autocratic systems (and also across democratic subtypes). To overcome this data limitation, I adopt trade volume in the institutional analysis. Theoretically, it is not the optimal measure of private economic interests abroad, but the relatively similar effects of trade volume and FDI on intervention (Table 4.1) suggest that they may be substituted for one another in the present framework. Empirical analysis of political regimes takes advantage of available measurements and employs the most detailed and precise data available on democratic and autocratic regime subtypes compiled to date. Democracy represents institutionalized democracies scoring 6 or higher on the twenty-one-point democracy scale (–10, +10), which maintained democratic institutions for at least three years. It is important to differentiate established and new democracies from nondemocracies and also from each other in statistical tests. Old and established democracies are highly inclusive regimes and are therefore reluctant to produce private goods for concentrated groups. Yet new democracies would be vulnerable to old elites and other antidemocratic groups until they are consolidated and would engage in spending to appease their challengers. In this respect, new democracies can be expected to spend for concentrated groups, unlike old ones. The New Democracy variable allows this type of analysis and is coded as 1 for democratic regimes that have been in place for less than three years and 0 otherwise. While there are various forms that democratic regimes can take, pure types on which there is scholarly consensus can be grouped on the basis of whether the government can be removed by the assembly in the course of its constitutional term in office. Systems in which they cannot be removed by the assembly are presidential. Systems in which they can be so removed are either parliamentary (when only the assembly is allowed to remove the government) or mixed (when either the assembly or the directly elected president can remove the government).90

The Parliamentary variable follows this approach and represents the regime category where the government needs the confidence of the legislature to stay in power.91

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Personalist regimes represent cases where “the leader, who usually came to power as an officer in a military coup or as the leader of a single-party government, had consolidated control over policy and recruitment in his own hands, in the process marginalizing other officers’ influence and/or reducing the influence and functions of the party.”92 Dynastic monarchies are political systems where the king effectively rules with the family and the latter have a voice in appointments, including the leadership position, whereas in Nondynastic monarchies the monarch appoints “loyal followers” who may or may not be family members.93 In line with the theoretical discussion, I merged Personalist and Nondynastic regimes to create the Personal Rule category. All regime variables have been constructed as dichotomous (1–0). Measurement of democratic, personalist, and monarchic regimes draw from Weeks’s classification, whereas democratic subtypes are based on Przeworski

Table 4.3. 

Economic interests, political institutions, and the decision to intervene.

Independent variables

Model 4. Democracy vs. Model 5. Disaggregating Model 6. Disaggregating autocracy democracies autocracies For A

Against A

For A

Against A

For A

Against A

Economic interests Trade volume (H1) .174** −.166** .117** −.316** .179** −.144** (.049) (.037) (.043) (.050) (.061) (.040) Democracy −1.786** −.581 −1.846** −.694 (.499) (.454) (.496) (.490) Democracy × −.168 −.169** −.173 −.192** trade (H4) (.116) (.051) (.123) (.054) New democracy −2.633* −.307 −2.693* −.415 (1.139) (1.027) (1.120) (1.067) New democracy × .199* .175** .195* .151** trade (.078) (.044) (.088) (.047) Parliamentary −.076 −.064 (.200) (.496) Parliamentary × −.003 trade (H5) (.029)

−.014 (.056)

Nondemocracy .320 .659 (.428) (.533) Nondemocracy × .106 .168** trade (.066) (.057) Personal rule −1.146* −.726 (.553) (.779) Personal rule × −.116 −.140 trade (H6) (.112) (.090)

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and his coauthors. Because Hypotheses 4 through 6 suggest an interactive relationship, dichotomous regime variables have been interacted with trade volume as the key independent variable to test for the role of economic interests in intervention through domestic institutions. The Trade Volume × Democracy variable tests for H4 in Model 4 (Table 4.3).94 Findings suggest that, in terms of its incentives to protect its economic stakes against international conflicts, institutionalized democracy is negatively related to intervention. These regimes are 69 percent less likely than Table 4.3. (continued)

Independent variables

Model 4. Democracy vs. Model 5. Disaggregating Model 6. Disaggregating autocracy democracies autocracies For A

Against A

For A

Against A

For A

Against A

−.930* (.365)

−1.209** (.338)

−.952* (.423)

−1.190** (.342)

−.930** (.356)

−1.217** (.336)

Realist claims and control factors Belligerent is the weaker side Major power belligerent

.146 −.316 .142 −.316 .140 −.311 (.191) (.563) (.188) (.573) (.193) (.562)

Agreement of interests

−2.730 −1.320 −2.526 −1.342 −2.796 −1.304 (1.790) (.874) (1.735) (.863) (1.841) (.869)

Aggressor (revisionist attacker)

−1.720** .066 −1.798* .087 −1.708** .060 (.618) (.325) (.704) (.324) (.605) (.325)

Nuclear attacker

−.174 1.368* −.306 1.402* −.169 1.364* (.322) (.579) (.398) (.583) (.306) (.577)

Jointly democratic with the attacker

3.034** (.780)

Major power intervener

2.051** 2.679** 1.779** 2.745** 2.007** 2.735** (.277) (.215) (.343) (.236) (.303) (.237)

Defensive alliance

1.977* 1.259 1.515 1.304 2.038* 1.223 (.922) (.666) (.820) (.675) (.966) (.661)

−2.503** 2.923** −2.555** 2.965** −2.500** (.540) (.799) (.547) (.738) (.542)

Neighbor

−1.560** .869* −1.610** .934* −1.560** .870* (.238) (.415) (.239) (.408) (.238) (.415)

Log distance

−1.120** −1.082** −1.133** −1.071** −1.113** −1.089** (.200) (.190) (.196) (.194) (.200) (.186)

Constant 3.258* .039 3.120 −.689 3.328* .180 (1.469) (1.704) (1.650) (1.940) (1.463) (1.707) Number of observations 267757 267757 267757 Log pseudolikelihood −4397.313 −4454.2218 −4389.9177 note: (1) No intervention is the base outcome; (2) Huber/White robust standard errors are reported in parentheses and clustered within each conflict year and the state in conflict to account for the possible linkage between the decisions of potential interveners; (3) ** p ≤ .001; * p ≤ .05; two-tailed tests.

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Table 4.4. 

Substantive effects of institutional variables (Model 4).

Independent variables

Percentage change Value

Trade volume Mean − 1 s.d. Mean + 1 s.d. Democracy 1 Democracy × Trade Maximum

For A

Against A

−37.99 +39.98 −81.80 Not significant

+62.28 −27.63 Not significant −68.84

note: Dichotomous variables are held at 0 and continuous variables at their mean to calculate baseline probability.

nondemocracies to intervene against their economic partners (Table 4.4). They are not especially likely to support their partners either because Trade Volume × Democracy has a null association with the “intervene for A” category. On the other hand, new democracies are more actively involved in their partners’ conflicts. Unlike institutionalized democracies, however, newly established democratic regimes do not show consistent behavior. Significant and positive coefficients observed for both “intervene for A” and “intervene against A” categories suggest that they support their economic partners in some cases and oppose them in others. Overall, these findings warn us against merging old and new democracies in the same category in a study of political institutions and public spending initiatives. While the democracy–autocracy dimension provides important insights, unpacking the autocracy as well as the democracy category does not suggest significant findings. Neither subtype of democracy is more or less likely than the other to intervene on the basis of economic interests. The Parliamentary × Trade Volume variable has a null association with both categories of the dependent variable in Model 5, where the coefficients report the effect of parliamentary democracy on intervention in comparison to presidential and mixed subtypes. H6 stipulated that personalist regimes and nondynastic monarchies associated with kleptocratic economic systems are less likely to protect economic agents as either the host or the home country. Model 6 shows that Personal Rule × Trade Volume is not significantly related to interveners’ choice of sides.95 While expectations about other autocracy types are less clear-cut and warrant further research into their economic systems, personal rule pre­ sents a particularly useful category to examine how economic groups relate to their state in autocratic environments and influence government spending.

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Yet ­expectations of the theoretical framework are not supported by the data: There is not a significant variation among autocracy types in public spending initiatives that could be picked up by the institutional analysis. To sum, statistical work presented in this chapter consistently suggests that the democracy–­ autocracy dichotomy remains the most insightful approach to the study of states’ incentives to protect economic agents against international conflicts. Do economic interests that drive states to intervene also explain the level of commitment and the resources that they are willing to bring into the conflict? The final stage of analysis expands on the choice of sides framework to test the role of economic variables in different forms of intervention. The outcome of interest is a three-category unordered categorical variable that represents basic intervention strategies available to external state B. The dependent variable ranges from 0 to 2, where 0 represents the “abstain” category; 1, military intervention; and 2, nonmilitary intervention. Statistical tests adopt multinomial logit estimation. The data on strategy are adopted from Corbetta and Dixon.96 Diplomatic interventions are expressions of support or opposition, cease-fire or troop withdrawal appeal or demand, the offer of military or diplomatic assistance, and diplomatic sanctions (nonrecognition) or assistance (recognition). Economic interventions include economic assistance or the offer of it and economic sanctions. Economic interventions are rare phenomena in armed conflicts, including civil wars and international conflicts, whereas military and diplomatic interventions are much more common. Given the number of observations on economic interventions, empirical analyses considering only this form of intervention are less likely to be informative. Therefore, I have combined diplomatic and economic interventions in the “nonmilitary intervention” category.97 Military interventions that refer to cases that include threats, displays, and use of force, as previously described, come from the COW MID Project and are included in the “military intervention” category. Statistical findings show that the strength of economic ties with a belligerent state also gives an idea about the potential benefits at stake for the external actor (Table 4.5). While trade volume does not help us understand and explain choice of strategy (Model 7), FDI and PTAs (Models 8 and 9) significantly increase external actors’ willingness to resort to high-cost intervention techniques such as military interventions. In the context of international conflicts, however, economic interests usually have an insignificant association with nonmilitary forms of intervention. Economic partners of the states in conflict choose costly and violent forms of statecraft to defend their partners. More

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Table 4.5. 

Economic interests and choice of strategy.



Model 7. Trade volume Model 8. FDI Model 9. PTAs (1948–2001) (1978–2001) (1945–2001)

Independent variables Military Nonmilitary Military Nonmilitary Military Nonmilitary Economic interests Trade volume (H1)

.008 −.046 (.044) (.043)

FDI (H2)

.076** −.002 .059** −.002 (.017) (.013) (.017) (.014)

PTAs (H3) .607* −.808* (.239) (.372) Realist claims and control factors Belligerent is the weaker side Major power belligerent Agreement of interests

−1.459** (.284)

−.791** (.303)

−1.586** .048 −1.373** (.357) (.347) (.261)

−.760** (.284)

.272 .766** −.192 .564 .062 −.624* (.370) (.254) (.523) (.355) (.389) (.261) −2.564 −1.401** −3.728* −1.631* −3.128* −1.071* (1.350) (.468) (1.626) (.822) (1.514) (.444)

Aggressor (revisionist attacker)

−.991 (.676)

Nuclear attacker

−.131 .623* .158 1.768** −.041 .665* (.505) (.310) (.683) (.449) (.495) (.313)

Jointly democratic with the attacker

1.917* (.825)

Major power intervener

2.248** 3.272** 1.627** 3.208** 2.142** 3.244** (.314) (.124) (.366) (.176) (.309) (.124)

Defensive alliance

1.568** 1.529** 2.011* 2.485** 1.757** 1.300** (.604) (.326) (.855) (.514) (.651) (.329)

Neighbor

−.383 .639** −1.091* 1.029** −.354 .664** (.449) (.208) (.489) (.336) (.434) (.209)

Log distance

−.222 (.235)

−1.536* .564 −.969 (.749) (.322) (.645)

−.172 (.228)

−.796** 2.142** −.970** 1.742* −.749** (.251) (.775) (.331) (.758) (.236)

−1.148** −.237* −1.358** −.147 −1.051** −.246* (.206) (.107) (.145) (.166) (.180) (.105)

Constant 3.237 −4.204** 4.706** −6.271 2.296 −3.794** (2.032) (1.066) (1.348) (1.414) (1.598) (1.052) Number of observations 268748

169423

275392

Log pseudolikelihood

−5530.1785

−11592.803

−11446.941

note: (1) No intervention is the base outcome; (2) Huber/White robust standard errors are reported in parentheses and clustered within each conflict year and the state in conflict to account for the possible linkage between the decisions of potential interveners; (3) ** p ≤ .001; * p ≤ .05; two-tailed tests.

IN INTERNATIONAL CONFLICTS 91

specifically, external states that have substantial economic interests in belligerents are particularly drawn toward coercive military strategies and are much more likely than other states to adopt military strategies. Given the short window of opportunity that international conflicts usually offer to external actors, interveners with economic stakes in belligerents consider military interventions as a more effective strategy to demonstrate their resolve in defending their partners and protecting trade and investment against future disruptions. CONCLUSION

This chapter empirically examined the motivation and constraint components of intervention in international conflict through the lenses of economic liberalism. Economic peace researchers have paid insufficient attention to the domestic dimension of economic interdependence, despite the fact that the liberal theory of IR, including its economic variant, builds an inevitable link between domestic groups and their state in foreign policymaking. Chapter 3 theoretically assessed this framework, and this chapter presented the statistical work that draws explicitly from the theory. I defined the motivation component as current and expected economic interests in foreign markets and measured them as trade, foreign direct investment, and preferential trade agreements. By drawing on the increasingly sophisticated analysis of regime types in comparative politics and international relations, the constraint component looked into the relationship between traders and investors and their state in democratic and autocratic regimes. Empirical findings show that when their nationals have significant economic stakes in a foreign market, states intervene to protect those stakes against the repercussions of international conflicts. Yet, compared to autocrats, democratic decision makers are reluctant to spend public resources for the protection of economic agents by intervention.

5

THE CRITICAL TEST U.S. Interventions We are a trading nation, and our prosperity is linked to peace and stability in the world . . . Simply stated, the worldwide market that we’re part of cannot thrive where regional violence, instability, and aggression put it at peril. Our economic wellbeing and our security depend on a stable world in which the community of peaceful, democratic nations continues to grow. —Dick Cheney, former secretary of defense1

why does the united states intervene in strangers’ conflicts? Does economic liberalism explain U.S. decision making as an external state to conflicts between other nations? The United States presents an important case for the theoretical framework described and tested in previous chapters. In Chapter 4, empirical tests consistently showed that major power states and third parties with significant economic stakes in belligerent countries are more likely to intervene in ongoing conflicts, although, in the latter case, democratic institutions may put a brake on policies aimed at protecting economic agents abroad. The United States is an ideal-typical case that brings together these characteristics. Its unique power status and economic and security interests around the globe suggest that the United States would be actively involved in other nations’ conflicts. The empirical record supports this point and shows that the United States has consistently acted to support its key allies in international conflicts and that its choice of sides was highly predictable from its previous relations with regional countries. Qualitative evidence presented in this chapter suggests important trends and shows that U.S. policymakers were driven by the incentive to protect American interests abroad.2 Preservation of the status quo has remained a central theme in intervention decisions.3 The United States has opposed dissident regimes, such as those in Nicaragua, Libya, and Iran, in their conflicts with neighboring states and has strengthened friendly governments to contain their advancement. Perhaps most importantly, a subtle combination of economic and ideological imperatives has driven U.S. decision making. In 92

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this respect, neither the liberal nor the realist framework alone can explain U.S. involvement in international conflicts. Most of the time, economic interests were inseparable from security considerations where long-term interests in belligerent nations rather than short-term, hegemonic calculations drove intervention decisions.4 Broad economic concerns mostly related to the stability and security of a region, and safe access to land and sea routes for economic activity played into these decisions. This chapter elaborates and empirically assesses these points. The next section discusses previous research on economics and U.S. military involvement abroad. The third section presents qualitative evidence from international conflicts in less developed areas—the Middle East, North Africa, and Latin America—where the United States intervened in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In an effort to combine economic liberalism with economic theories of imperialism that developed a deterministic approach to intervention, I focus on regions where international conflicts and other forms of political instability are more likely to jeopardize the security of investors and traders than in developed areas.5 DEFENDING ECONOMIC INTERESTS ABROAD?

A voluminous literature exists on the role that economic interests play in American foreign policy. Such considerations echo in policymakers’ accounts of the use of force abroad. In a speech to the Connecticut Chamber of Commerce, Secretary of the Navy Wilbur explained the U.S. decision to become involved in World War I on the Allied side as an economic matter: Americans have over twenty million tons of merchant shipping to carry the commerce of the world, worth $3 billion. We have loans and property abroad, exclusive of government loans, of over $10,000,000. If we add to this the volume of exports and imports for a single year—almost $10 billion—we have an amount almost equal to the entire property of the United States in 1868 and if we add to this the $8 billion due us from foreign governments, we have a total of $31 billion, being about the total wealth of the nation in 1878 . . . These vast amounts must be considered when we talk about defending the flag . . . We fought not because Germany invaded or threatened to invade America but she struck at our commerce on the North Sea and denied to our citizens on the high seas the protection of our flag . . . To defend America we must be prepared to defend its interests and our flag in every corner of the globe . . .

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An American child crying on the banks of the Yangtze a thousand miles from the coast can summon the ships of the American navy up that river to defend it from unjust assault.6

Similarly, Staley, in his seminal work War and the Private Investor, quotes President Coolidge on the protection of private investors’ abroad: “Our government has certain rights over and certain duties toward our own citizens and their property, wherever they may be located . . . The fundamental laws of justice are universal in their application. These rights go with the citizen. Wherever he goes, the duties of the Government follow him.”7 While policymakers approached the protection of economic interests abroad as elements of America’s grand strategy and a natural outcome of its extensive global interests, some historians and area specialists interpreted economic relations with less developed areas, especially Latin America, as “hierarchical.” Arguments on economic determinism, interest group influence, or hegemonic ambitions in distant regions have been adopted in various accounts of American foreign policy. Military involvement in less developed areas was argued to be catering to the parochial demands of interest groups. Among important leftist historians, LaFeber and Williamson argued that the United States sought hegemonic control of Central American affairs. This has since become a well-known thesis and spurred a voluminous debate. In the revisionist camp, scholars associated security interests with policymakers’ incentives to protect American monopolies in Central America. The economic determinism theme was expressed in popular terms such as “banana republics,” “gunboat diplomacy,” and “dollar diplomacy.”8 The “symbiotic relationship” between foreign investment and traditional elements such as landowners and conservative elites in host countries has been argued to create strong incentives to preserve the status quo and oppose revolutionary regimes that seek to introduce radical changes to the economic structure.9 While the revisionist thesis emphasized the hierarchical economic and political relations between the United States and Latin American countries, other scholars contested its arguments on empirical grounds. Gilpin argued that the revisionist thesis is a mostly inadequate and/or incomplete explanation: One can cite numerous examples of corporations exercising influence over American foreign policy for their own ends. American policy toward Castro’s Cuba, Allende’s Chile, and other countries has been profoundly influenced by the hostile attitudes toward these nations of American business. The Hicken-

THE CRITICAL TEST: U.S. INTERVENTIONS 95

looper Amendment (1962) and subsequent policy statements and laws of various administrations in Washington denying financial aid to countries that confiscated the property of American corporations without “just” compensation were the outgrowth of corporate lobbying. . . . The available evidence does not, however, add up to the radical thesis that there is a systematic relationship between American policy and the multinationals. . . . On the contrary, there are many examples when corporate interest and foreign policy have sharply diverged.10

Lowenthal’s interpretation of American foreign policy in the region reaches a similar conclusion: “The whole record of American involvement in [the Caribbean] . . . suggests that the main interest of the U.S. Government has not been economic. Security concerns and traditional axioms, not simple conquest or profit, have motivated American involvement in the Dominican Republic and the rest of the Caribbean for many decades.”11 In a major work in this field, Krasner presents a systematic account of extractive industries and unilateral use of force by the United States in Third World countries. Krasner argues potently that, since 1950, the United States has been unwilling to use its power against the expropriation of economic assets belonging to American nationals unless “nationalizations were associated with regimes that were perceived as being communist” and instead paid compensations to corporations or imposed economic sanctions on the host country.12 On the other hand, policymaking resulted in an increased burden on taxpayers when Congress had the upper hand because legislators mainly prioritized interests of their constituencies. For instance, when King Saud of Saudi Arabia demanded tax payments from ARAMCO (Arabian American Oil Company), the National Security Council decided to increase payments to Saudi Arabia to share the burden through more taxes on oil.13 In this extensive analysis, Krasner concludes that statism is the theory that better fits American policymaking given the lack of evidence that supports an explanation based on the economic interests of powerful interest groups: The six cases discussed . . . in which the United States used overt or covert force—Mexico in 1914 and 1916, Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, Cuba in 1961, the Dominican Republic in 1965, and Chile in the early 1970s—cannot be adequately explained as involvements preserving the coherence of American capitalism. . . . While all involved economic interests, they also impinged on more general policy objectives usually associated with minimizing the presence of communist regimes in less developed countries. One can think

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of other cases of forceful intervention besides, including Korea, Lebanon, and Vietnam, where there were no direct economic interests but where the same general political goal was threatened.14

Layne presents an account of U.S. decision making that depicts the United States as an “extraregional hegemon with a military presence in regions where it has a vital stake in maintaining stability.”15 Using the Open Door as “an explanatory tool” to define American grand strategy in the post-1945 period, Layne clarifies the alleged tension between economic and security goals and depicts them as closely intertwined and complementary rather than competing objectives. Differentiating economic interests from parochial demands of interest groups that push the state for private goods, such an approach allows a model where policymaking is responsive to both domestic demands and international stimulus. In line with the present framework, the Open Door melts economic liberalism and realpolitik explanations of foreign policy in the same pot.16 Few would deny that there is a strong economic undercurrent to U.S. relations with Latin America as well as with North Africa and the Middle East. From late nineteenth to the early twentieth century, American capital was used to build infrastructure, develop extractive industries and commercial agriculture, and establish efficient shipping lines in Central America.17 In the post-1945 period, American economic interests were established in other regions, and the viability of such investments depended heavily on preserving existing economic relations and domestic alliances. In defending these interests against potential disruptions of international conflicts, U.S. efforts mainly involved supporting regional allies in their conflicts, and, in doing so, Washington adopted a balanced policy rather than the outright and unconditional support that can alienate potential allies. In line with previous research, the present analysis, which particularly focuses on intervention in international conflict, suggests no compelling portrait that policymakers were driven exclusively by the demands of interest groups and ignored broader American interests in the conflict region. There were several cases where economic interest groups registered their grievances against host countries or expressed concern with interstate turmoil, but the ultimate U.S. policy was based on a careful calculation of long-term strategic interests that accounted for regional as well as international dynamics. For instance, in the Saudi Arabia–Egypt conflict (1962) over the Yemeni civil war between traditional and leftist groups, the United States supported its long-time ally Saudi Arabia. Yet such support came late and remained

THE CRITICAL TEST: U.S. INTERVENTIONS 97

modest. The Kennedy administration also extended formal recognition to the revolutionary rebels who assumed control of the Yemeni government with Nasser’s support despite the fact that ARAMCO, the largest American private investment in the region, vehemently opposed such appeasement toward Yemen.18 Hence, while being executed inconsistently at times, the overarching goal of maintaining stability and keeping a region friendly to U.S. economic and security interests dominated decision making even when that required ignoring investors’ demands. In doing so, the United States searched for the optimal policy that “would serve the interests of relevant interest groups and the electorate at large and still protect American interests abroad.”19 The historical background of the U.S. decision to intervene and its choice of sides also shows that economic interests in regional allies were not direct at all times. Opposing Nicaragua in conflicts with its neighbors in the twentieth century, supporting Sudan and Chad against Libyan aggression in 1980s, or supporting Oman against Yemen in 1982 involved no direct economic interests. In the first two cases, Nicaragua and Libya emerged as serial aggressors in their regions, whereas Oman became a strategic ally for the United States and a key littoral state on the Strait of Hormuz after the Iranian revolution. Besides, neither conflict was as significant as the world wars or the Korean War. Indeed, most were low-intensity skirmishes between belligerent nations, and, in most cases, American involvement remained limited to a show of force or military assistance to its allies. Hence, neither the balance of payments nor the magnitude of foreign investment in any of these countries would adequately predict U.S. military involvement. Similarly, looking for a direct threat to American security interests would also fail to provide a satisfying explanation. Instead, the strategic location of the belligerents, the possibility of outside interference, and the long-term consequences of supporting one side of the conflict shaped U.S. decisions. REGIONAL INTERESTS AND CHOOSING SIDES

Much ink has been spilled on U.S. military involvement abroad, though few studies have provided a comprehensive picture of U.S. involvement as an external state in international conflicts.20 Quantitative work undertaken in Chapter 4 identified general patterns in intervention behavior. Employing a number of multinomial logit regressions and using external states’ choice to intervene for or against a belligerent as the dependent variable, I tested several arguments drawn from the realist and liberal research programs. Quantitative

98  THE CRITICAL TEST: U. S. INTERVENTIONS

analysis suffers from some limitations, the most important being its inability to test causal mechanisms. Qualitative work brings in historical evidence, which enhances our ability to delineate the cause-and-effect relations. This is especially important in a complex case like that of the United States, where the third-party state has economic and political interests around the globe. These extensive interests do not imply that the United States intervenes in any conflict, nor does it mean that the United States has had direct interests in the belligerents that it militarily assisted. Quantitative tests suggest general contours of intervention behavior, whereas qualitative evidence greatly improves our understanding of decision-making dynamics, especially when state behavior does not easily conform to these patterns. As the following sections show, two major themes dominated U.S. interventions in international conflicts in less developed areas. First, containing a regional aggressor with an alien ideology that policymakers believed was not an indigenous movement has been a central policy goal. Opposing outside interference that could upset existing economic and political relations was an important part of this policy. European interference in the pre-1945 period and later Soviet influence were seen as forces to be contained through support to regional allies. Second, the United States kept direct military involvement at the minimum possible level. Military involvement was mostly indirect through allies; was undertaken in cases where U.S. policymakers anticipated long-term adverse consequences, unless some action would be taken; and came after economic punishments proved inefficient in containing an aggressive nation. Central America

Military involvement in Latin American was a litmus test of American foreign policy objectives. President Johnson declared to Secretary of State Rusk, “This hemisphere is our home. This is where we live. These people are our neighbors. If we cannot make it work here, where we live, how can we expect to make it work anywhere else?”21 Central America and the Caribbean acquired a much greater importance for U.S. security and economy than the rest of the region.22 This was summarized nicely by Secretary of State Philander C. Knox in 1912: The logic of political geography and of strategy, and now our tremendous national interest created by the Panama Canal, make the safety, the peace, and the prosperity of Central America and the zone of the Caribbean of paramount interest to the Government of the United States. Thus the malady of revolutions and financial collapse is most acute precisely in the region where it is most dangerous. It is here that we seek to apply a remedy.23

THE CRITICAL TEST: U.S. INTERVENTIONS 99

U.S. interests in Central America, including Panama, Venezuela, Haiti, Honduras, and the Dominican Republic, can be easily justified on economic grounds. Economic interests in these countries were unparalleled by any European country or by U.S. interests elsewhere in Latin America. In the early 1900s, the U.S. market share was well over 60 percent in all five countries and over 50 percent in the 1910s while in Haiti the United States dominated over 70 percent of the market in both decades. In Venezuela, the market was more evenly divided among England, Germany, and the United States (around 20 percent each) in 1903–1904, while Germany reduced its investments to 16 percent in early 1910s.24 Most historians and area specialists for Latin America have argued that the main goals of U.S. military involvement in late nineteenth century were debt settlement and the security of American investments against dissident leaders. In this respect, U.S. actions followed more or less historical patterns of intervention because debt collection was recognized as a legitimate form of military involvement by international law in this period.25 The United States also militarily imposed financial arrangements on countries such as the Dominican Republic (1903, 1905, and 1916–1924) and Nicaragua (1909, 1912–1925, and 1925–1933) in the early twentieth century to control customs collection and assist the target country in paying its external debt.26 Overall, “between the Spanish-American War and the Great Depression, the United States sent troops into Latin America in more than thirty-four occasions in the name of protecting United States investments in the region. France, Germany, Italy, and Spain also frequently used armed intervention or blockades to redress the claims of their nations or to collect unpaid debts.”27 As discussed extensively in Chapter 2, most of these interventions were unilateral uses of force against a country without an intra- or interstate war in the background. It is important to emphasize that U.S. military interventions in international conflicts in Latin America followed more complex and broader goals than simply debt collection and investor protection. The Monroe Doctrine, presented by President James Monroe in 1823, depicted the general principle of a reciprocal noninterference policy between the United States and European countries and guided intervention decisions in conflicts in the late nineteenth century. An early application of the Monroe Doctrine in the context of an international conflict was the France–Dominican Republic conflict in 1895. France sent a fleet to appear before the Dominican capital to redress the claims of the Banque Nationale de Saint Domingue (National Bank of San Domingo),

100  THE CRITICAL TEST: U. S. INTERVENTIONS

controlled by Credit Mobilier. French action was aimed at compelling the Dominican authorities through seizure of customhouses. However, an American corporation based in New York, San Domingo Improvement Company, had a contract with the Dominican government to administer the customhouses and collect revenues, and a French show of force would have jeopardized the company’s financial situation. While contacting the French government through the American ambassador in Paris for negotiations over French claims, a tit-for-tat strategy was also designed to signal resolve: “Three U.S. Navy ships were on hand as well to observe the dispute, which was settled when the San Domingo Improvement Company purchased the National Bank from Credit Mobilier and paid an indemnity to the French, putting off for the moment European intervention on the grounds of Dominican insolvency.”28 The Roosevelt Corollary put a new spin on the Monroe Doctrine in 1904 and recognized direct use of force by the United States in cases where the noninterference policy is violated by a European power. The most significant test of the Roosevelt Corollary was the Venezuela Crisis of 1902–1903. On December 10, 1902, Italy, Great Britain, and Germany imposed a blockade on Venezuela to enforce creditor claims incurred as a result of property damage to European nationals during Venezuela’s internal violence (1898–1900). American President Theodore Roosevelt was worried about the German military plans for the Western Hemisphere: “If any South American country misbehaves toward any European country, let the European country spank it . . . [but] the punishment should not take the form of acquisition of territory by any non-American power.”29 “The Venezuela business,” as Roosevelt called it, led him to formulate a policy known as the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, which aimed to keep Europe away from the Caribbean. The United States did not hesitate to support the Venezuelan side in the crisis and rejected individual claims of European countries or decisions of the International Court of Arbitration at Hague that ordered Venezuela to make a preferential payment of European claims.30 Nevertheless, the U.S. government also aimed to create a global public good by committing itself to the financial and economic stability of Latin American countries. Within a few years after the conflict, the United States supported Juan Vincente Gomez as a response to President Castro’s controversial economic policies against European and American investors, specifically the French Cable Company and the New York and Bermudez Asphalt Company, and assisted European countries to redress their claims without having to exert military control over their debtors.

THE CRITICAL TEST: U.S. INTERVENTIONS 101

The Monroe Doctrine was reinterpreted by U.S. decision makers to account for emerging threats in the Western Hemisphere. For instance, Kennedy emphasized that “the Monroe Doctrine means what it has meant since President Monroe and John Quincy Adams enunciated it, and that is that we would oppose a foreign power extending its power to the Western Hemisphere.”31 Basically, the Monroe Doctrine continued to influence U.S. policy in the region until Hoover’s noninterference policy, which became formally recognized in the 1933 Montevideo and 1936 Buenos Aires conferences.32 Afterward, the actual practice was to gradually abandon direct intervention between 1920 and 1940 and to transition to a new stage in line with the global goals. The United States attempted to institutionalize relations with Latin American countries through an Inter-American system involving the Organization of American States (1948), the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (1947), and the Inter-American Development Bank (1959).33 While the influence of the Monroe Doctrine subsided in policymaking, the goal to keep the region safe from outside interference continued with renewed significance, and intervention took more diverse forms. In the post1945 period, American economic interests in the region reached record levels. In 1960s, the Business Group for Latin America was formed by thirty-seven firms, including Ford, U.S. Steel, DuPont, Standard Oil, Anaconda Copper, International Telephone and Telegraph, United Fruit, and the Chase Manhattan Bank; the group actively lobbied the government for protection of foreign investments. Yet there is little evidence that intervention decisions in this period were guided by the interest groups’ protection demands. Indeed, U.S. policy in Latin America almost entirely reflected the complexity in U.S. global strategy: The practice of contemporary U.S. policy toward Latin America is shaped by three broad-based concerns: support for economies and development strategies that accord private foreign banking and investment capital a key role; support for regimes prepared to align themselves with efforts to contain, and even roll back, the forces of national and social revolution; and a determination to safeguard America’s strategies and “national security” interests in conformity with regional and global goals.34

Policymakers aimed to balance support for investors and traders with the policies that reflected broader economic and security interests in the region, which sometimes caused resentment among business groups operating in Central America. As one corporate representative mentioned:

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The Executive Branch of the U.S. Government has indicated on numerous occasions that it is pursuing a policy of “low profile” in Latin America, and that this policy limits the capacity of the U.S. government to involve itself on behalf of U.S. private foreign investments. We know, for example, that practically no sanctions will be invoked by the U.S. government in cases of expropriation. We also know that leading members of the Congress concerned with Latin America accept this “low profile” posture of the Executive Branch. All this must lead us to the conclusion that, as far as the protection of U.S. private investments in Latin America goes, we in the business community are literally on our own.35

Early interventions in conflicts between regional states in Central America were harbingers of U.S. policy to contain subversive forces in the following decades. U.S. decisions were driven by the goal to preserve the status quo and involved a mix of economic and security concerns. In 1880s, President Barrios of Guatemala sought to create a Central America Union and revive the idea of a five-nation federation in the region. In 1885, he fought with El Salvadoran forces on the field of Chalchuapa and was killed in the war.36 The United States and Mexico intervened against Guatemala despite the fact U.S.–Guatemala relations had been decent during Barrios’s administration. Yet his threats to cut the cables of the Central and South American Telegraph Company alarmed the United States, which sent USS Wachusett to protect the company’s investment.37 Starting in the 1920s, civil wars in the region frequently led to border disputes between neighboring countries. In these conflicts, Nicaragua would become the focal point of U.S. interventions and, later, the representative of anti-Americanism in the region during the Cold War. Nicaragua: A Serial Aggressor

Nicaragua’s civil war against the Sandinistas starting in 1926 as well as its support for rebel groups that targeted neighboring states was a major source of concern for the United States.38 Rebel factions led by Sandino (Army for the Defense of Nicaraguan Sovereignty) were based in northern Nicaragua and Honduras. Their continuous and substantive presence weakened Nicaragua’s control of the frontier zone with Honduras, called the “Western Segovias,” which had become the safe zone for revolutionary armies and criminal groups.39 Nicaragua frequently blamed Honduras for not cracking down on the rebels and allowing them to operate freely across the porous border. Disagreements between the two neighboring states led to cross-border raids by

THE CRITICAL TEST: U.S. INTERVENTIONS 103

Nicaragua to halt insurgent trafficking. The United States was militarily present in Nicaragua at that time and established the Nicaraguan National Guard to deal with internal violence. Importantly, the United States militarily assisted Honduras in controlling rebel activity. While the United States had no real interest in Honduras, its strategic location next to Nicaragua and its dependable democratic government that relied so heavily on outside assistance and willingness to support the United States against Nicaragua’s Sandinistas allowed it to attract extensive U.S. economic and military aid in return. The conflict between Honduras and Nicaragua was not an isolated incident. Regime crisis with Nicaragua’s government was reminiscent of those with Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Chile, El Salvador, and Guatemala.40 Economic and security concerns perfectly overlapped in the Nicaraguan case as well as in Cuba and Grenada after the rise of leftist leaders in late 1970s: The political and economic paths pursued by revolutionary leaders in these countries confirmed the worst fears of many policymakers, businesspeople, bankers, and trade union leaders in the United States. They became convinced that not since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis had the US security and economic interests in the Caribbean and Latin America in general had been endangered so seriously.41

Border disputes between Nicaragua and Costa Rica in mid-1950s were examples of this trend. With the construction of the Panama Canal, its protection and control of alternative routes through the San Juan River in Costa Rica and Lake Nicaragua in Nicaragua were central economic and security issues for the United States. In 1954, an exile rebel army led by the former president of Costa Rica, Rafael Calderon Guardia, crossed the border from Nicaragua into Costa Rica. Nicaraguan President Somoza wanted to support his long-time friends Guardia and Picado and agreed to Picado’s request for assistance.42 In 1955, Costa Rican rebels attacked border towns. Guardia also obtained aircraft from Sweden that were used against the Costa Rican army. To counteract the attack, the United States intervened by selling fighter planes to Costa Rica following an OAS (Organization of American States) recommendation. The conflict terminated in a few weeks, and under the auspices of OAS Nicaragua and Costa Rica agreed to the joint surveillance of the border.43 Border conflicts also driven by the presence of transnational rebel groups aroused tensions between neighboring Nicaragua and Honduras in 1980s.44 These clashes have been interpreted by critics as U.S. manipulations to create

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an opportunity to attack Nicaragua.45 John D. Negroponte, U.S. ambassador to Honduras in 1980s, called the situation “our special project,” and the United States consistently intervened against Nicaragua, which it believed to be driven by outside powers.46 As one scholar observed: From 1981 to 1990, the U.S. engaged in a concerted and multifaceted campaign to overthrow the government of Nicaragua, a policy that was highly controversial domestically and culminated in the Iran-contra scandal. In the history of U.S. attempts to destabilize other governments, the effort against Nicaragua stands out as one of the most intensive and long-lasting.47

The onset of Nicaragua’s revolutionary civil war (1982–1990) marked the deterioration of the relationship between the United States and Nicaragua. Beginning late in Carter’s term, aid was suspended when the FSLN (Marxist Sandinista National Liberation Front) took power, nationalized private industries, and was suspected by Washington of supporting leftist groups in other Central American countries. During the Reagan presidency, concerns with foreign interference in Central America heightened, as reflected in the 1984 Report of the Bipartisan Commission: We have stressed before and we repeat here: indigenous reform movements, even indigenous revolutions, are not themselves a security concern of the United States. History holds examples of genuinely popular revolutions, springing wholly from native roots. In this hemisphere, Mexico is a clear example. But during the last two decades we have faced a new phenomenon. The concerting of the power of the Soviet Union and Cuba to extend their presence and influence into vulnerable areas of the Western Hemisphere is a direct threat to U.S. security interests.48

Nicaragua was armed by Cuba and the Soviet bloc, whereas U.S. military assistance to Honduras reached record levels in the 1980s. Outside support to neighbors turned their conflicts into a proxy war between East and West as the United States aimed at “rolling back” communism in the Third World.49 The United States was involved in Nicaragua’s internal violence in several ways by providing support to the Contras, mining the Nicaraguan border, providing economic support to Honduras to base the Contras, and imposing economic sanctions on Nicaragua. U.S. interventions in the 1981 and 1986 conflicts between Honduras and Nicaragua took place in this tense environment. Multiple border incursions by the Nicaraguan armed forces into Honduran

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territory, chasing the Contras, made the United States step up its military aid to Honduras tenfold in this period. Honduras allowed and supported U.S. efforts to arm and train the Contras on its territory in exchange for such assistance.50 To demonstrate its will to oppose revolutionary movements in Central America, the United States also undertook several military maneuvers in the region. Joint military exercises (1983 and 1985) were conducted on Honduran territory to step up the pressure on Nicaragua. A new training agreement was signed with Honduras in July 1983.51 Economic and military assistance tied Honduran hands to assist the United States in the long-running crisis with Nicaragua.52 Expectedly, such assistance dramatically waned in early 1990s with the culmination of Cold War rivalries. Libya: North Africa’s Serial Aggressor

Libya emerged as North Africa’s Nicaragua in 1970s. Libya’s relations with the United States quickly deteriorated after Qaddafi’s 1969 coup against the friendly Idrisi regime. Discovery of oil further changed the way that Libya perceived its regional status. While the Idrisi regime heavily depended on revenues from foreign bases, Qaddafi’s Arab nationalism, financed by oil revenues, captured the rising ideological trend in the region and culminated in a militaristic foreign policy to establish its sphere of influence.53 Qaddafi gradually nationalized the petroleum and banking sectors, eventually putting them under government control, and abolished the base rights that were a constant source of income in Idrisi’s term. Despite its heavy reliance on exports, Libya did not shy away from “raising prices, demanding participation, and nationalizing the oil industry,” mostly targeting independent oil companies.54 Libya’s actions spearheaded a wave of nationalization. With increasing political leverage, oil-producing countries effectively protested the Yom Kippur War in 1973 by restricting oil production and unilaterally imposing oil prices. Arab countries in OPEC, such as Nigeria and Algeria, acted together with Libya in increasing prices in 1980.55 A rising tide of anti-Americanism began in Libya, culminating in the 1979 mob attack on the U.S. embassy, which alerted the United States about Libya as a serial aggressor in North Africa. A series of economic embargoes and travel bans gradually expanded the economic and political pressure on Libya. Oil interests, which accounted for 11 percent of U.S. oil exports, failed to stop the United States from opposing Libya’s aggressive policies toward Central Africa. Security concerns heightened so substantially that economic interests could be easily sacrificed.56 When the U.S. State Department consulted oil

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companies operating in Libya on the government’s decisions, there was minor domestic opposition. American companies voluntarily exited the oil market to support the government’s bid against Libya. Despite the fact that operations of twenty American companies accounted for 88 percent of the Libyan oil market, Amerada Hess, Conoco, Occidental, Amoseas, Oasis (Continental, Amerida, Marathon), Esso, and W. R. Grace ended their operations and withdrew from the Libyan market.57 At home, oil-producing states suffered from high oil prices, and their congressional representatives enthusiastically encouraged the embargo decision. On the East Coast of the United States, oil refineries were mostly designed to process Libyan crude, and these states opposed economic sanctions, which could easily escalate to an oil ban.58 Libya was denounced as a terrorist state by both the Ford and Carter administrations, but tensions heightened particularly in Reagan’s term: “In contrast to the Carter administration, which tended to emphasize regional sources for regional problems, the Reagan administration viewed Libyan pressure against Sudan or Tunisia, for example, as simply part and parcel of a broader external challenge orchestrated from Moscow.”59 Libya’s neighbors gained special importance during this tense period, and the United States tried to counteract Libyan expansionism through aid to poor African countries.60 To control the situation, Reagan signed the National Security Decision Directive, titled “Security Considerations in Egypt and Sudan,” in October 1981, which involved military aid and expanded multinational exercises to demonstrate U.S. commitment to the security of Egypt and Sudan.61 In 1983, the U.S. State Department’s stance toward Libya also emphasized concern with Libyan aggression toward neighboring countries: Qaddafi has altered the power balance in northeastern Africa and created a permanent state of anxiety on the part of his weaker neighbors, distracting them from economic development. His machinations throughout Africa have contributed to instability and encouraged anti-American elements . . . Qaddafi’s accomplishment has been to increase markedly the level of fear among the weak of the humane, to set back the momentum of accommodation and peace in the Middle East, and to sow instability among the poverty-stricken fledgling states of Africa.62

A series of conflicts took place between Libya and its North African neighbors. The United States consistently intervened against Libya in these conflicts as a reflection of its policy toward the Qaddafi regime. Libya’s weak neighbors,

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Sudan and Chad, had almost no political or economic value for the United States. Yet they had been Qaddafi’s strongest bids due to their fragile political structure and close proximity. Conflicts in which Libya attacked its neighbors reflected these contentious interrelations. Libya actively sought to subdue Sudan, Liberia, Niger, and particularly Chad, where transnational rebel groups supported by Libya carried on political violence and destabilized the country.63 Chadian President Hissen Habre was previously a rebel leader in Chad’s recurrent civil wars who consequently had prevailed and captured the government.64 In 1981, Libya forced Chad into announcing its union with Libya to pay back Libya’s military assistance for Habre’s rebels. In the 1983 Libya–Chad conflict, the United States sided with Chad to halt Libyan advancement into the country’s southern region. It sent military assistance to Habre’s government, strengthened Egypt’s position along the Libyan border, and pressured France to intervene against the rebels under Goukouni’s leadership who were allegedly supported by Qaddafi.65 To show his support of Reagan’s concerns with Libya, Mitterrand intervened in Chad and set up a defense line along the sixteenth parallel about 200 miles north of N’Djamena, ceding the northern half of the region to rebels controlled by Libya. Yet the French assistance remained limited to a few paratroopers. When the United States asked the French about striking Libya from bases in Great Britain, France refused, which was later reflected in Reagan’s memoirs: The refusal upset me, because I believed all civilized nations were in the same boat when it came to resisting terrorism . . . At least in the case of France, however, economic considerations prevailed while it publicly condemned terrorism, France conducted a lot of business with Libya and was typically trying to play both sides.66

Libya’s special interest in its weak neighbors also turned Sudan’s ­Nimeiri into a major ally toward the end of 1970s. Sudan successfully played the Soviet–­Libyan axis of evil card to squeeze aid from the United States and benefited from U.S. interest in keeping the Soviets out of poverty-stricken Africa. Despite Nimeiri’s inability to crack down on Libyan terrorists based in his country and his initial socialist stance, Sudan became a major recipient of aid in the region following Israel and Egypt until Bashir’s term.67 Nimeiri frequently claimed that Libyan agents infiltrated from neighboring countries to destabilize his regime and asked for military assistance against the southern rebels allegedly supported by Libya. It was marked in congressional hearings

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that “ever since Anwar Sadat had indicated to the Carter administration that Sudan is the ‘soft underbelly’ of Egypt, our government has been seeking to guarantee the survival of Numeyri’s [Nimeiri] own government against external threats, particularly those perceived as originations from Libya.”68 Among several hot pursuits and territorial incursions of Libya into Sudan to defeat West-friendly Nimeiri, the United States intervened in three particular conflicts in 1981, 1983, and 1984. In 1981, “the pressure on Qaddafi was turned up by several weeks of intense prior publicity about a huge set of military maneuvers in November by the U.S. and its regional allies under the name Operation Bright Star, complete with two AWACS radar aircraft patrolling Egypt’s border with Libya.”69 The Sudanese groups with which Libya cooperated to stage the attack against Nimeiri were indeed Sudanese secret agents as part of a plan among Sudan, the United States, and Egypt to lure Libya into conflict and respond heavily with Egyptian air forces. In 1983, the United States sent AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) planes and, in 1984, airlifted 12,000 Egyptian troops and supplies to strengthen Sudan against rebels supported by Libya.70 Egypt also benefited from Libya’s aggressive policies: It assumed the role of a regional stabilizer against Libya in North Africa. The African–Arab elements in its culture put Egypt in a special position to approach the United States and show poor African nations that there were sources of assistance alternative to Soviet subversion.71 Egypt’s influence was not limited to North Africa. Egypt was closely linked to African and Middle Eastern countries and carried maritime significance with its strategic location on the Suez Canal. During Sadat’s administration, Egypt proved capable of mobilizing both African and Middle Eastern support for his bid against Israel in the Yom Kippur War. In this period, Egypt toyed with a rapprochement policy with the United States, despite domestic opposition from conservative groups. Sadat promised disengagement of his forces from the Sinai and paid a historical visit to Israel in November 20, 1977. Starting in 1974, his infitah (open-door) policy made Egypt attractive for American investors.72 U.S. policy became intimately related to Sadat’s personal rule, and Egypt received the second greatest amount of economic assistance, following Israel, after the Yom Kippur War. As an extension of the developing relations between the two countries, the United States supported Egypt in its conflict with Libya in 1985, and Egypt intervened along with the United States in the Libya–Sudan conflicts in 1981 and 1983 to demonstrate its support for U.S. policies in North Africa.73

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The Middle East: The Early Years

In the early twentieth century, security in the Middle East was for the most part provided by Britain. Beginning in 1880s, Britain had created protectorates in the Arabian Peninsula and from Aden to Bahrain to handle the foreign affairs of the area. Local rulers agreed not to grant any concessions or rights within their territory to a foreign country. By 1900, coastal rulers of the peninsula from Kuwait to Muscat had already signed protection treaties with Britain, and, in the interior, local rulers obtained favorable deals from the British after World War I with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.74 Though the Ottomans perished with the partition of their land among Britain, France, and Italy, this was not the end of great power competition in the region. Neither defeat in World War I nor the Bolshevik Revolution eliminated Russian influence, and Britain found itself in a stiff competition with the Soviets, particularly for Iran. As early as 1907, the two powerful states practically divided Iran into north and south with the Anglo-Russian Convention. Britain saw Iran as a buffer state against Russian expansion. By exerting control over Iran, Britain sought to guarantee safe access to India, which required control of the Suez Canal and the Persian Gulf. As the British Navy switched from coal to oil in World War I, the discovery of oil in Iran significantly increased its importance. The Anglo-Persian agreement on August 9, 1919, gave Britain control over Iran’s finances. The agreement was hidden from the purview of the Iranian Majlis. When the secret deal with Britain surfaced, it sharply divided domestic coalitions: Traditional elements such as landowners who opposed Soviet-sponsored revolutionary movements were favoring the treaty, whereas the northern merchants suffering from the British embargo on trade with the Soviets opposed it.75 To counteract the British maneuvering, positive inducements were combined with sticks in the Soviets’ Iranian policy. The Bolsheviks cancelled Iranian debts and renounced previous privileges and concessions. They continued to exert de facto control in the northern provinces of Iran that were contiguous to Soviet Azerbaijan and Mazaneran and experimented with establishing puppet regimes in this region, such as the Gilan Republic, with the help of Jangali rebels. The Enzeli affair between Iran and Russia in 1920 took place in this fragile environment and involved Britain as the intervener state. With the Bolshevik Revolution, the White Russian Navy retreated to Iran’s Caspian port of Enzeli, where British troops were also based. In May 1920, Bolsheviks moved to

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seize the White Russian fleet at the Caspian seaport, leading to a conflict with Iran.76 Britain supported the White Russians in their bid against the Bolsheviks but was quickly overwhelmed by the Soviet force, bringing an end to the conflict.77 Iran and the Soviets signed the Treaty of Friendship on February 26, 1921, formally terminating the conflict. The Bolshevik Army continued to stay in the northern provinces, and Iran became effectively divided between the two great powers. The treaty abolished all previous treaties and conventions between Iran and the Tsarist regime and introduced an intervention clause that gave Soviets “the right to require the Persian government to send away foreign subjects, in the event of their taking advantage of their engagement in the Persian navy to undertake hostile action against Russia.”78 British involvement in the region extended well beyond Iran. With the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Saudi Arabia fell under British influence. Britain supported Ibn Sa’ud to defeat his rivals and consolidate power against his rival Sharif Husayn. Britain abstained from assuming colonial control and relied mostly on bargains with friendly local patrons. The British approach was exemplified in the Anglo-Saudi treaty of 1915, where Britain recognized the territories of Sa’ud and promised to assist the king against outside aggression. In return, Sa’ud agreed not to “enter into any correspondence, agreement or treaty with any foreign nation or power, and refrain from all aggression on, or interference with the territories of Kuwait, and Bahrain, and of the shaiks of Qatar and the Oman coast, who are under the protection of the British government, and who have treaty relations with the said government.”79 The year 1932 marked the zenith of this local deal as Britain declared Ibn Sa’ud as the king. Britain fulfilled its treaty obligations by supporting Sa’ud in his long-­ running conflict with Yemen. As a direct consequence of the Anglo-Saudi treaty, the only opportunity for expansion for Saudi Arabia remained toward the Yemeni border. Sa’ud seized this opportunity. He annexed the buffer territory Asir, which brought him to the brink of a military confrontation with Imam Yahya, who also had plans for Asir. In spring of 1933, Saudi forces were massed along the Saudi–Yemeni border and engaged in several military skirmishes with Yemen. The conflict terminated with the Treaty of Ta’if in June 1934.80 Both Britain and Italy intervened in this border conflict and sent warships to maintain the status quo in the region, though such support remained as a show of force and did not involve any direct military support to Sa’ud.81 British interest in the Middle East, particularly in Saudi Arabia and Iran, was later inherited by the United States. Policymakers saw Ibn Sa’ud as an

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influential man in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia, encircled by British protectorates around the colony at Aden and British allies in traditional monarchies, was also attracted to the United States as a balancer against the British hegemony. While oil and strategic calculations motivated British security policies in the region, American oil diplomacy remained insignificant until World War II. The discovery of oil in Iran also attracted the attention of American corporations, such as Standard Vacuum and Sinclair, which asked for oil concessions along with Britain and Soviet Union. In the 1930s, the U.S. State Department formed some relations with SOCAL (Standard Oil of California), which was interested in Saudi oil. Yet oil interests played a limited role in U.S. policy toward Saudi Arabia. Miller, for instance, suggested, [U.S.] Government officials did not cater to the oilmen, nor did they accord them special privilege. In fact, sensitive to association with large oil companies, officials sought to maintain the utmost propriety in their dealings with the oil representatives. Still, impressed by the potential of Saudi oil and imbued with the notion that American business might serve the national interest as easily as the profit motive, State Department officials, particularly those connected with Near Eastern affairs, frequently gave the oilmen sympathetic hearing.82

Similarly, Anderson argued, “Although the companies provided the government with data on the subject, the government’s basic posture toward Saudi oil derived from the emerging pattern of world resources and not from corporate lobbying.”83 Because Sa’ud gave oil concessions to American firms voluntarily, Washington did not have to engage in aggressive oil diplomacy. All the United States had to do was to preserve existing economic and political alliances. In doing so, policymakers had to develop a national policy on the Middle East to safeguard American access to oil reserves and respond to declining domestic reserves based on postwar scenarios developed by the Petroleum Administration for War, the Navy, and the Department of State: “For a world still locked in a cataclysmic war that could not operate for a second without oil, the future disposition of this last great reservoir is a matter of incalculable importance— too important, perhaps for even the individualistic U.S. to leave wholly in the hands of private enterprise.”84 During World War II, Saudi Arabia emerged as a major stabilizer in the region and was vital to the Allied effort in both economic and political terms.

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In the 1950s, the United States began to fully replace Britain as the security provider. The United States built the Dhahran military base, established a permanent military mission, helped the Damman port expansion, and signed a formal defense agreement (1951) with Saudi Arabia. ARAMCO, the largest single American investment overseas, represented the anticolonial stance of the United States, differentiating its existence and ways of doing business in the Middle East from those of Britain. Saudi Arabia’s territorial integrity was important to secure the supply of oil through ARAMCO. Rather than outright support to traditional elements, however, the United States continuously courted reform and development in Sa’ud land and invested heavily in a balanced policy that appeased both sides to regional conflicts. During the Ford and Nixon administrations, U.S. policy in the region focused mainly on the “Twin Pillars” of Saudi Arabia and Iran and on defending American interests with regional surrogates. While Egypt was an undisputable ally in North Africa in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, its earlier relations with the United States in the Middle East remained unstable and were frequently put to the test in regional conflicts. Saudi Arabia and Egypt emerged as the main foes in the Middle East and as primary actors of the Arab Cold War.85 Nasser’s accession to power in Egypt through the Young Office coup of 1952 and his Arab socialist ideology divided the Middle East into two camps: a progressive camp that opposed traditional elites and a reactionary camp composed of conservative monarchies.86 The Eisenhower Years: Egypt

U.S. relations with Egypt remained uncertain through the Eisenhower years. Pursuing an evenhanded policy, Washington aimed at striking a balance between British interests, which opposed Nasser’s policies and Egypt’s pivotal role in the Middle East and North Africa. In 1954, the United States responded sympathetically to Egyptian complaints about the British base in the Suez Canal zone, and British troops withdrew from the canal in June 1954 as a result of U.S. efforts. Washington also declined to join the Baghdad Pact, which involved Britain, Iraq, and Egypt’s adversaries in the region. The Aswan Dam was the most important single project in the Egyptian economic development and was endorsed by the World Bank. The United States initially favored financial support to the dam project to resolve the Arab–Israeli conflict but ended up rejecting it under domestic pressure. Southern cotton growers saw Egypt as a major competitor in the cotton market, with 80 percent of Egyptian export earnings coming from cotton, and their opposition heavily influenced U.S. policy.87

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As the 1956 presidential elections approached, neither Eisenhower nor Dulles wanted to risk their political bid with the dam project. However, the political situation at home led to dramatic consequences at the international stage, and Nasser decided to nationalize the Suez Canal to finance the dam project. According to Washington, nationalization was in Egypt’s sovereign rights, and some international supervision for safe transit would be sufficient. As long as Nasser was complying with the 1888 Convention, use of force would be against international law. On the other hand, nationalization of the canal was unacceptable to Britain and France:88 “In 1956, nearly one-fourth of Britain’s imports passed through the canal; one-third of the Canal’s total traffic was of British registry; and, most importantly, Britain depended on the canal for transportation of the bulk of its oil requirements.”89 According to Sir Anthony Eden, the canal was a matter of survival for the British economy, whereas it was not as vital for the United States. There was also substantial French investment in the canal, and Egyptian support for Algerian nationalists had already turned France against Egypt.90 On the Israeli front, border raids from Gaza by Egyptian-sponsored commandoes (fedayeen) and the Egyptian blockade of Israel’s southern port Eilat convinced policymakers that Nasser had aggressive intentions and could attack Israel in the near future unless removed from office.91 British, French, and Israeli interests converged, and they came to an agreement that Israel would initiate a conflict against Egypt and that Britain and France would join Israel later on the basis of keeping the canal open for international traffic. First, Britain and France asked for U.N. action and proposed the AngloFrench resolution. Egypt for the most part agreed to unimpeded transit and ameliorated U.S. concerns with nationalization.92 The U.N. Security Council approved fixed tolls, insulation of the canal from the politics of any country, and a fair share of the tolls for Egyptian development. Yet the resolution failed to avoid military action. On October 29, 1956, Israel staged a successful attack on Nasser’s forces. Britain and France delivered their ultimatum to “cease fire and withdraw to positions ten miles from the Suez Canal within 12 hours” on October 30. On Nasser’s rejection, they invaded the canal zone. The U.S. role was twofold. While Washington threatened to use force if Soviet intervention on behalf of Egypt resulted in the bombing of London and Paris, it also worked to end military hostilities initiated by its allies.93 The United States supported a U.N. ceasefire call and withdrawal of Israeli troops and pressured Britain through

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the IMF (International Monetary Fund). Saudi Arabia, despite its entrenched disagreement with Nasser, embargoed oil shipments to Britain and France.94 Britain and France withdrew under pressure, whereas Israel withdrew after the United States declared its support for U.N. sanctions. It was agreed between the parties to have a U.N. peacekeeping force in the Gaza Strip and Sham al-Sheikh.95 With the Suez conflict, the United States became “the principle arbiter of western policy in the Middle East” discouraging any other Western country from taking major unilateral action without U.S. agreement.96 With the Suez crisis fiasco came the Eisenhower Doctrine, with three main provisions of a joint congressional–executive declaration based on economic aid for building strong economies, commitment to independence and territorial integrity of the threatened states, and presidential flexibility to assist any nation with military aid.97 The doctrine stated: The President is authorized to . . . employ the armed forces of the United States as he deems necessary to secrete and protect the territorial integrity and political independence of any such nation or group of nations requesting such aid against overt armed aggression from any nation controlled by International Communism.98

U.S. involvement in Syria–Jordan conflicts in 1957 and 1970 closely reflected this approach. The Eisenhower Years: Syria

While containing British aggression in the region, Eisenhower was worried about the growing Soviet influence in Syria. In the 1940s and 1950s, several coups and countercoups in Syria made it especially vulnerable to Soviets. Rise of ideological parties in the 1950s pointed heavily to Soviet interference. In 1957, the Arab Socialist Resurrection (Ba’th Party), which subscribed to communism, dominated both the cabinet and the parliament.99 In August 1957, Syrian forces encircled the U.S. embassy in Damascus, claiming to foil a plot to replace Syrian President Shukri al-Quwatli with a pro-Western regime.100 Several other developments in 1957 added to policymakers’ fears of increasing outside interference in Syrian domestic politics. These included the $60 million shipment of Soviet tanks and other military hardware, a wideranging economic and technical agreement between Syria and the Soviets signed in Moscow (August 6), expulsion of three American diplomats accused of plotting to overthrow the Syrian regime (August 13), and replacement of

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the Army Commander-in-Chief Nizam al-Din with Afif al-Bizri, who could adopt a friendly stance toward the Soviets.101 The United States was also concerned about the possibility that Nasser was organizing a Soviet-friendly coup in Syria. During the Suez crisis, Syria cut trans-Syrian pipelines that carried Persian Gulf oil to the Mediterranean and blew up the Iraq Petroleum Company pipelines in support of Nasser. In doing so, Syria halted the transfer of Iraqi petroleum to Britain and Europe.102 Syria and Jordan, a major Western ally, disagreed on most major regional issues and belonged to opposing camps in the Arab Cold War.103 Syria was in a strategic geographical position where it could choke the landlocked Jordan.104 Considering all these developments, the United States went public on September 7 by means of a presidential statement that Syria had become a base for military and subversive actions in the region. Referring to the Eisenhower Doctrine, the president announced, “If any of Syria’s Arab neighbors were physically attacked by the Sino–Soviet bloc, the United States, upon request, would be prepared to use its own armed forces to assist any such nation or group of nations against such armed aggression.”105 While Lebanon and Iraq endorsed the Eisenhower Doctrine, Syria interpreted it as intervention in the internal affairs of another nation.106 The U.S. intervention in the 1957 Syria–Jordan conflict took place in this international context. Already by March of that year, a crisis was looming between Jordanian monarch Hussein and the Nabulsi government of Syria. On March 13, the Anglo-Jordanian treaty that involved Syria had expired, and in early April Nabulsi announced his intention of establishing diplomatic relations with the Soviets. In this period, several skirmishes took place between Jordanian and Syrian intelligence services that carried out terrorist attacks against each other in a tit-for-tat fashion. King Hussein asked Western powers for help, stating that “the pot appears to be boiling over in Jordan.”107 In April, Hussein suspended the constitution and declared martial law because of alleged procommunist subversion that he claimed was organized by Syrian Arab nationalists. Close U.S. allies in the region, particularly Turkey and Israel, were worried about the changing political dynamics in Syria and announced that they were ready to take military action against Syria. The British Foreign Office made clear its determination to sustain Hussein against the plot organized by Syria and Egypt. With U.S. permission, Iraq dispatched a brigade to the pipeline station. Turkey concentrated its troops across the Syrian border, and Dulles seemed reluctant to openly prohibit Turkish

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incursion into Syria.108 Later in October came Nasser’s resolute support of Syria.109 In northern Syria, Egyptian units joined the Syrian army. The United States became militarily involved in the crisis by sending the Sixth Fleet to the Syrian coast—to which the Soviets responded by sending their own fleet—as well as by guaranteeing a $10 million economic aid grant to Jordan and acknowledging that Jordan’s independence and territorial integrity were vital to American interests in the region.110 While the United States successfully managed the conflict in 1957 and preserved the status quo in the region, the Syria–Jordan relationship remained a difficult one, occasionally erupting into military hostilities. Soviet and Egyptian involvement in Syria became only more complicated for the United States in the following years, with the intensification of the Palestinian resistance. During the Nixon administration, the race escalated between the superpowers in arming their allies in the Middle East. A war of attrition developed between Israel and Egypt, shaping the Syrian–Jordanian disagreements.111 To give an example, a crisis developed in the Middle East in September 1970 when members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine hijacked three airplanes and directed them to Jordan.112 American and British nationals in the planes were held hostage by the guerillas. Syria assisted the guerillas with border raids. On September 18, Syrian tanks crossed the Jordanian border toward Irbid, the scene of the hostage incident. The Palestine Liberation Army, another guerilla group backed by Syria, crossed into Jordan and outnumbered the small Jordanian army. King Hussein indicated that “Jordan might need the help of foreign friends” to stop the Syrian invasion, and Kissinger announced that if the United States failed to act, “the Middle East crisis would deepen as radicals and their Soviet sponsors seized the initiative.”113 The United States put American airborne units on alert. West Germany warned the Soviets that outside intervention was imminent unless they stopped backing Syria. At Hussein’s request, the United States and Israel planned an Israel Defense Forces intervention with troop mobilization along the Syrian border and delivery of additional arms to Israel.114 U.S. preparation for a widespread conflict proved effective, and Syria withdrew from Jordan to prevent U.S. military action. The Middle East in the Kennedy Years

Kennedy saw the rising Arab nationalism as an indigenous movement rather than a communist plot and adopted a conciliatory approach toward Egypt. Washington approved $431.8 million of food aid to Egypt in 1963 through

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1965 through the American Farm Bureau.115 While U.S. investments, including infrastructure projects in Egypt, were no match with those in Saudi Arabia, Washington tried to make things right with Egypt by using economic and military aid as bait. An important example of this tripartite entanglement was the Saudi Arabia–Egypt conflict over Yemen in 1962. In the 1962 Yemeni revolution and the following civil war, which toppled the monarchic regime, Saudi Arabia supported the royalists led by Imam, whereas Egypt sided with the revolutionaries led by Sallal, and the civil war turned into a larger struggle between rivals of the Arab Cold War. Egypt organized air raids against tribal resistance in northern Yemen and attacked airfields in Saudi Arabia. In February 1962, Egyptian planes dropped 119 bundles of small arms and ammunition along a 100-mile corridor up Saudi Arabia’s western coast, which was used to transport supplies to the Yemeni front. In November, combat aircraft supplied by Egypt bombed five areas in Saudi Arabia in response to Saudi support to Royalists. In response to the attack, Saudi Arabia broke off diplomatic relations with Egypt. John Badeau, the U.S. ambassador to Egypt, warned Nasser that “bombings of Saudi Arabia and airdrops of weapons . . . are forcing the U.S. close to point where we will have no alternative but to make good our obligation to Saudis.”116 Only after it became clear that Nasser would not change his course of action in the conflict, Kennedy approved Operation Hard Surface, which involved the deployment of eight F ­ -100D tactical fighter aircraft and one transport-type command support aircraft. The U.S. president also dispatched two destroyers to the Saudi port of Jedda and agreed to send a squadron of airplanes without combat ­authorization.117 While the United States supported Saudi Arabia with limited military operations to discourage Yemenis from prolonging the conflict, it nevertheless recognized the revolutionary government on December 19, 1962, after the war’s termination. The U.S. consul general reported from Yemen that the new regime met the dual criteria for U.S. recognition with popular support and effective control of the territory, and the Kennedy administration mainly followed this advice.118 The intervention in 1962 and subsequent recognition reflect Kennedy’s balanced policy, which accounted for broader dynamics and long-term U.S. interests in the Middle East and abstained from outright and unlimited support to status quo–oriented powers of the region. U.S. actions were driven by the reality on the field rather than the particular interests of its allies or domestic constituencies. Throughout the crisis, the United States followed a

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conciliatory approach between its Western allies and Arab nationalist concerns. The United States hardly had any economic or political interest in Yemen, and Kennedy faced stiff domestic and foreign opposition to his decision to recognize Yemen’s revolutionary government. Britain refused to extend its recognition; lobbyists for ARAMCO claimed that such support might lead the Saudis to reconsider the terms of the contract under which their company operated; and Israeli Foreign Minister Golda Meir warned the president that such recognition might boost Nasser’s image in the Middle East.119 Several important and long-term goals drove U.S. behavior in this particular conflict. Yemen was one the most backward places in the region. By recognizing the revolutionary government, Washington grasped the opportunity to convince Sallal to modernize the country and reduce outside interference. Keeping the country in traditional hands opposed by domestic unrest, Kennedy thought, would not necessarily safeguard American interests in the Gulf region. For Kennedy, it was nationalism and reform, rather than communism, that drove the revolutionary rebels.120 Prolonging the conflict with unconditional support to Saudi Arabia would only bring outside interference by the Soviets and stir up other revolutionary elements in the region.121 The United States was perhaps more interested in building relations with Egypt than with Yemen. Nasser was not perceived by the U.S. administration as a communist puppet but as a nationalist leader. It had been a stable U.S. policy to entice Egypt into the Western camp, and recognition of the Yemeni government was an important element of this policy. A week after Egypt sent forces to Yemen, the United States signed a long-term economic agreement with Egypt.122 All in all, the Kennedy administration took every opportunity to show its goodwill to both sides of the Saudi–Egypt conflict in 1962 and bring the Yemeni civil war to a peaceful resolution. A Turning Point in the Middle East

Already by 1974, Joseph Sisco, assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern and South Asian affairs, had developed the major principles for U.S. policy in the Gulf. These principles included: (1) support for indigenous regional collective security efforts to provide stability and to foster orderly development without outside interference; (2) the peaceful resolution of territorial and other disputes among regional states; (3) continued access to Gulf oil supplies at reasonable prices and in sufficient amounts to meet our growing needs and those of our European and Asian friends and allies; (4) enhancing of American commercial and financial interests.123

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The Carter Doctrine allowed direct military involvement in conflicts in the Gulf and increased security assistance programs to the Gulf states. In his 1980 State of the Union Address, Carter told the Congress, “Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by an outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States. It will be repelled by use of any means necessary, including military force.”124 Specifically on Hormuz, Secretary of State George Shultz reflected the U.S. position: “Only the U.S. could defeat Iran’s efforts to close down navigation in the Persian gulf and choke off the flow of oil through that critical waterway . . . the immediate crisis lay in making Iran understand that it could not close the Gulf to commercial shipping.”125 Theocratic revolution in Iran in 1979 was a major turning point in the Middle East for the United States. The Iranian Revolution led to the revision of U.S. security policies in the region and intensified security concerns. U.S. involvement and choice of sides in the Oman–Yemen conflict in 1982 and the Tanker War during the 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War were mainly driven by concerns with losing Iran, one of the “Twin Pillars” in the region, to the antiWestern camp. Military involvement in these conflicts was aimed at keeping the Strait of Hormuz open and securing passage from the Gulf to the Indian Ocean. Hormuz was one of the world’s most economically important waterways.126 Physical features of Hormuz made security a major concern: “The narrowness of the Gulf in general and the Strait of Hormuz in particular, together with numerous islands and highlands close to navigable channels, make oil tanker traffic congested and very easy to attack.”127 Oman’s border conflict with South Yemen in 1982 took place in this international environment. Yemen had remained mostly insignificant for the United States, whereas Oman became an important country given its location on the Strait of Hormuz with the Omani Musandam Peninsula. Under the leadership of Sultan Qabus ibn Said, Oman became especially receptive to U.S. interests. While most leaders in the Persian Gulf were reluctant to allow military bases in the region, Oman agreed to an American military base on the Masirah Island airstrip off the coast of Oman in June 1980, despite pressure from its neighbors. With the Iranian Revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Oman on the south side of the Strait of Hormuz became a strategically important country.128 Oman’s political stability was long threatened by the Dhofari rebellion and the Yemeni support to the rebels in the 1970s. The rebel organization, Popular Front for the Liberation of Oman and the Arabian Gulf, was assisted by George

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Habash, who was the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Marxist People’s Democratic Republic in South Yemen. Although the rebellion started to subside by 1974, disagreements between Aden and Muscat continued, and relations between two countries started deteriorating in 1979 when the Dhofari rebels started operating again at the South Yemeni border.129 While the border dispute with Yemen in 1982 lasted just four days and mainly involved boundary clashes, Oman’s strategic location, commitment to modernization, and openness to reconciliation with Yemen attracted the United States to Oman’s side. Twenty-five hundred troops engaged in military exercises in Oman from December 3 through December 7, 1982, in an effort to signal U.S. commitment to the territorial integrity of Oman. The Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988) had similarly been a security concern for the United States. Disagreements between the belligerents were acute, and both countries had the power to upset the status quo in the Gulf for several years to come. Preece summarized the security situation that the war had created for the United States: U.S. policy concerns currently are threefold: first, that Iraq, despite moves to sustain its economic and military capacities, ultimately might suffer a destabilizing defeat to the detriment of U.S. interests in the Persian Gulf region; second, that future instability in Iran could open opportunities for Soviet exploitation; and third, that the conflict might expand beyond its present confines to threaten friendly regional states and the availability of their vast petroleum resources.130

The United States was neutral in the beginning of the war but tilted toward Iraq to contain Iran and protect vulnerable Gulf states as Iran moved from the United States to the Soviets as its superpower ally.131 The hostage crisis with Iran in 1982 further deteriorated the relationship and led the United States to impose trade and arms embargos on Iran.132 The U.S. administration refused to sell weapons to Iraq but initially allowed transport planes, vehicles, and helicopters, which would be useful in the war effort. Trade with Iraq also increased substantially. Importantly, the United States allowed dual-use export, including sensitive technology and commodity credits and bank guarantees for oil pipeline.133 Initially in the war, both sides declared war zones as part of their war effort. Iraq also declared a maritime exclusion zone within thirty-five nautical miles from Kharg.134 According to Humphrey, “Interception of neutral merchant ships by Iranian naval forces thereafter increased markedly [after 1985] and by April 1987, Iran had stopped and searched 1,200 vessels and seized the

THE CRITICAL TEST: U.S. INTERVENTIONS 121

cargoes of 30 of them. Most of the world’s flag states had ships intercepted but the reaction was not uniform and few formal protests against visit and search per se were made.”135 These states included Britain (Barber Perseus was searched in 1986), France (Ville Angers was searched in 1985), and the United States (President Taylor was searched in 1986), and most viewed Iranian actions as a right of self-defense under the right of contraband.136 Iraq tried to put an economic squeeze on Iran to push it into closing the Hormuz and to trigger outside intervention against Iran.137 The war turned into a bloody impasse, with Iraq targeting Kharg Island in 1984, which was Iran’s principal oil terminal. The Tanker War can be argued to have started with the Kharg incident. Iraq sank or destroyed a significant number of foreign tankers. After 1984, Iran’s response was to stop and search shipping entering the Gulf— in some cases confiscating cargoes bound to Iraq—and to attack shipping sailing to and from Kuwait, which Iran considered to be Iraq’s de facto ally.138 While leading to difficulties for shipowners and oil traders sailing to northern waters, a rise in marine insurance rates, and some increase in spot oil prices, the skirmishes in the straits did not seriously affect oil prices and exports. Oil exporters compensated for the losses by lowering prices or replacing lost oil. The U.S. involvement in the Tanker War was twofold. First, an Iran–­ Denmark dispute in 1988 reflected the U.S. concern with Iran. In 1981, 1987, and 1988, Iran attacked Danish merchant ships several times. However, in the 1988 dispute, the United States took action to protect neutral shipping from Iran’s hostile actions. U.S. warships came to the aid of the Danish ship Karama Maesk, which was attacked on July 2, 1988. Because the United States did not single out American merchant ships for protection, it also took military action in the war, including retaliating against Iranian attacks on U.S. warships or tankers. On February 26, 1984, a U.S. destroyer fired at an Iranian aircraft; on October 19, 1987, the U.S. navy destroyed three Iranian offshore oil facilities; on April 18, 1988, the United States attacked Iranian naval vessels and oil platforms, damaging six Iranian ships as a response to the Iranian attack on U.S. reconnaissance helicopters (March 6, 1988) and U.S. warship Samuel Roberts (April 14, 1988); and, on July 3, 1988, U.S. warship Vincennes shot down an Iranian civilian plane with civilian casualties.139 Hence, by signaling its commitment to the strait’s security, the United States aimed at providing a public good for the international community, and, by limiting its military involvement in regional conflicts even when they involved the most formidable foes of the United States, Washington preferred coercive bargaining through limited force to an all-out military confrontation.

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CONCLUSION

Qualitative evidence presented in this chapter unveils the linkages between U.S. interventions in different historical epochs. Throughout the twentieth century, the United States acted to resist foreign interference and strengthen regional allies against outside subversion, even when allies meant no more than a buffer zone against dissident regimes. What mainly drove the U.S. choice of sides in international conflicts was not the political and economic significance of the allied states but the threat that their adversaries posed to American interests in the region. In the Venezuelan crisis in 1902 and the Dominican–French dispute in 1895, French and German involvement led the United States to step into the fray. If it had gone unchecked, European interference in Central American countries could have resulted in a wave of colonialism and territorial annexation. Similarly, the United States would have had a weak incentive to support Honduras or Costa Rica in a border skirmish with neighboring states unless their adversary was Nicaragua, which emerged as a serial aggressor in the region with a revolutionary ideology. Astonishingly similar to the Nicaraguan case, the U.S. policy in North Africa in the 1980s mainly focused on containing Libyan aggression toward its weak neighbors, Sudan and Chad. U.S. policy in North Africa was typical in many ways, and Sudan, in particular, is a textbook case of a belligerent that offered no more than a buffer zone against a serial aggressor. Indeed, the U.S. government overcommitted itself to Sudan’s security through economic and military aid. Despite the fact that the Sudanese government lacked incentives for modernization or reconciliation with the tribes in the south, the United States strengthened the northern government against the southern rebels. A historical account of U.S. policy in the Middle East suggests similar patterns. Like Sudan and Chad in North Africa or the Dominican Republic and Costa Rica in Latin America, both Oman and Yemen had little significance for the United States in 1982. The Iranian attack on the Danish tanker Karama Maersk in 1987 was also typical of several acts of aggression against merchant ships during the Iran–Iraq war and would not necessarily have required U.S. action. Yet both conflicts took place in an international environment where it was especially important to contain Iran after the revolution and show, selectively, U.S. commitment to the protection of the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most commercially significant waterways. In understanding the U.S. choice of sides in international conflicts, preserving the status quo and keeping the land and sea routes safe for international trade played a major role.

6

IN CIVIL WARS Piracy goes to the heart of national security and economic interests. America has always been a seafaring nation, and securing the world’s sea-lanes has been a source and a symbol of our strength. In the face of instability and humanitarian crises around the world, our ability to project our naval power to help ensure the free passage of goods and humanitarian aid is as important as it’s ever been.1

a general theory of international intervention not only brings together previous research, but it might also facilitate an analysis of intervention in different international settings. Relevant to the framework presented in this book is civil war intervention, as discussed in Chapter 2. Most cases of civil war intervention violate international law; the U.N. Charter unequivocally opposes attempts to interfere in the domestic affairs of another nation with the exception of those that fall within the humanitarian doctrine. Yet a more contemporary interpretation of international law requires that scholars and practitioners take into account the reality on the field in line with the arguments of the “new interventionism” literature.2 Civil war intervention constitutes a vast literature on its own and has made considerable progress in the post–Cold War period with increasing attention to humanitarian intervention and peacekeeping.3 There is substantial agreement on the fact that several core characteristics of civil wars, such as the time frame of their existence and the legal status of civil war belligerents, render this type of aggression as a distinct international phenomenon. Proper attention should be paid to the confounding factors in the civil war context. Understanding alignments in international conflicts requires examining state-to-state relations between external actors and belligerents. In civil wars, interstate relations are not the complete story: External actors frequently intervene to support the rebel side against governments. In this context, it is also necessary to understand how interveners relate to armed nonstate actors who operate within the borders of other states and aim to undermine the sovereign authority of their government. 123

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This chapter highlights whether the book’s framework can shed light on interveners’ motivations in civil war intervention. The following sections test the intervention model developed in Chapter 4 against this particular type of intervention. Next, the chapter draws from the qualitative work in Chapter 5 and discusses U.S. policies as it has sought to influence civil wars and international conflicts linked through transnational rebellion in less-developed areas of the world. MOTIVATION

Civil war intervention is relevant to the framework of this book on an important dimension. Economically minded external states aim at managing the deleterious effects of internal fighting on economic activity and cross-border transactions with intervention. U.S. interventions in the Nicaraguan and El Salvadoran civil wars in the 1970s and British intervention in the Nigerian civil war (1967–1970) have been associated with economic concerns of intervener states.4 As the nature of aggression has changed from interstate to intrastate, which generated a new breed of global problems in the post–Cold War era, civil wars have emerged as sites of poor and deteriorating economic conditions in far corners of the international economic system. Externalities of civil wars are reminiscent of the fact that costs as well as benefits of globalization are not constrained by the borders in which they unfold. Such spillover effects are stronger in an age of economic and political interconnectedness, and failed states not only arouse a concern for security but also emerge as threats to the global economic order.5 Civil wars are common in underdeveloped or developing countries that have previously been the target of imperialist policies. Therefore, economic incentives behind civil war intervention have strong political lineages. Several interventions in civil war settings were undertaken by former colonial powers that continued to have important economic stakes in these countries, pointing to the complex economic and political motivations underlying such decisions. Britain in Nigeria and Malaysia and France in Chad and Lebanon are a few examples.6 The 1960 Belgian intervention on behalf of the separatists in Congo’s civil war has also been heavily associated with the influence of the Belgian mining company, Union Miniére du Haut Katanga, which supplied nearly 10 percent of the world’s copper and about 60 percent of its cobalt from the mines in the separatist Katanga region of Congo.7 Colonial ties that build long-term asymmetric economic relationships through force mostly determine which

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external states will step into the fray. Possible loss of economic benefits in civil wars may loom large in states’ intervention decisions, specifically when they have privileged access to that domestic market. Economic ties in the form of enforced bilateralism through colonial history would give interveners incentives to corroborate their political and economic dominance on small states vulnerable to domestic unrest. States that gained access to Third World markets with the demise of European colonialism and regional countries whose economies are affected by these wars also respond to civil wars with intervention.8 Writings on covert military operations have similarly emphasized economic interests, particularly the influence of organized groups with overseas investments, in American policymaking.9 Washington has responded to the nationalization of American investments by dissident regimes by collaborating with regime challengers in military coups. Two textbook examples include the 1953 Iranian coup and the 1954 Guatemalan coup, which have notoriously been associated with the forceful protection of private interests in hostile markets.10 Strategic calculations precede intervention decisions, particularly in highprofile violence within or between countries. Findings in Chapter 4 showed that interveners in international conflicts are driven by economic interests, among other important factors. If economic factors also explain civil war intervention, then external involvement in both forms of armed conflict can be studied within a unified framework. Combining interventions in different forms of aggression is also important from another dimension. Most of the time, international conflicts and civil wars feed into each other and involve the same actors as in transnational rebellion. Regional conflicts are commonly intertwined with political instability in a country and its externalities on neighboring states. In these cases, external states play a more complex role as they attempt to influence different forms of conflict that are linked to each other. Hence, intervention models should also illustrate the mechanism behind interveners’ decision making in civil wars that lead to interstate conflicts. CHOICE OF SIDES AND CHOICE OF STRATEGY

While case study research has explored economic motivations in civil war intervention, broad empirical analyses are rare. As Fordham writes, “Most recent quantitative analyses of intervention do not include economic motivations at all.”11 Available evidence, however, indicates that there are no direct effects of economic interests in a large sample of civil war interventions.

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Fordham, for instance, shows that economic interests of external actors in civil war states, measured as exports, indirectly affect intervention decisions through alliance formation.12 Following Fordham’s analysis, this section pre­ sents an analysis of the direct effects of trade on intervention and expands on it in several important ways. It tests the models developed in Chapter 4 against intervention cases that take place in the civil war setting. Following the research design in Chapter 4, the data set adopted here is dyadic, where each civil war state is matched with all other states in the international system for each year that the civil war was ongoing. The unit of analysis is a nondirected conflict year. In an AB dyad, State A is the civil war state and State B is the external state. Intervention data come from Regan and Aydin (2006) and cover the post–World War II period. The data set codes military, economic, and diplomatic interventions—including mediations—that have been adopted by external states in civil wars that cross the threshold of 200 fatalities. Some of the independent variables adopted in Chapter 4 have been revised to account for the characteristics of the civil war state. Log Capabilities is the natural logarithm of the civil war state’s CINC score from the COW Project’s Composite Index of National Material Capabilities.13 Major Power Civil War State and Nuclear Civil War State are dichotomous variables that respectively account for the major power status of the civil war state and its possession of nuclear capabilities.14 Dyadic variables measure economic (Trade Volume, FDI, PTA) and political ties (Agreement of Interests, Joint Democracy, Defensive Alliance, Neighbor, and Log Distance) between the civil war state and external states and follow the operationalization rules laid out in Chapter 4. Table 6.1 presents results that assess the role of trade volume, FDI, and PTAs on civil war intervention. To generate results comparable to Fordham’s analysis, the dependent variable in these models reduces all forms of intervention to a dichotomous choice that takes on a value of 1 if external state B intervenes in the civil war and 0 otherwise. Given that the outcome of interest is a dichotomous variable, statistical tests use logit estimations. Models 1 and 2 support Fordham’s findings: Ongoing economic exchange between an external state and the civil war state, measured as trade volume or FDI, have little or no effect on civil war intervention.15 While existing economic benefits cannot capture the link between economics and intervention decisions, economic expectations suggest an interesting possibility yet to be explored by scholars. PTAs have a substantial effect on external states’ decisions and increase the probability of intervention by 384 percent (Model 3).16 Hence, exter-

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Table 6.1. 

Economic interests and intervention in civil wars.

Independent variables

Model 1. Trade

Model 2. FDI

Model 3. PTAs

Economic interests Trade volume .118* (.054) FDI .040 .052 (.055) (.067) PTAs 1.309** (.401) Realist claims and control factors Log capabilities (civil war state) −.047 .169 .149 (.158) (.147) (.161) Major power civil war state −.447 −.761 −1.113 (.801) (1.158) (1.454) Agreement of interests −.301 −.401 −.581 (.639) (.699) (.677) Nuclear civil war state −.471 −.786 −.812 (.549) (.538) (.581) Jointly democratic with the −.078 −.178 −.247 civil war state (.140) (.141) (.151) Major power intervener 4.400** 4.273** 4.391** (.202) (.201) (.208) Defensive alliance 1.620** 1.902** 1.986** (.569) (.612) (.586) Neighbor 1.933 2.032* 2.086* (1.020) (.978) (.880) Log distance −.453* −.501** −.416* (.186) (.173) (.177) Constant −1.094 −.317 −1.268 (1.909) (1.790) (1.929) Number of observations 49875 50926 50926 Log pseudolikelihood −2483.017 −2559.411 −2552.118 note: (1) No intervention is the base outcome; (2) Huber/White robust standard errors are reported in parentheses and clustered by conflict; (3) ** p ≤ .001; * p ≤ .05; two-tailed tests.

nal states connected to the civil war state through economic institutions that grant them preferential access to the latter’s domestic market have a strong incentive to become involved in the ongoing war. As in international conflicts, the institutional environment of the civil war state matters in understanding what happens inside the conflict. Institutional connectedness allows external parties to credibly restructure conflict states’ preferences for war termination and settlement. Not only do these states have a strong economic interest that they need to protect against political instability and domestic violence, they

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also have the leverage to exert interstate influence on the civil war state. More specifically, states with institutional ties to the civil war state have a number of tools that they effectively use. They can change the decision calculus of the civil war state by manipulating the costs and benefits of a certain course of action, withholding the benefits from trade agreements, or offering additional incentives for behavior in line with their preferences. Hence, states with institutionalized economic ties present a unique set of interveners with a greater incentive to become involved in civil wars. Table 6.2 expands on Fordham’s analysis to suggest other important aspects of civil war intervention. The first set of results relates to the choice of strategy assessing how economically minded interveners choose their level of involvement (Model 4). The outcome of interest is a three-point unordered variable of intervener strategies: abstain (no intervention), military intervention, and nonmilitary intervention.17 Statistical tests adopt multinomial logit following Chapter 4. Military interventions include contributions of troops, naval support, equipment or aid, intelligence or advisors, air support to the civil war state, or military sanctions. Economic interventions take the form of grant, loan, credit, relief from past obligations, nonmilitary equipment, and sanctions.18 Diplomatic interventions are mostly mediations, but there are also cases of international forums, recall of ambassadors, arbitration, and offers to mediate that were not accepted by combatants.19 Given the small number of economic interventions, they are combined with diplomatic interventions in the “nonmilitary intervention” category. Results show that FDI and PTAs have substantial effects on interveners’ choice of strategy.20 FDI decreases the probability that an external state will adopt military intervention by 96 percent (seventy-fifth percentile value), and PTAs have no effect. Both economic variables consistently indicate that states that have economic ties to the civil war state through economic institutions or their nationals’ investments overwhelmingly choose nonmilitary interventions compared to other external parties. Given that the majority of nonmilitary interventions in the data are mediations, these findings strongly suggest that economically motivated interveners are inclined toward strategies that aim at peaceful management of civil wars. This is an important finding that solves a central puzzle in the literature— at least for interveners that are driven by economic concerns. Specific goals behind intervention decisions have rarely been explored with empirical evidence. Instead, scholars purported the assumption that external intervention

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Table 6.2. 

Economic interests and interveners’ choices in civil wars.



Model 4. Choice of strategy

Model 5. Choice of sides

Independent variables

Military

Biased

Nonmilitary

Neutral

Economic interests FDI −.143** .133** −.150** .185** (.014) (.023) (.015) (.026) PTAs .829 1.786** .748 1.917** (.523) (.350) (.524) (.374) Realist claims and control factors Log capabilities .151 .154 .260 −.098 (civil war state) (.199) (.168) (.180) (.194) Major power civil war state −.865 −1.674* −1.341 .911 (1.638) (.695) (1.713) (.758) Agreement of interests −.815 −.356 −1.222 .271 (.892) (.682) (1.004) (.579) Nuclear civil war state −.604 −1.214 −.534 −3.775** (.641) (.623) (.574) (.684) Jointly democratic with the −.618** .257 −.705** .568* civil war state (.229) (.221) (.222) (.245) Major power intervener 4.517** 4.183** 4.596** 3.842** (.265) (.243) (.268) (.333) Defensive alliance 2.322** 1.581* 2.945** .391 (.742) (.696) (.867) (.658) Neighbor 2.241* 1.865 2.130* 2.094* (.890) (.983) (.932) (.944) Log distance −.432* −.389* −.373 −.460 (.206) (.198) (.211) (.235) Constant −1.592 −2.496 −1.375 −3.597 (2.235) (2.155) (2.189) (2.757) Number of observations 50926 50926 Log pseudolikelihood −2984.523 −2882.839 note: (1) No intervention is the base outcome; (2) Huber/White robust standard errors are reported in parentheses and clustered by conflict; (3) ** p ≤ .001; * p ≤ .05; two-tailed tests.

is aimed at stopping violence and ending the conflict.21 Numerous accounts of superpower competition in the Cold War era, however, indicate a skeptical view in which external actors do not always have benevolent goals or are not always moved by the motivation to save lives. States are sensitive to risks and costs, and conflict management could be a secondary goal to pursuing national interests. Such self-interested behavior, which has been the central contention of this book, does not necessarily preclude conflict management as an incentive. Given long-term repercussions of civil wars on the war country and its region, considerations of peace and stability should not be ruled out. There

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are instances in which interveners’ interests can be best served with strategies that encourage the resolution of the conflict at the bargaining table. In this regard, coercive interventions and diplomacy present different approaches to intervention. Because it requires the consent of the combatants, mediation is commonly studied as a conflict management strategy in the literature, whereas there is no such consensus among scholars on the motivation behind military and economic intervention.22 Scholars have usually considered mediations as unbiased, neutral forms of external involvement aimed at reassuring conflict parties of mediators’ credibility and commitment to conflict resolution. This framework suggests that states with interests that are most sensitive to the externalities of civil violence, such as economically minded interveners, have the greatest incentives to choose strategies with a conflict management aspect. The second set of results relates to the choice of sides and explores how interveners with economic interests in the civil war state choose sides in the conflict setting. The outcome of interest in Model 5 (Table 6.2) is a three-point unordered variable that represents three possible choices of potential interveners; biased intervention, unbiased (neutral) intervention, and no intervention (abstain). Regan and Aydin code diplomatic interventions as unbiased external efforts; therefore, they have been included in the “unbiased intervention” category of the dependent variable.23 Only a few military and economic interventions are neutral, whereas the majority of these attempts are undertaken by external actors to support the rebel or the government side in a civil war and have been included in the “biased intervention” category. The statistical test adopts multinomial logit estimation. In Model 5, FDI significantly decreases the probability that an external state will adopt a biased intervention strategy: It is negatively associated with intervention on the government or the rebel side.24 PTAs, on other hand, do not have a statistically significant effect on interveners’ choice of sides. Both findings indicate a strong preference for a neutral intervention when economically motivated states enter civil wars and nicely complement findings suggested for the choice of strategy described in the preceding paragraphs. This group of interveners adopts intervention techniques that facilitate peaceful resolution of civil wars rather than techniques that assist one side militarily and encourage it to fight on for a decisive outcome. Hence, interveners who have economic interests to protect have a lesser incentive to facilitate the victory of one side; instead, they take action to find a new status quo point that can be acceptable to both sides of the conflict.

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Why do interveners who take action to protect their economic interests against armed violence choose military strategies in international conflicts and diplomacy in civil wars? There are two important reasons. First, international conflicts are usually low-scale confrontations and have a short duration, whereas civil wars present a more intricate setting for interveners.25 Civil war cases adopted in this book’s analysis are defined as intrastate violence that crosses the threshold of 200 fatalities. Hence, these cases represent a deadly confrontation between the government and dissident groups. In this setting, military assistance to one side of the conflict could further encourage the combatants to escalate fighting, causing more damage and instability for the economy of the civil war state. The uncertainty element is also important in civil war outcomes. Most civil wars terminate with an inconclusive outcome where neither side can guarantee a solid victory. Others linger on for decades, and a cycle of violence and instability sets in. A biased intervention where an external state openly takes sides with one combatant is highly unlikely to change the path dependency that many civil wars experience. Neutrality ensures that the external state does not attract the unwanted attention of the warring parties. Armed dissident groups challenging the state can easily sabotage the economic facilities of a foreign power that assists government forces. In regions where they exert control, they can force the capital to leave or pay protection rents, both of which significantly increase the costs of economic activity. Considering that most insurgencies are geographically bounded and have little interest or power to topple governments, the latter continues to hold the power position in granting access to outsiders. Therefore, governments can also cancel licenses or close sites where foreign investors and contractors operate in an attempt to punish intervention on the rebel side. Hence, biased intervention in an uncertain environment, as in a civil war, does more harm than good for an external state whose interests are highly sensitive to combatants’ decisions. TRANSNATIONAL REBELLION

Intervention in international conflicts is intertwined with external states’ role in belligerents’ civil wars and should be studied as part of an intervener’s broader strategy toward a particular country.26 Border disputes are commonly driven by the presence of rebel bases in neighboring countries and the latter’s inability or reluctance to eliminate them. Evidence from Chapter 5 lucidly illustrates this point. Conflicts between Nicaragua and Honduras (1929, 1981, and 1986), Nicaragua and Costa Rica (1954), Libya and Chad (1983), and

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Oman and Yemen (1982) originated mainly from cross-border raids of transnational rebel groups across porous borders and/or external support to these organizations by neighboring countries. Intervention in these regional conflicts closely reflected the U.S. attitude toward the civil wars associated with them. Washington’s long-term opposition to revolutionary insurgencies that it believed were not indigenous movements affected its choice of sides in Nicaragua’s conflicts with Honduras. The United States intervened multiple times in Nicaragua’s civil war (1982–1990) against the Sandinista government, providing military support to the Contras and targeting the government with economic sanctions. If considered together with U.S. military support to Honduras against Nicaragua, the evidence suggests the linkage between interventions in these two types of conflicts and the consistency in U.S. policy choices. Similarly, in Chad’s civil war, the United States militarily supported Hissen Habre’s government against his long-term rival Goukouni Oueddei, whose guerillas were assisted by Muammar al-Qaddafi. In Chad’s conflict with Libya (1983), the United States also intervened on Habre’s side and aimed to contain Libya’s advancement to the country’s south in collaboration with the Goukouni rebels. The U.S. stance in the civil war complemented its strong distaste of Qaddafi’s aggressive policies toward Libya’s weak neighbors and his expansionist tendencies, particularly involving Chad. While avoiding military intervention in Yemen’s civil war, the United States still played a major diplomatic role. The civil war took a regional character with the involvement of Egypt and Saudi Arabia on opposite sides and turned into a proxy war between regional rivals in 1962. Egypt attacked Saudi towns on the Yemen–Saudi Arabia border in support of the revolutionary rebels, and King Sa’ud supported the traditionalist elements. Despite the United States being close allies with Saudi Arabia, its perspective on the civil war was quite different. Intervention on the Saudi side remained inconsequential for the outcome of the civil war and was followed by the diplomatic recognition of the revolutionary rebels who toppled Imam’s traditional rule. Though President Kennedy faced strong domestic and regional opposition to his policy, his rapprochement with the new Yemeni government and appeasement of the reactionary elements in the region complemented the limited role of the United States in the Saudi Arabia–Egypt conflict. Similarly, Palestinian armed groups shaped the interrelations of regional countries in the Middle East. Specifically, in 1970s Syria hosted Palestinian rebels who had attacked Israeli targets and also supported those based in Jor-

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dan. Transnational activity of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) pitted Syria against Israel and Jordan in this period. On February 23 and 24, 1972, Israel targeted Palestinian bases in Syria, following a Palestinian attack on an Israeli settlement in the upper Galilee. On September 19, 1970, Syria entered Jordan with 20,000 troops in support of the PLO, and on August 11, 1971, Syria and Jordan clashed near the border when Jordanian troops attempted to eliminate PLO bases. While the United States remained on the sidelines in the Syria–Israel conflict, working mostly through the United Nations, it played both diplomatic and military roles in the latter. In September 1971, Secretary of State William Rogers asked Syria for troop withdrawal, and the United States placed its military forces in the region on alert.27 Hence, violent nonstate actors that operate in multiple countries and define the political relations between regional states, as in transnational rebellion, have been an important focus in Washington’s conflict management agenda. Ethiopia and Somalia: Linked through Rebellion

Transnational rebellion continues to shape states’ political relations in the twenty-first century, and a variety of interrelated goals that include ideological and economic motivations drive the U.S. attitude toward these conflicts. With the demise of communist ideology, subversive forces in the new global order are driven by religious fundamentalism. The War on Terror is the contemporary interpretation of the East–West conflict that shaped the international political system for fifty years during the Cold War period. Just as when the strategic importance of the Third World was coming to an end with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, a new breed of anti-Americanism and a hawkish leadership in Washington seemed to bring ideological wars and vulnerable countries on the periphery back into the U.S. grand strategy. The roles that Libya and Nicaragua played as regional hubs of Soviet expansionism during the Cold War have now been taken over by Somalia in Africa and Afghanistan in the Middle East, which have been claimed by the United States to be Al-Qaeda’s playgrounds. While the Taliban’s presence has so far failed to lead to open military conflict among turbulent Middle Eastern states given their preoccupation with internal unrest, the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) movement in Somalia has significantly defined the political relations among regional countries in the Horn of Africa. Perhaps most importantly, it has stirred up deep-running ethnic and religious hatreds among Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia as the conflict became a battleground for historical grudges rather than a standoff against transnational terrorism.

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In its brief tenure in power between June and December 2006, the ICU successfully consolidated power and brought order to war-torn Somalia for the first time since the devastating civil war waged by the warlords in 1993. Suppressing Somali clans and the warlords, the ICU became the closest among Somalia’s previous rulers to monopolizing the use of force after the civil war and establishing a viable government. On the economic front, the ICU managed to raise traditional revenue through local administrations and the business community on a consensual basis. ICU control also dampened piracy off the Somali coast, which led to a safe environment for trade and in turn increased revenues to the ICU government from seaports.28 All evidence, therefore, pointed to the ICU as an effective government with popular support. On the Western front, however, a failed regime was preferable to an ideologically dissident one. Removal of the ICU from power by Ethiopian incursion on December 24, 2006, with U.S. support came with long-term repercussions for Somalia’s internal stability and economic development. It also had little effect on eliminating the ICU.29 The military wing of the ICU, Al Shabaab (“The Youth”), melted into the population and initiated an effective guerilla war. It resorted to car, suicide, and roadside bombings and assassinations as its main strategies against the TFG (Transitional Federal Government) and Ethiopian forces.30 By November 2008, the ICU had recaptured most of southern and central Somalia and controlled some parts of Mogadishu, whereas TFG rule remained limited to parts of Mogadishu and Baidoa. While the ICU effectively financed itself with traditional sources, the TFG struggles on the economic front and relies predominantly on foreign contributions. However, such contributions are not stable over time. For instance, when donor countries withheld funds from Somalia in 2007 due to human rights abuses and lack of transparency, 40 percent of the police officers trained by the United Nations left the force or defected.31 While the ICU succeeded in reducing criminal activities, the TFG’s term is fraught with piracy and kidnappings initiated by a growing number of armed criminal groups. Indicative of increasing armed activity and the fragmentation of violence in Somalia, the U.N. Monitoring Group describes several armed opposition groups and unaffiliated and irregular forces that operate in Somalia without a unified command. Among the armed groups, Al Shabaab (Harakat al-Shabaab al Mujahidiin) and the Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia (ARS), which also includes some ICU members, are the most significant ones.32 Further evidence of rampant violence under TFG rule is the revival of widespread piracy perpetrated by lightly armed militias, leading to further loss of revenue from marine

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resources.33 Maritime crime appears to be the most lucrative activity in the TFG’s term. Ransoms ranging from $500,000 to $2 million turn piracy into a low-risk, high-profit enterprise in Somalia’s poor economic environment, and pirate networks easily recruit young men with these economic incentives. Despite international efforts to eradicate it, piracy instead becomes consolidated around two main networks based on clan affiliations: Pirates in the Puntland network (northeastern Somalia) come from the Majerteen clan, and members of the central Somalia network come from the Habar Gidin clan. In this complex security environment, the TFG claims to rule the country from a “green zone” much like its counterparts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Limited resources available to the government are being spent heavily on military effort and perks for strongmen allied with the TFG, leaving little for public spending. The U.N. Monitoring Group estimates that “as much as 80 per cent of the international investment in building the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) has been diverted to purposes other than those for which it was intended.”34 Hence, the TFG functions as another militia that claims its share of the pie in Somalia’s lawlessness, albeit a dysfunctional one that is fraught with internal fighting and corruption. As the TFG has allied with warlords to control local administrations, popular support from businesses and the larger population became divided between the government and rebels. While local perceptions on Al Shabaab are mostly positive, the TFG alliance with the warlords is widely viewed as a coalition of convenience that seeks to eliminate the ICU for more control over country’s resources. It is plainly argued by the U.N. Monitoring Group that warlords who controlled Somalia before the ICU have little or no incentive to support the central government. Instead, they are reorganizing and rearming themselves for the fundamental objective of attempting to retake the local administrations in and around Mogadishu that they lost to ICU . . . It is the view of the Monitoring Group that the principal aim of the re-emerging Somali warlords is to regain control of their former vested interests, comprising individual fiefdoms with their attendant political and economic benefits.35

The international dimension of the civil war in Somalia is profound and diminishes prospects for peace in this complicated security environment. The war is aggressively fed by arms transfers from outside states, arms-trading networks, violent nonstate actors such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and by financial support from states, powerful individuals, and groups affiliated with these states. According to the U.N. Monitoring Group on Somalia:

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The principal sources for the overall military build-up involving arms, military materiel and foreign military personnel can be identified as 10 states . . . Of those States, seven are aligned with ICU: Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, Saudi Arabia, and the Syrian Arab Republic; the remaining three States, Ethiopia, Uganda and Yemen, are aligned with TFG. Not included in the foregoing is Lebanon, whose territory is being used by Hizbollah, which has created a reciprocal relationship of assistance with ICU. Also not included is a complete list of the States from which volunteers originate in support of ICU, or States from which individuals send monetary contributions to either TFG or ICU.36

Among these external actors to civil war, the role that Somalia’s neighbors Ethiopia and Eritrea play in the conflict clearly stands out. Ethiopia and Eritrea dangerously confront each other in Somalia’s civil war and escalate the war with the widespread militarization of the TFG, the ICU, and affiliated militias. Eritrea provides arms, other military equipment, training and supplies to the ICU and the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), which fights against the Ethiopian government both at home and in Somalia. Ethiopia, on the other hand, assists the TFG, recruits new militia members, and arms Somalian clans and warlords of the former Opposition Alliance and the Puntland autonomous region.37 Though cast in the language of the War on Terror, Ethiopia appears to have its own security interests in Somalia not necessarily related to U.S. concerns. While Ethiopia claims that the ICU waged jihad by declaring its intent to liberate Somali-speaking areas from Ethiopia and stir up its Muslim population, regional rivalries present a more accurate picture of Ethiopia’s actions than combating jihadism. In an interview, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles pointed to the Eritrean role: “There was a broad front organized by the Eritreans involving all sorts of Ethiopian rebels and the ICU movement in Somalia. The ONLF constituted a very important part of that broad front. We believe the back of the ONLF insurgency in the region has now been broken.”38 Eritrea has similar security considerations. Because the TFG survives mainly on Ethiopian military muscle, Eritrea assists armed opposition groups in arresting consolidation of power by the government and in denying its formidable foe a stronghold in Somalia. Hence, both domestic dynamics of the civil war and outside interference reflect enduring cleavages among Somali groups and regional countries that compete among themselves and aim to settle their long-running grudges in the war setting. Microlevel analysis of these dynamics does not provide much

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evidence for a global conspiracy by Al-Qaeda except for the presence of a few Al-Qaeda sympathizers in the Al-Shabaab ranks. Besides, commercial groups such as arms trading networks are no less effective than Al-Qaeda in keeping the pot boiling over Somalia. Yet Washington is tempted to evaluate the behavior of rebel groups in Somalia in the broad context of transnational terrorism. It is certainly the case that there are discernable trends in rebel goals and tactics. If considered from this comparative perspective, the civil war in Somalia is no more than an old ethnic conflict where criminals, rebel soldiers, and militias are recruited on the basis of their clan affiliations. As in the all-out civil war between President Siyad Barre’s clansmen and the Hawiye clan between 1988 and 1991, interclan rivalry has long characterized Somalia’s domestic politics with devastating consequences.39 Considering that most Al-Shabaab recruits also come from the Hawiye background can give an idea about the resilience of clan cleavages. What makes Somalia an important case study for policymakers and scholars is that these cleavages, coupled with regional feuds, are flexible enough to interact with emerging nonstate actors and to be exploited by rival states in the region. Unless addressed with indigenous solutions, Somalia’s problems will not go away and will keep haunting the international community and the United States as an “old” ethnic conflict that became a magnet for transnational networks, such as terrorists and arms traders, that thrive on violence. The U.S. Role in the Ethiopia–Somalia Rift

The complex security environment in Somalia’s civil war significantly shaped U.S. policy toward Africa. First the Islamic Courts Union’s (ICU) and, after the ICU was overthrown by Ethiopia, Al Shabaab’s resilience and considerable military success have increased American military commitment to and involvement in the Horn of Africa. On the international level, the United States aimed to strengthen the TFG by proposing a regional peacekeeping force consisting of 8,000 soldiers from East African countries.40 On the regional level, Washington considered both direct and indirect military involvement in Somalia. First, CIA operatives based in Nairobi, Kenya, paid large sums to secular warlords in 2005 to hunt for Al-Qaeda operatives.41 Ironically, the warlords who fought in Somalia’s civil war between 1988 and 1991 and drove peacekeepers out of the country in 1993 were put on the U.S. payroll as a bulwark against religious terrorism. While the intelligence that warlords provided remained ineffective in identifying the location of suspected Al-Qaeda operatives, their alliance with the United States proved to be a catalyst in consolidating a grassroots

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ICU movement as a reaction to outside interference.42 The Pentagon had also been reported to have trained Ethiopian special forces, Agazi commandos, in camps near the Somali border as part of the counterterrorism effort. The Bush administration increased security commitments to the region through the Combined Joint Task Force–Horn of Africa (CJTF–HOA) established in 2003 and A ­ FRICOM (U.S. Africa Command), the regional combatant command established in 2007. AFRICOM was intended to prevent a conflict in the region instead of fighting one, whereas CJTF–HOA functioned as a coordination unit working with other U.S. agencies and host governments.43 In the search for militants to be blamed for the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, the United States was also directly involved in the Somalian civil war with airstrikes that were conducted on January 8, January 23, and June 3, 2007 and targeted suspected hideouts of Al-Qaeda members.44 Indirect involvement through support to regional allies was another crucial element of U.S. strategy. Months after the ICU captured power in central and southern Somalia, Ethiopia entered the country with ground troops and bombed Somalian targets to support the U.N.-backed transitional government. Though the United States denied assisting Ethiopia in this process, news sources indicate that Washington tacitly approved it.45 The Ethiopian incursion started on December 24, 2006, a few days after General Abizaid, the commander of U.S. forces from the Middle East to Afghanistan, arrived in Addis Ababa to meet with the Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles.46 Ethiopian actions were interpreted by the United States as a reaction to aggression by the ICU and as an effort to halt the shipment of arms going to the rebels in accordance with the arms embargo.47 Before withdrawing in January 2009, Ethiopia had a continuous military presence in Somalia and successfully attacked rebel hideouts based on intelligence provided by American spy satellites and the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command. The continuity in U.S. attitude toward international conflicts is striking. First, similarities between the political situation in Ethiopia today and that in Sudan in 1980s draw attention to the consistency in the U.S. approach of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Meles himself fights an ethnic war at home and relies on the support of the Tigrayan clan, which makes up just 7 percent of the population. Fraught with repression of opposition groups, widespread election fraud, police brutality, and internal revolts by Ogadenis and Oromos, Meles thrives on U.S. military and economic assistance rather than the support of his populace.48 The seemingly uncondi-

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tional support of the United States leads to a greater rift between the rulers and the ruled, putting Ethiopia on the same dangerous track as Sudan’s northern government.49 Commissioning Ethiopia to fight Islamist rebels does more harm than good in the Horn of Africa. While the United States interprets the Somalian civil war in purely ideological terms, mostly drawing from its Cold War experience, Ethiopia’s attack on Somalia draws attention to long-running regional dynamics that have not been adequately factored into U.S. policies. Another similarity between U.S. interventions is the broad economic goals that interventions pursue in international conflicts. Somalia’s civil war has repercussions for international trade given the country’s strategic position in Africa.50 Piracy off the Horn of Africa is a serious threat to maritime security in the Gulf of Aden, and pirate networks are exclusively Somali-based. In its December 2008 report, the National Security Council noted that pirate groups, which mostly operate from Somalia’s ungoverned port towns, frequently attack merchant vessels in the Gulf, which links the Red Sea and the Suez Canal with the Indian Ocean. The report summarizes adverse economic effects of piracy in the Horn of Africa: Piratical attacks off the Horn of Africa constitute a threat to the lives and welfare of citizens and seafarers of many nations. Nearly 12% of the world’s petroleum passes through the Gulf of Aden, which is one of the world’s most important waterways. A single piratical attack often affects the interests of numerous countries, including the flag State of the vessel, various States of nationality of the seafarers taken hostage, regional coastal States, owner States, and cargo owner, transshipment, and destination States. Further, such attacks undermine confidence in global sea lines of communication, weaken or undermine the legitimacy of States, threaten the legitimate revenue and resources essential to the building of Somalia, cause a rise in maritime insurance rates and cargo costs, increase the risk of environmental damage, and endanger the lives of seafarers who may be injured, killed, or taken hostage for ransoms.51

While the ICU eliminated piracy, its removal from power created an economic opportunity space in poverty-stricken Somalia. As the military wing of the ICU, Al-Shabaab, waged an effective guerilla war against the TFG in 2008, piracy also skyrocketed. Insurance premiums have increased tenfold when pirate attacks in the Gulf of Aden reached a peak with forty-two vessels attacked and 889 mariners held hostage for a ransom of $30 million total in this period.

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Such attacks dropped to twenty-seven vessels and 476 seafarers in 2009.52 U.S.flagged vessels were attacked by pirates in only two instances in mid-2009 (Maersk Alabama and Liberty Sun). Yet the threat remained significant as U.S. commercial vessels, those vessels that carried Department of Defense cargo for Operations Iraqi and Enduring Freedom, and humanitarian cargoes for the U.N. Agency for International Development and other international organizations to East Africa and South Asia frequently used this waterway.53 Piracy has been interpreted by U.S. policymakers as a global threat to international trade. Washington’s approach reflects its long-time commitment to the safety of land and sea routes for neutral passage of goods.54 The United States played an active diplomatic and military role in international conflicts that put maritime shipping in jeopardy. In the Suez conflict between Egypt and the Israel–Britain–France alliance (1956), Washington worked through the United Nations for a cease-fire call and put economic pressure on Britain through the IMF and on Britain and France as Saudi Arabia cut oil destined to these countries. In the Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988), the United States assisted Iraq with dual-use exports and attacked Iranian offshore facilities and aircrafts to retaliate against Iranian aggression toward merchant vessels and the U.S. military presence. U.S. policies in the Gulf of Aden similarly aim to manage the security challenges to merchant and humanitarian shipping. U.S. Naval Forces Central Command (NAVCENT) developed a counterpiracy plan with four components: “international naval presence, improved defensive measures from the shipping industry, international legal framework for resolving piracy cases, and removal of safe havens in Somalia.”55 NAVCENT also established the Combined Task Force 151 to regularly patrol a vast ocean area along the Somali coastline, which stretches to 1,500 miles.56 The United States coordinated counterpiracy efforts among NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization), the EU, and individual countries via the Contact Group on Piracy off the Coast of Somalia, which was established on January 14, 2009, pursuant to U.N. Security Council Resolution 1851.57 The long-term effects of international collaboration and U.S. input may remain uncertain given the complexity of the security situation in the Gulf of Aden and particularly in Somalia. However, Washington’s commitment to the security of international trade and of land and sea routes that enable trade remains the cornerstone of its approach to international and civil wars around the world.

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CONCLUSION

The dynamics of violence in the international system, and therefore the context of intervention, are changing. There is an astounding decrease in international conflict, whereas civil violence keeps destroying the social fabric of countries. Violent acts between nations are sometimes being delegated to nonstate actors that easily escape domestic and international jurisdiction. Whether external states also relate to these groups or their sponsors on the basis of their economic and security interests and adopt forceful measures to pursue those interests presents the next challenge to intervention models. Border disputes are particularly driven by the presence of rebel bases in neighboring countries and the latter’s support to these groups. Intervention in international conflicts is intertwined with external actors’ role in belligerents’ civil wars and should be studied as part of an intervener’s broader strategy toward a particular country. This chapter used quantitative evidence from 153 civil wars in the post–World War II period and qualitative evidence from conflictual dyads—Nicaragua and Honduras, Libya and Chad, and Ethiopia and Somalia—that are linked through transnational rebellion. Empirical tests against civil war interventions confirmed the findings in Chapter 4 for international conflicts: States go to conflicts that have the potential to destroy their nationals’ economic interests. In their choice of strategy, interveners commonly prefer diplomatic methods in civil wars and military methods in international conflicts due to the highly uncertain environment of the former for economic activity. Historical accounts similarly confirm earlier findings on U.S. interventions (Chapter 5). Countries such as Honduras, Chad, and Ethiopia that the United States has supported in regional conflicts had little significance for the intervener. Yet they were strategically located in an economically and/or politically important region that the United States had a strong interest in stabilizing. Hence, the U.S. choices of sides and alignments in conflicts were driven mostly by the threat posed by the adversaries of its regional allies to American interests.

7

CONCLUSION

states become an external participant in a conflict as a result of a complex decision-­making process aimed at realizing a certain outcome. When historical patterns are closely considered, even the states most salient to the belligerents play a waiting game rather than taking action, which shows that intervention is not the simple outcome of a diffusion process. An emphasis on systemic influences does not necessarily reduce intervention behavior to a deterministic reaction. As Bueno de Mesquita writes in The War Trap, “Decision makers . . . are not the victim of outside forces inescapably driving them to war. The selection of war or peace is a choice that is initiated, conducted, and concluded by individual leaders who must accept responsibility for their decisions.”1 Such decisions involve “careful, deliberate calculations” in which states consider several factors, including especially those that originate from the international system before stepping into strangers’ conflicts.2 How do alignments form inside violent conflicts? How do states choose sides that they are going to support when hostilities ensue? These questions are not new. More than a decade ago, Powell asked a similar question: “If one state threatens another, how do other states react?”3 Several insights from Foreign Powers and Intervention in Armed Conflicts shed light on what intervention is and why states become involved in strangers’ conflicts. The book clears the conceptual confusion in security studies with greater attention to the international setting of intervention and unifies existing research in a common theoretical framework of motivations behind interveners’ decisions. 142

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OVERVIEW OF FINDINGS

Existing scholarship has long approached intervention as the coercive involvement of external states in international conflicts and attempted to identify states’ alignment patterns, especially in wartime. There is historically a certain agreement among realists of all strands that external intervention is a military response to armed conflicts between two or more nations. Similarly, international law considers international conflicts as a major security issue and develops a framework that describes when intervention is legal in this context. It is therefore important to look at what we already know from this consensual perspective and in the light of the broad empirical evidence. Yet civil war interventions are also relevant cases to the study of intervention and take place in international contexts that present similar stimuli with international conflict. The framework of this book has adopted a broad conception of intervention. Both international conflicts (interstate wars and low-intensity disputes) and civil wars are relevant opportunities for external states to intervene (Chapter 2). In defining opportunities, the book has gone beyond the conventional approach that commonly limits intervention to conflict settings (reactive intervention). It discussed the role that foreign powers play in different phases of the conflict, including preconflict (preventive intervention) and postconflict (reconstructive intervention) stages. Forms of statecraft that states can choose from the toolbox in their influence attempts have also been defined broadly and included military and nonmilitary (diplomatic and economic) interventions. In doing so, Foreign Powers and Intervention in Armed Conflicts could bridge the gap between separate literatures that rarely consider different types of armed conflicts and different forms of intervention in the same framework. Second, the book has drawn from realist and liberal scholarship to examine the relative importance of economic and security considerations in several aspects of intervention decisions, including choice of sides and choice of strategy (Chapters 3 through 6). An empirical assessment of power and security considerations in wartime alignments suggests that realism is a research program that continues to shed light on state behavior. “Realism is thriving, both in theory and in practice,” and contemporary security studies have taken advantage of the realist framework in explaining a wide variety of outcomes in world politics.4 Realist scholarship offers the most comprehensive theory on wartime alignments and presents the indispensable departure point in this

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exercise. Examination of traditionally recognized factors offers important insights that often challenge what we know about intervention: 1. Offensive realists were right: Neither power nor revisionist incentives of attackers seem to trigger the balancing coalitions predicted by defensive realists. Also contrary to the expectations of international audiences, external interveners do not oppose those who seek to alter the world order nor do they rush to save weak states. In support of offensive realist claims, states intervene against weak belligerents and support powerful ones in international conflicts. While capabilities of the belligerent (civil war state) also fail to play a role in civil war intervention, the power status of the intervener and its ability to pro­ ject power to the conflict zone are robust explanations of intervention in both types of conflicts. Major powers are the most frequent interveners in armed conflicts and have a strong incentive to police events around the globe. Location emerges as the key element in intervention decisions independent of interveners’ power status. States stay away from distant conflicts, but they also exercise caution in entering their neighbors’ conflicts. Finally, states honor previous alliance commitments when their allies experience internal stability, but they do not necessarily take sides with their allies in international conflicts. 2. Democratic fraternity: Recent revisions of the realist theory explain important trends in intervention decisions. States’ perception of threats emerges as a pivotal point to study the dynamics of intervention. Shared democratic institutions between belligerents and external actors strongly affect perception of threats: Democratic interveners support their regime counterpart in international conflicts even if the latter is the initiator of militarized actions. Joint democracy does not emerge as a robust explanation of intervention in civil wars. Yet when democratic states enter civil wars taking place in other democracies, they refrain from adopting military strategies and incline toward neutral interventions. Undoubtedly, several cases of intervention in militarized conflicts are driven by multiple motives that an exclusive emphasis on external states’ security considerations is unable to account for. Regional power plays and rivalries are not less likely than power considerations and external threats to influence intervention decisions. Rivalries represent acute disagreements and capture the long-term conflict history of a pair of states, also shaping their responses to security issues. Enduring rivalries present a “peculiar kind of stability,” where rivals continue a conflictual relationship over a sustained period of time without a clear-cut victory or defeat.5 Incremental changes in power,

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though not leading to rivalry termination, might upset the stalemate between rivals and open up windows of opportunity to supersede their adversary. Intervention can be an attempt by enduring rivals to disrupt this stalemate. Rival states have dealt with each other long enough to be suspicious of their opponent’s intentions and actions. To preempt the possible influence its rival might achieve, rival states may engage in competing interventions.6 By way of example, in the Laotian civil war (1960–1962), the United States intervened on the government side, while Russia, North Vietnam, and China assisted the rebel group, the Pathet Lao. In official declarations, the superpowers blamed each other for stirring a civil war in Laos by providing military support to the combatants, and their actions were aimed at undoing each other’s influence in the war. Diplomatic interaction between the United States and the Soviet Union in this period points to the intensity of competition for influence in Laos. On August 11, 1959, “the State Department has suggested that the Communist military activity in Laos might be a part of a Moscowdirected plan to create tensions in Southeast Asia” and accused the Soviets of promoting fighting between the rebel group Pathet Lao and the Laotian government.7 Later, on September 5, a U.S. statement on the situation in Laos was an attempt to prove with evidence that the Soviet Union, China, and North Vietnam were supporting Pathet Lao and blocking the war’s resolution.8 On the other hand, the Soviet Union also made an official declaration as a response (August 17, 1959) and accused Laos of violating her neutrality by permitting the United States to establish a military base: “The Government of Laos, despite its obligation under the Geneva agreement, has concluded a treaty legalizing the presence of United States military personnel in Laos and handing over control of the Laotian army to their control.”9 Domestic imperatives, other than protecting private interests abroad, also play a role in interventions, a factor that realism has been reluctant to account for.10 Internal threats in a country, such as political instability and domestic violence, may bias leaders’ perception of international pressures.11 Leaders who gain access to power through unconstitutional means may have a greater incentive to divert public opinion by engaging in military quagmires abroad. Thus, leaders facing threats at home can react to a conflict without a genuine interest in the belligerents. Finally, leaders who face veto players with divergent preferences may be slowed down by strong opposition and fail to respond to an ongoing conflict, as predicted by their economic and political ties to the belligerents.

146  CONCLUSION

States’ intervention in strangers’ conflicts may also include a heterogeneous set of cases on another dimension. Some of these interventions are applauded by liberals as signs of international consensus and some by internationalists as efforts of collective security. What is intriguing is that these same interventions are seen by realists as a reflection of power politics. While the interpretation of individual cases may differ across research programs, a search for trends in the general behavior of interveners based on available empirical evidence may successfully clarify the comparative explanatory advantage of research programs in explaining states’ decisions. This book has examined economic considerations and their domestic correlates in intervention decisions. It has argued that external states adopt security policies to protect and maintain their nationals’ economic interests against the repercussions of armed conflicts in foreign markets. This has been a rather controversial claim for the popular liberal thesis that free trade should correlate highly with peace. Layne and Schwarz’s interpretation of economic liberalism is perhaps the pinnacle of these claims: Rather than being the stimulus to peace that it is touted to be, economic interdependence—and the need to protect America’s stakes in it—is invoked to justify a post–Cold War U.S. military presence in Europe and East Asia and military intervention in the Balkan conflict. The strategy dictates that the United States be prepared to risk war, if necessary, to ensure that the markets and raw material sources with which it is linked are not closed by “renationalized” economic and foreign policies that will result from regional instability. In effect, the foreign policy establishment has embraced the proposition that wars (or at least continuous preparations for war) are necessary for the American economy to prosper. So much for the peaceful effects of interdependence. (italics in original)12

Approaching economic liberalism as a positive paradigm that explains state behavior around the core premise of economic interests and their domestic repercussions overcomes the maddening vagueness of this normative reading. Economic interdependence may lead to peaceful strategies under some circumstances and forceful ones under others. Besides, war and peace are among several forms of state behavior that a research program in world politics aims to explain around its core premise and the empirical expectations originating from this premise. States adopt a variety of security policies

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to protect their interests in distant markets, and preserving peace with their important trade partners is one among these policy choices. What separates the liberal paradigm from realism is nothing more than the level of analysis where we look for the causes of international outcomes.13 Realism emphasizes systemic factors originating from the international system, whereas liberalism prioritizes domestic politics of states in its various strands.14 This book supports two hypotheses based on this reformulation of economic liberalism: 1. A political economy of intervention: States act to support their nationals’ economic interests in belligerent economies by providing military assistance to their partners in international conflicts and adopting diplomacy in civil wars. This argument is well placed independently of whether such interests are measured as current or expected economic benefits to investors and traders. 2. Reluctant democracies: Democratic decision makers are under crosspressures from multiple domestic constituencies with intersectional and competing interests. The crowded bargaining table in democracies requires that decision makers give priority to public goods provisions that redistribute social output to the society rather than to policies that satisfy a particular constituency. Intervention to defend interests of economic agents against armed conflicts has private good properties and is therefore less likely when economically minded external states are democracies. In combination with the finding on democratic fraternity, democratic states as external actors to conflicts are driven more by the motive of assisting their regime counterparts and less by small group interests. Findings reported here are subject to change as researchers provide an in-depth study of the coalitions that result between rulers and economic actors in various institutional settings, but they represent a crucial first step in an empirical application of economic liberalism. The present framework not only articulated the domestic component in the formation of state preferences but also showed that liberalism is a positive theory that explains outcomes in world politics independent of the form that they may take. These outcomes may include forceful as well as pacific state behavior, as illustrated by the application of economic liberalism to intervention in armed conflict. Liberalism’s explanatory power lies specifically in providing insights into the domestic sources of state preferences and the interplay of domestic demands with international stimuli.

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CONCLUSION

Do considerations of peace and security actually guide states’ behavior as external actors to conflicts? If not, then what are the causes behind intervention? How do states choose the conflicts in which to intervene? Which political and economic prerequisites drive their choices of sides and strategy? These are questions to which we can give only limited answers because, as scholars and practitioners, we have not invested much effort in examining the causes of intervention in armed conflicts. The answer this book gave to the “who intervenes?” question has been simple and commonsensical. States’ decisions as to whether to intervene have been much more complex than a universal drive for saving other nations and bring to the fore important questions about interveners’ incentives. National interests drive interventions in armed conflicts. States are not moved by incentives to create a public good through containment of conflicts between or within other nations. External states might choose to legitimize their actions within international regimes by referring to the security implications of conflicts, but this does not explain how states choose the conflicts for which they will step into the fray. Intervention decisions are, most of the time, informed by a combination of political and economic objectives. Several forms of political and economic ties with the belligerents can trigger external response to ongoing conflicts and determine interveners’ choice of sides; assisting a crucial ally that comes under attack, containing a nearby conflict from spreading to the region, democratic fraternity, pleasing international audiences, or protecting economic interests of politically significant domestic constituencies in belligerent economies can be a few examples to the factors underlying intervention decisions. Strong ties to the belligerents can also be neutralized by the presence of a powerful opponent in the conflict and diminish the value of force as an option. Therefore, understanding intervention in armed conflict requires unveiling the complex decision making that precedes foreign powers’ decisions.

REFERENCE MATTER

APPENDIX MEASUREMENT AND RESEARCH DESIGN

the data design adopted in Chapter 4 is dyadic, where each original participant (belligerent) in an international conflict (State A) is matched with all other states in the system as potential interveners (State B). This approach ensures that the empirical analysis covers the relationships of potential interveners with each belligerent of an ongoing conflict. If we consider a generic dyad such as AB, A is the belligerent of the conflict and B is a potential intervener, which can be any state in the system. The data setup is nondirected in the sense that I have not duplicated the observations by including the BA dyad in the analysis. A directed-dyad approach does not offer much in this framework because the analyst knows from the data the actual roles of the states A and B. To give an example to this dyadic framework, Libyan military aircraft attacked targets in northern Chad on July 31 through August 3, 1983. The United States deployed two surveillance and eight fighter planes, and, France and the former Zaire (Democratic Republic of Congo) deployed troops to support Chad against Libyan aggression.1 Libya and Chad are the belligerents of this conflict (State A), whereas the United States and France are external interveners (State B). While Libya and Chad are matched with all other states in the system as potential interveners, the belligerent–­intervener dyads are cases in which an intervention took place in this particular conflict (Table A.1). Data on international conflicts come from the Correlates of War Project (COW) Militarized Interstate Disputes (MID) data set for the period between 1816 and 2001. According to the COW definition, the term belligerent (State A) refers to states that direct a military action (involving threat, display, or use of force) toward another state and/or are targeted by this action. In the first and second stage of the analysis, intervener states (State B) are nonbelligerents that enter into a conflict between the original participants after initial hostilities have begun either as the initiator or the target of a military action. In the final stage, the term intervention is broadly defined 151

152  APPENDIX

Table A.1. 

Matching belligerents and interveners, Libya–Chad ­(Initiation; February 23, 1983). Belligerent (A)–intervener (B) dyads

For or against A?

Timing

Libya–United States Libya–France Libya–Zaire Chad–United States Chad–France Chad–Zaire

Against Against Against For For For

August 2, 1983 August 9, 1983 July 3, 1983 August 2, 1983 August 9, 1983 July 3, 1983

source: COW Project MID data and Corbetta and Dixon, 2005.

and also includes diplomatic and economic forms of statecraft. Following the COW Project definitions, I have coded states involved on the first day of the conflict on Side A as attackers and states involved later on Side A as interveners on the attacker side. Similarly, I have coded states involved on the first day of the conflict against Side A as targets and states involved later against Side A as interveners on the target side. CONTROL VARIABLES Control variables adopted in this empirical assessment draw from the realist debate discussed in this chapter. The first set of variables models the role of power considerations and interests in interventions in international conflicts. Belligerent Is the Weaker Side accounts for the distribution of power between belligerent nations. It is a dichotomous variable (1–0) that codes whether the belligerent (State A) is the weaker side among the original participants. In conflicts where there are multiple belligerents, the weakest party is coded as 1. The COW Project’s Composite Index of National Material Capabilities (CINC) has been adopted in the construction of this variable. 2 This measure uses information on six dimensions: urban population, total population, energy consumption, iron and steel production, military personnel, and military expenditures. CINC scores are calculated as the ratio of a state’s share of systemwide totals averaged across the six dimensions of capabilities. The major power status of a belligerent presents a special case that is highly relevant to the link between power and alignments in conflicts. Ad hoc coalitions may form among external states to support powerful belligerents. Major Power Belligerent tests for the possibility of bandwagoning on the side of strong belligerents. I code a belligerent state as 1 if it is identified as a major power by the COW Project and 0 otherwise.3 Power has a dual role in intervention decisions and is relevant to the present framework on another dimension. Powerful states may also be more likely to intervene in conflicts to police international events that can harm their interests around

MEASUREMENT AND RESEARCH DESIGN 153

the world. Major Power Intervener controls for the power status of the intervener and codes dichotomously (1–0) whether potential intervener B has major power status according to the COW classification. Similarity of Interests tests for the similarity of states’ foreign policy positions and goals. It is a continuous variable standardized between 1 and 0, indicating maximum to minimum agreement, respectively. In the measurement of this variable, I have adopted the (global) tau-b scores following Altfeld and Bueno de Mesquita’s influential study. Tau-b scores are measured as the extent to which states’ alliance clusters overlap with each other; greater overlap indicates greater similarity in states’ security interests.4 Another set of control variables tests for the role of threats in intervention decisions and specifically looks at which states that initiate a militarized action are perceived as threatening by external states. Aggressor equals 1 when belligerent A is the attacker of this conflict and is coded as a revisionist state by the COW Project. The code 0 refers to cases where A does not have revisionist goals and A can be either the initiator or the target of militarized hostilities. Both sides of the conflict can be revisionist; what is important in the present framework is identifying states that make revisionist claims and resort to militarized action to realize such claims. The term revisionist refers to states that are dissatisfied with the distribution of power, prestige, or goods (such as territory) in the system and have an incentive to change this distribution to their favor. More specifically, “the state that openly attempts to challenge the predispute condition by (1) making claims to territory, (2) attempting to overthrow a regime, or (3) declaring the intention not to abide by another state’s policy” is coded as revisionist in the COW scheme.5 The weapons technology that an attacker holds also gives an idea about the significance of the threat that it poses to other nations. Nuclear Attacker is a dichotomous measure (1–0) of whether belligerent A is the attacker and “possesses nuclear weapons in a given year, provided that the state has an active nuclear weapons program.”6 Shared democratic institutions between belligerents and external states pre­sent another way to measure the significance of threats to external actors. Democratic states almost never intervene against a democratic belligerent. Some authors take this argument a step further by claiming that domestic coalitions in other states usually contain liberal elements that are sympathetic to the United States, further barring counterbalancing: “No coalition has formed to counterbalance US power because political liberalism constitutes a transnational movement that has penetrated most potential challenger states at least to some degree.” 7 Whether democratic states support their regime counterparts in international conflicts, even in cases where the latter is the initiator of militarized action, is the question that I attempt to answer. Jointly Democratic with the Attacker is a dichotomous variable (1–0) that measures whether A is the attacker and shares democratic institutions with potential intervener B. A country is coded as democratic in a year if it scores 6 or higher on the twenty-one point Polity

154  APPENDIX

index (–10, +10) from POLITY IV.8 This index is the difference between composite democracy and autocracy scores for each country derived from three basic dimensions of political institutions: competitiveness of political participation, openness, and competitiveness of executive recruitment and political constraints on the executive. Previous studies on war expansion also put an overwhelming emphasis on alliances and distance. To control for this framework, three variables have been adopted. Formal alliances are important to delineate the specific promises that external states made to belligerents in the preconflict stage. Defensive Alliance indicates that states have promised military support to their ally in case of an outside attack. If states keep their international promises and alliances are reliable, outside intervention on behalf of a belligerent should be more likely in the presence of a defense pact. Defensive alliance is coded as 1 if belligerent A and external state B share a formal defense pact and 0 otherwise.9 The distance variable is used to control for the distance between belligerents and external states. States are thought to be more concerned with conflicts taking place in their region and intervene in these conflicts to influence the course of events in their favor. States are also better able to reflect their power over short distances and achieve a successful outcome, which may further encourage them to intervene in nearby conflicts. Log Distance accounts for these dynamics and is measured as the natural logarithm of the distance between belligerent A and external state B in miles measured by the COW Direct Contiguity data. Another important focus of war expansion scholars is that states sharing borders with belligerents may also be pulled into their neighbors’ conflicts. Neighboring states commonly dispute their borders and escalate their disagreements to armed conflicts. Territorial conflicts survive for a longer period than conflicts over other issues. Hassner argues that territorial disputes become entrenched and are less amenable to resolution over time because disputants are increasingly likely to attach a greater value to the disputed territory as the disagreement persists.10 Fearon also suggests that territorial issues are usually perceived as indivisible by the disputants where parties are less likely to be bought out with side-payments or issue linkages.11 Because neighboring states have long-running disagreements in which a stalemate is reached, they look for opportunities to supersede each other. Their neighbors’ conflict with other states presents this opportunity, and intervention can be adopted as a tool to force the neighbors’ hand to accept an agreement that they would not otherwise. Neighbor codes dichotomously (1–0) whether belligerent A and external state B are contiguous by land or river or are separated by up to 150 miles of water, according to the COW Direct Contiguity Data.

NOTES

Chapter 1 1.  Geoffrey Blainey, The Causes of War (New York: Free Press, 1988), 232. 2.  Bernadotte E. Schmitt, “The Diplomatic Preliminaries of the Crimean War,” American Historical Review 25, no. 1 (1919), 45. 3.  Ibid., 53. 4.  Diego Abente, “The War of the Triple Alliance: Three Explanatory Models,” Latin American Research Review 22, no. 2 (1987): 47–69; Erik Goldstein, Wars and Peace Treaties, 1816–1992 (London: Routledge, 1992); Randall Schweller, Unanswered Threats: Political Constraints on the Balance of Power (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006); Thomas Whigham, The Paraguayan War (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002). 5.  Isaiah Bowman, The New World: Problems in Political Geography (Chicago: World Book Company, 1921); Ernest C. Helmreich, The Diplomacy of the Balkan Wars, 1912–1913 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1938); Brian Pearce, George Weissman, and Duncan Williams, The War Correspondence of Leon Trotsky: The Balkan Wars, 1912–13 (New York: Monad Press, 1980). 6.  William Stueck, The Korean War: An International History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995). 7.  Frederick S. Calhoun, Power and Principle: Armed Intervention in Wilsonian Foreign Policy (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1986); Warren I. Cohen, The American Revisionists: The Lessons of Intervention in World War I (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967); Benjamin O. Fordham, “Revisionism Reconsidered: Exports and American Intervention in World War I,” International Organization 61,

155

156  NOTES TO CHAPTER 1

no.  2 (2007): 277–310; Wayne S. Cole, Charles A. Lindbergh and the Battle against American Intervention in World War II (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974). 8.  The term belligerent refers to originator state/nonstate actors involved in an international conflict or a civil war on its first day, whereas intervener is defined as a state that enters into a conflict after the original participants. See Chapter 2 for a detailed discussion of this terminology. 9.  Robert J. Lieber, “Oil and Power after the Gulf War,” International Security 17, no. 1 (1992): 155–176. 10.  Martha Finnemore, The Purpose of Intervention: Changing Beliefs about the Use of Force (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003), 6. 11.  It is important to clarify the empirical domain of this book. Throughout this study, I have adopted the definition of international conflict from the Correlates of War Project (COW) Militarized Interstate Disputes (MID) data; Faten Ghosn, Glenn Palmer, and Stuart A. Bremer, “The MID3 Data Set, 1993–2001: Procedures, Coding Rules, and Description,” Conflict Management and Peace Science 21, no. 2 (2004): 133–154. In the COW definition, the terms conflict and dispute, as they are commonly referred to in conflict research, refer to cases “in which the threat, display or use of military force short of war by one member state is explicitly directed towards the government, official representatives, official forces, property or territory of another state”; Daniel M. Jones, Stuart A. Bremer, and J. David Singer, “Militarized Interstate Disputes, 1816–1992: Rationale, Coding Rules, and Empirical Patterns,” Conflict Management and Peace Science 15, no. 2 (1996): 169. In this sense, not all conflicts involve use of force by belligerents but only the threat or display of it. The definition of civil war comes from Regan and refers to cases of organized violence that result in at least 200 fatalities and take place between a domestic armed group and its internationally recognized government; Patrick M. Regan, Civil Wars and Foreign Powers: Outside Intervention in Intrastate Conflict (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000). 12.  Though quantitative analyses of civil wars are relatively new, theoretical models and historical studies include several insightful works that discuss earlier cases; Stathis Kalyvas, “ ‘New’ and ‘Old’ Civil Wars: A Valid Distinction?” World Politics 54, no. 1 (2001): 99–118. Scientific studies based on quantitative evidence trace interstate wars between two members of the international system back to modern state formation. The COW Project goes back to 1816 to identify wars, whereas Holsti’s list goes back to 1648; in the time period that the COW Project misses (1648–1816), Holsti identifies fifty-eight conflicts (twenty-two in the 1648–1712 period and thirty-six in the 1715–1814 period); Kalevi J. Holsti, Peace and War: Armed Conflicts and International Order, 1648–1989 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991). Also see Jack Levy, War in the Modern Great Power System, 1495–1975 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1983) on historical wars.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 1  157

13.  “Pirate Attacks Increased in 2007, Maritime Group Says.” New York Times, January 10, 2008. 14.  James Mayall, The New Interventionism 1991–1994: United Nations Experience in Cambodia, Former Yugoslavia and Somalia (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 12. 15.  David A. Baldwin, Economic Statecraft (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985), 15. 16.  Stephen M. Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987); Michael F. Altfeld and Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, “Choosing Sides in War,” International Studies Quarterly 23, no. 1 (1979): 87–112; Jeffrey W. Taliaferro, Balancing Risks: Great Power Intervention in the Periphery (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004). 17.  Brett A. Leeds, “Alliance Reliability in Times of War: Explaining State Decisions to Violate Treaties,” International Organization 57, no. 4 (2003): 801–827; Paul K. Huth and Bruce Russett, “What Makes Deterrence Work? Cases from 1900 to 1980,” World Politics 36, no. 4 (1984): 496–526; Benjamin Most, Harvey Starr, and Randolph M. Siverson, “The Logic and Diffusion of International Conflict,” in Manus I. Midlarsky, ed., Handbook of War Studies (Winchester, MA: Unwin Hyman, 1989); Randolph M. Siverson and Harvey Starr, The Diffusion of War: A Study of Opportunity and Willingness (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991). 18.  Alastair Smith, “Alliance Formation and War,” International Studies Quarterly 39, no. 4 (1995): 405–425; Alastair Smith, “To Intervene or Not to Intervene: A Biased Decision,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 40, no. 1 (1996): 16–40; Suzanne Werner, “Deterring Intervention: The Stakes of War and Third-Party Involvement,” American Journal of Political Science 44, no. 4 (2000): 720–732. 19.  Stanley Hoffman, quoted in Miroslav Nincic, Democracy and Foreign Policy: The Fallacy of Political Realism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 9. 20.  Andrew Moravcsik, “Taking Preferences Seriously: A Liberal Theory of International Politics,” International Organization 51, no. 4 (1997): 513–553. 21.  Jeffry A. Frieden, “The Economics of Intervention: American Overseas Investments and Relations with Underdeveloped Areas, 1890–1950,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 31, no. 1 (1989): 55–80; Stephen Krasner, Defending the National Interest: Raw Materials Investments and US Foreign Policy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978); Frederic S. Pearson and Robert Baumann, “Foreign Military Intervention and Changes in the United States Business Activity,” Journal of Political and Military Sociology 5, no. 1 (1977): 79–97. 22.  Finnemore, The Purpose of Intervention; Frieden, “The Economics of Intervention”; Charles Lipson, Standing Guard: Protecting Foreign Capital in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985).

158  NOTES TO CHAPTER 1

23.  Frieden, “The Economics of Intervention.” 24.  Boaz Atzili, “The Virtues and Vices of Fixed Territorial Ownership,” SAIS Review of International Affairs 27, no. 2 (2007): 95–108; Stephen Krasner, Sovereignty: The Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999). 25.  There are several other important characteristics of U.S. interventions that Chapters 5 and 6 will discuss in detail. 26.  Benjamin A. Most and Harvey Starr, “Theoretical and Logical Issues in the Study of International Diffusion,” Journal of Theoretical Politics 2, no. 4 (1990), 400. 27.  Galia Press-Barnathan, The Political Economy of Transitions to Peace: A Comparative Perspective (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009). For an overview of this impressive literature, see Edward D. Mansfield and Brian M. Pollins, “Interdependence and Conflict: An Introduction,” in Edward D. Mansfield and Brian M. Pollins, eds., Economic Interdependence and International Conflict: New Perspectives on an Enduring Debate (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003). Canonical studies in this body of work include Katherine Barbieri, The Liberal Illusion: Does Trade Promote Peace? (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002); John R. Oneal and Bruce M. Russett, “The Classical Liberals Were Right: Democracy, Interdependence, and Conflict, 1950–1985,” International Studies Quarterly 41, no. 2 (1997): 267–293; John R. Oneal and Bruce M. Russett, “The Kantian Peace: The Pacific Benefits of Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations, 1885–1992,” World Politics 52, no. 1 (1999): 1–37; and Solomon William Polachek, “Conflict and Trade,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 24, no. 1 (1980): 55–78, among others. 28.  Han Dorussen and Hugh Ward, “Intergovernmental Organizations and the Kantian Peace,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 52, no. 2 (2008): 189–212; Emilie M. Hafner-­Burton and Alexander H. Montgomery, “Power Positions: International Organizations, Social Networks, and Conflict,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 50, no. 1 (2006): 3–27; Emilie M. Hafner-Burton, Jana Von Stein, and Erik Gartzke, “International Organizations Count,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 52, no. 2 (2008): 175–188; Yoram Z. Haftel, “Designing for Peace: Regional Integration Arrangements, Institutional Variation, and Militarized Interstate Disputes,” International Organization 61, no. 1 (2007): 217–237. 29.  Scholarly work has considered the economic consequences of international conflicts on domestic economies of the belligerents and external states. There is also ample evidence in economics and international relations that civil wars dramatically change and destroy the economic fabric of countries. See Alberto Abadie and Javier Gardeazabal, “The Economic Costs of Conflict: A Case Study of the Basque Country,” American Economic Review 93, no. 1 (2003): 113–132; Seonjou Kang and James Meernik, “Civil War Destruction and the Prospects for Economic Growth,” Journal of Politics 67, no. 1 (2005): 88–109; James C. Murdoch and Todd Sandler, “Economic

NOTES TO CHAPTER 2  159

Growth, Civil Wars, and Spatial Spillovers,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 46, no. 1 (2002): 91–110. 30.  Marcus Miller and Lei Zhang, “Oil Price Hikes and Development Triggers in Peace and War,” The Economic Journal 106, no. 435 (1996): 445–457; Coby van der Linde, The State and the International Oil Market: Competition and the Changing Ownership of Crude Oil Assets (Boston: Kluwer, 2000). 31.  Peter Gourevitch, “The Second Image Reversed: The International Sources of Domestic Politics,” International Organization 32, no. 4 (1978): 881–912. 32.  Nincic, Democracy and Foreign Policy. 33.  Krasner, Defending the National Interest; Paul A. Papayoanou, Power Ties: Economic Interdependence, Balancing and War (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999); Etel Solingen, Regional Orders at Century’s Dawn: Global and Domestic Influences in Grand Strategy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998). 34.  Doak Bishop, James Crawford, and W. Michael Reisman, Foreign Investment Disputes: Cases, Materials and Commentary (Hague: Kluwer Law International, 2005). 35.  F. C. Shaffer & Associates was engaged in a development project, and because Ethiopia is a landlocked country it had to transport galvanized gratings through Eritrea’s Port of Assab. During the Eritrea–Ethiopia conflict, Eritrea banned the passage of these imports and seized the property to prevent shipping. 36.  Speech by Anthony Harrigan, executive vice president of the U.S. Industrial Council in 1975, New York Times, August 11, 1975. 37.  Moravcsik, “Taking Preferences Seriously.” 38.  Helen V. Milner, Interests, Institutions, and Information: Domestic Politics and International Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), 19. 39.  As Schweller argues, “The study of foreign policy . . . requires knowledge of politics within and between states, of comparative and international politics”; Schweller, Unanswered Threats, 127. Chapter 2 1.  Stephen Van Evera, Causes of War: Power and the Roots of Conflict (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999), 190–191. 2.  The term aggressor is used here to refer to the terminology in Van Evera’s work. The information on aggressors and their victims cannot be properly extracted from the COW Project MID data because the COW project identifies only who is involved in conflicts on the first day. Though I will ultimately rely on the decision rules of the COW Project, it is important to acknowledge the ambiguity regarding the specific roles of conflict participants in this major data project. The term attacker that I use refers to the belligerent state that first directs a militarized action against another state. The COW Project MID data include a coding of “revisionist” states in the sense of

160  NOTES TO CHAPTER 2

seeking to change the international status quo. In cases where an attacker is also coded as revisionist, I will refer to it as the “aggressor.” Otherwise, attacker simply refers to the first mover in this book’s framework. 3.  The seminal works on defensive realism include but are not limited to: Robert Jervis, “Cooperation under the Security Dilemma,” World Politics 30, no. 3 (1978): 167–214; Barry R. Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984); Jack Snyder, Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991) and Walt, The Origins of Alliances. On offensive realism, see Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1981); John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: Norton, 2001); Fareed Zakaria, “Realism and Domestic Politics: A Review Essay,” in Michael E. Brown, Sean Lynn-Jones, and Steven E. Miller, eds., The Perils of Anarchy: Contemporary Realism and International Security (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995). Snyder presents an excellent overview of defensive and offensive realism in his review of Mearsheimer’s The Tragedy of Great Power Politics; Glenn H. Snyder, “Mearsheimer’s World-Offensive Realism and the Struggle for Security: A Review Essay,” International Security 27, no. 1 (2002): 149–173. 4.  Randall Schweller, Deadly Imbalances: Tripolarity and Hitler’s Strategy of World Conquest (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998). 5.  Keir A. Lieber and Gerard Alexander, “Waiting for Balancing: Why the World Is Not Pushing Back,” International Security 30, no. 1 (2005): 109–139; John M. Owen, “Transnational Liberalism and U.S. Primacy,” International Security 26, no. 3 (2001/02): 117–152. 6.  Scott S. Gartner and Randolph M. Siverson, “War Expansion and War Outcome,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 40, no. 1 (1996), 4. 7.  Jones et al., “Militarized Interstate Disputes,” 163. 8.  Blainey, The Causes of War, 228. 9.  Lewis F. Richardson, Arms and Insecurity: A Mathematical Study of the Causes and Origins of War (Pittsburgh, PA: Boxwood Press, 1960), 259. 10.  Robert Powell, In the Shadow of Power: States and Strategies in International Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999). 11.  James N. Rosenau, “Intervention as a Scientific Concept,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 13, no. 2 (1969): 149–171. 12.  Siverson and Starr, The Diffusion of War. Also reflecting the scholarly interest in wars, several qualitative studies have applied the realist framework to high-profile aggression, especially to World War I; see Snyder, Myths of Empire; and Stephen Van Evera, “The Cult of the Offensive and the Origins of the First World War,” International Security 9, no.1 (1984): 58–107. 13.  The distinction between wars and lower-scale conflicts follows the COW Project definitions. Small and Singer write that a war should lead “to a minimum of 1000 battle fatalities among all of the system members involved” caused exclusively by fight-

NOTES TO CHAPTER 2  161

ing and not by starvation, genocide, diseases, or climate conditions; Melvin Small and J. David Singer, Resort to Arms: International and Civil Wars 1816–1980 (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1982). War participant refers to states that sustain at least 100 fatalities or send at least 1,000 armed personnel to active combat; J. David Singer and Melvin Small, The Wages of War 1816–1965: A Statistical Handbook (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1972). Lower-scale conflicts involve those cases where there is militarized action such as threat, display, or use of force but where the 1,000-death threshold is not reached. 14.  Karen A. Feste, Expanding the Frontiers: Superpower Intervention in the Cold War (New York: Praeger, 1992), 37. 15.  Adam Roberts, “Law and the Use of Force After Iraq,” Survival 45, no. 2 (2003), 46; italics added. 16.  Feste, Expanding the Frontiers. 17.  Taliaferro, Balancing Risks, 18–22. 18.  In a similar vein, Western includes civil war intervention cases (Somalia, Bosnia, and Lebanon), intervention in an international war (the Gulf War), and military deployment in Grenada by the Reagan administration in the same framework; Jon W. Western, Selling Intervention and War: The Presidency, the Media, and the American Public (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005). 19.  The literature is impossible to exhaust here. Some examples are Michael Grow, US Presidents and Latin American Interventions: Pursuing Regime Change in the Cold War (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2008); David N. Gibbs, The Political Economy of Third-World Intervention (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); Gabriel Kolko, Confronting the Third World: United States Foreign Policy, 1945–1980 (New York: Pantheon, 1988). 20.  Note that a coup d’état attempt does not necessarily point to the presence of a civil war. Prominent civil war scholars agree that a certain level of violence needs to be maintained in a civil war, which disqualifies most coups d’état; Michael W. Doyle and Nicholas Sambanis, “International Peacebuilding: A Theoretical and Quantitative Analysis,” American Political Science Review 94, no. 4 (2000): 779–801; James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin, “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War,” American Political Science Review 97, no. 1 (2003): 75–90; Regan, Civil Wars and Foreign Powers; Meredith R. Sarkees, “The Correlates of War Data on War: An Update to 1997,” Conflict Management and Peace Science 18, no. 1 (2000): 123–144. In this respect, it is doubtful whether the U.S. role in the military coup against Arbenz in Guatemala (1960) would be considered as intervention in intrastate violence. See Charles D. Brockett, “An Illusion of Omnipotence: U.S. Policy Toward Guatemala, 1954–1960,” Latin American Politics and Society 44, no. 1 (2002): 91–126. 21.  Richard N. Lebow, The Tragic Vision of Politics: Ethics, Interests and Orders (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 22.  Schweller, Deadly Imbalances; Walt, The Origins of Alliances, Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1979).

162  NOTES TO CHAPTER 2

23.  Richard K. Betts, “The Delusion of Impartial Intervention,” Foreign Affairs 70, no. 6 (1994): 20–33. 24.  Jones et al., “Militarized Interstate Disputes,” 186. 25.  Patrick M. Regan and Aysegul Aydin, “Diplomacy and Other Forms of Intervention in Civil Wars,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 50, no. 5 (2006): 736–756; UCDP/ PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset. 26.  Smith, “Alliance Formation and War”; Smith, “To Intervene or Not to Intervene”; Powell, In the Shadow of Power; and Werner, “Deterring Intervention.” 27.  Renato Corbetta and William J. Dixon, “Danger beyond Dyads: Third-Party Participants in Militarized Interstate Disputes,” Conflict Management and Peace Science 22, no. 1 (2005): 39–61. 28.  Patrick M. Regan, “Interventions into Countries at Risk of Civil War,” unpublished manuscript (2010). 29.  According to the COW MID data, twenty-eight of 527 interveners in the 1816– 2001 period entered an ongoing conflict on its first day. In further support to early intervention, 106 of 527 interveners in the same time frame intervened within the first five days of conflict onset. For instance, the United States intervened in the Haiti–­ Dominican Republic conflict in 1963 within four days after initial hostilities began. 30.  Stueck, The Korean War. 31.  “Threats and Responses; Bush’s Speech on Iraq: ‘Saddam Hussein and His Sons Must Leave,’ ” New York Times, March 18, 2003. 32.  Alexander L. George, “Strategies for Preventive Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution,” Conflict and Cooperation 34, no. 1 (1999): 9–19. 33.  Lloyd J. Dumas, The Peacekeeping Economy: Using Economic Relationships to Build a More Peaceful, Prosperous and Secure World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011). 34.  William J. Long, “Trade and Technology Incentives and Bilateral Cooperation,” in David Cortright, ed., The Price of Peace: Incentives and International Conflict Prevention (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1997). 35.  David Cortright, “Incentives Strategies for Preventing Conflict,” in David Cortright, ed., The Price of Peace: Incentives and International Conflict Prevention (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1997), 281–282. 36.  Michael S. Lund, Preventing Violent Conflicts: A Strategy for Preventive Diplomacy (Washington, DC: U.S. Institute of Peace Press, 1996); Cyrus Vance and Herbert S. Okun, “Creating Healthy Alliances,” in Kevin Cahill, ed., Preventive Diplomacy: Stopping Wars before They Start (New York: Routledge, 2000); I. William Zartman, Cowardly Lions: Missed Opportunities to Prevent Deadly Conflict and State Collapse (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2005). 37.  Regan, “Interventions into Countries at Risk of Civil War.” 38.  Bertrand G. Ramcharan, Preventive Diplomacy at the UN (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 2008).

NOTES TO CHAPTER 2  163

39.  Zartman, Cowardly Lions, 211. 40.  Kenneth Hackett, “International NGOs in Preventing Conflict,” in Kevin Cahill, ed., Preventive Diplomacy: Stopping Wars before They Start (New York: Routledge, 2000), 274. 41.  Gartner and Siverson, “War Expansion and War Outcome.” 42.  Smith, “Alliance Formation and War”; Smith, “To Intervene or Not to ­Intervene.” 43.  Werner, “Deterring Intervention.” 44.  Curtis S. Signorino and Ahmer Tarar, “A Unified Theory and Test of Extended Immediate Deterrence,” American Journal of Political Science 50, no. 3 (2006): 586–605. 45.  Blainey, The Causes of War, 57. 46.  Suzanne Werner and Amy Yuen, “Making and Keeping Peace,” International Organization 59, no. 2 (2005): 261–292. 47.  Michael W. Doyle and Nicholas Sambanis, Making War and Building Peace: United Nations Peace Operations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006); Virginia P. Fortna, Does Peacekeeping Work? Shaping Belligerents’ Choices after Civil War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008); Roland Paris, At War’s End: Building Peace after Civil Conflict (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 48.  Graciana Del Castillo, Rebuilding War-Torn States: The Challenge of PostConflict Economic Reconstruction (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2008), 35–39. 49.  Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, “Aid, Policy, and Growth in Post-Conflict Societies,” European Economic Review 48, no. 5 (2004): 1125–1145. 50.  Collier and Hoeffler, “Aid, Policy, and Growth,” 9. 51.  Press-Barnathan, The Political Economy of Transitions to Peace. 52.  Ibid.,197. 53.  Inis L. Claude, Swords into Plowshares: The Problems and Progress of International Organization (New York: Random House, 1984), 215–224. 54.  Michael J. Glennon, “The New Interventionism: The Search for a Just International Law,” Foreign Affairs 78, no. 3 (1999): 2–7. 55.  Anthony C. Arend and Robert J. Beck, International Law and the Use of Force (London: Routledge, 1993). 56.  Jules Lobel and Michael Ratner, “Bypassing the Security Council: Ambiguous Authorizations to Use Force, Cease-Fires and the Iraqi Inspection Regime,” American Journal of International Law 93, no. 1 (1999): 124–154. 57.  Roberts, “Law and the Use of Force,” 38. 58.  Corbetta and Dixon, “Danger beyond Dyads.” 59.  Glennon, “The New Interventionism.” 60.  Ian Johnston, Aftermath of the Gulf War: An Assessment of UN Action (Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner, 1994); Joseph Lepgold and Thomas G. Weiss, “Collective Conflict Management and Changing World Politics: An Overview,” in Joseph Lepgold and Thomas G. Weiss, eds., Collective Conflict Management and Changing World Politics (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998). Similarly, in civil wars, the

164  NOTES TO CHAPTER 2

collective use of force with the Security Council’s authorization has been rare and has happened only once: after the civil war in Somalia, with Resolution 794 on December 3, 1992. See Arend and Beck, International Law and the Use of Force. 61.  Louis Fisher, “The Korean War: On What Legal Basis Did Truman Act?” American Journal of International Law 89, no. 1 (1995): 21–39. 62.  Quoted in ibid., 33. 63.  Schweller, Unanswered Threats. 64.  Ibid. 65.  Richard N. Haass, “What to Do with American Primacy,” Foreign Affairs 78, no. 5 (1999): 37–49. 66.  “U.S. Watched as a Squabble Turned into a Showdown,” New York Times, August 17, 2008. 67.  Doyle and Sambanis, Making War and Building Peace; Michael Gilligan and Stephen J. Stedman, “Where Do the Peacekeepers Go?” International Studies Review 5, no. 4 (2003): 37–54; Barbara F. Walter, “The Critical Barrier to Civil War Settlement,” International Organization 51, no. 3 (1997): 335–364; Virginia P. Fortna, “Scraps of Paper? Agreements and the Durability of Peace,” International Organization 57, no. 2 (2003): 337–372. 68.  David Carment and Frank Harvey, Using Force to Prevent Ethnic Violence: An Evaluation of Theory and Evidence (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001), 128. 69.  Bruno Tertrais, “The Changing Nature of Military Alliances,” The Washington Quarterly 27, no. 2 (2004): 135–150. 70.  Daniel Byman and Matthew Waxman, The Dynamics of Coercion (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Joseph S. Nye, The Paradox of American Power: Why the World’s Only Superpower Can’t Go It Alone (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); Lisa L. Martin, Coercive Cooperation: Explaining Multilateral Economic Sanctions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992); William H. Kaempfer and Anton D. Lowenberg, “Unilateral versus Multilateral International Sanctions: A Public Choice Perspective,” International Studies Quarterly 43, no. 1 (1999): 37–58. 71.  Pamela Aall, “What Do NGOs Bring to Peacemaking?” in Chester Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson, and Pamela Aall, eds., Turbulent Peace: The Challenges of Managing International Conflict (Washington, DC: U.S. Institute of Peace Press, 2001). 72.  Jochen Prantl, “Informal Groups of States and the UN Security Council,” International Organization 59, no. 3 (2005): 559–592. 73.  Aysegul Aydin and Patrick M. Regan, “Networks of Third-Party Interveners and Civil War Duration,” European Journal of International Relations 18, no. 3 (2012). 74.  Arvid Raknerud and Håvard Hegre, “The Hazard of War: Reassessing the Evidence of the Democratic Peace,” Journal of Peace Research 34, no. 4 (1997): 385–404. 75.  Michael W. Doyle, “Liberalism and World Politics,” American Political Science Review 80, no. 4 (1986), 1156.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 2  165

76.  Walt, The Origins of Alliances. 77.  Charles Lipson, Reliable Partners: How Democracies Have Made a Separate Peace (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), 4. 78.  James Fearon, “Domestic Political Audiences and the Escalation of International Disputes,” American Political Science Review 88, no. 3 (1994): 577–592. For a discussion of audience costs and the credibility of signals for different types of autocracies, see Jessica L. Weeks, “Autocratic Audience Costs: Regime Type and Signaling Resolve,” International Organization 62, no. 1 (2008): 35–64. 79.  Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and George W. Downs, “Intervention and Democracy,” International Organization 58, no. 3 (2006): 567–600. 80.  “France and Britain Lead Military Push on Libya,” New York Times, March 19, 2011; and “Confusion over Who Leads Libya Strikes, and for How Long,” New York Times, March 22, 2011. 81.  Kenneth W. Abbott and Duncan Snidal, “Why States Act through Formal International Organizations,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 42, no. 1 (1998), 23, 26. For an overview of research on institutions, see Emilie M. Hafner-Burton and Alexander H. Montgomery, “Power Positions: International Organizations, Social Networks, and Conflict,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 50, no. 1 (2006): 3–27. 82.  Hence, mediators, given their joint preference for a negotiated settlement, might have a bargaining leverage over coercive interveners. For instance, Werner and Yuen suggest that cease-fires following international wars under “pressure” from external states are at greater risk of failing; Werner and Yuen, “Making and Keeping Peace.” The failure of coercive and biased interventions in settling civil wars is also illustrative of this effect; Regan and Aydin, “Diplomacy and Other Forms of Intervention in Civil Wars.” 83.  Jacob Bercovitch, “Mediation in International Conflict: Theory and Practice,” in I. William Zartman and J. Lewis Rasmussen, eds., Peacemaking in International Conflict: Methods and Techniques (Washington, DC: U.S. Institute of Peace Press, 1997). 84.  Regan and Aydin, “Diplomacy and Other Forms of Intervention in Civil Wars.” 85.  To create mediator dyads, I have adopted the mediation data from Regan et al., “Diplomatic Interventions.” The unit of analysis in these data is conflict month. I have matched each mediator that intervened in month t with all other mediators that intervened in previous months (t – 1, t – 2, t – 3, . . . , t – n) or concurrently (t) with this mediator. 86.  Clifford Bob, The Marketing of Rebellion: Insurgents, Media, and International Activism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 87.  Rosenau, “Intervention as a Scientific Concept,” 150. 88.  Waltz, Theory of International Politics. 89.  John O’Laughlin, “Spatial Models of International Conflicts: Extending Current Theories of War Behavior,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 76,

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no. 1 (1986): 63–80; Randolph M. Siverson and Harvey Starr, “Opportunity, Willingness, and the Diffusion of War,” American Political Science Review 84, no. 1 (1990): 47–67. Chapter 3 1.  Richardson, Arms and Insecurity, 263. 2.  James Caporaso, “False Divisions: Security Studies and Global Political Economy,” Mershon International Studies Review 31, no. 1 (1995): 117–122; Robert Gilpin, U.S. Power and the Multinational Corporation (New York: Basic Books, 1975); Michael Mastanduno, “Economics and Security in Statecraft and Scholarship,” International Organization 52, no. 4 (1998): 825–854. 3.  Baldwin, Economic Statecraft; Joseph M. Grieco, Cooperation among Nations: Europe, America, and Non-Tariff Barriers to Trade (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990); Joanne S. Gowa, Allies, Adversaries, and International Trade (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994). 4.  Moravcsik, “Taking Preferences Seriously.” 5.  Doyle, “Liberalism and World Politics.” 6.  Richard A. Matthew and Mark W. Zacher, “Liberal International Theory: Common Threads, Divergent Strands,” in Charles Kegley, ed., Controversies in International Relations Theory: Realism and the Neo-Liberal Challenge (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995). 7.  Lisa L. Martin and Beth A. Simmons, “Theories and Empirical Studies of International Institutions,” International Organization 52, no. 4 (1998): 729–757. 8.  Snyder, Myths of Empire; Zakaria, “Realism and Domestic Politics.” 9.  Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Power and Interdependence (Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman/Little Brown, 1988). 10.  Gourevitch, “The Second Image Reversed,” 882. 11.  Peter A. Gourevitch, Politics in Hard Times: Comparative Responses to International Economic Crises (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986); Ronald Rogowski, Commerce and Coalitions: How Trade Affects Domestic Political Alignments (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989). 12.  Moravcsik, “Taking Preferences Seriously,” 519. 13.  Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Alastair Smith, Randolph M. Siverson, and James D. Morrow, The Logic of Political Survival (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005); Fearon, “Domestic Political Audiences and the Escalation of International Disputes.” 14.  Jack Snyder and Robert Jervis, “Civil War and the Security Dilemma,” in Barbara F. Walter and Jack Snyder, eds., Civil Wars, Insecurity, and Intervention (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999). 15.  John Maynard Keynes, The End of Laissez-Faire: The Economic Consequences of the Peace (Amherst, MA: Prometheus Books, [1919] 2004). 16.  Norman Angell, The Great Illusion: A Study of the Relation of Military Power to National Advantage (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1913).

NOTES TO CHAPTER 3  167

17.  Dale C. Copeland, “Economic Interdependence and War: A Theory of Trade Expectations,” International Security 20, no. 4 (1996): 5–41. 18.  Keohane and Nye, Power and Interdependence. Also see John E. Mueller, Retreat from Doomsday: The Obsolescence of Major War (New York: Basic Books, 1989). 19.  Richard Rosecrance, The Rise of the Trading State: Commerce and Conquest in the Modern World (New York: Basic Books, 1986). 20.  Kenneth N. Waltz, “Globalization and Governance,” PS: Political Science and Politics 32, no. 4 (1999): 693–700. 21.  John J. Mearsheimer, “Back to the Future: Instability in Europe after the Cold War,” International Security 15, no. 1 (1990): 5–57. 22.  Barbieri, The Liberal Illusion. 23.  Keohane and Nye, Power and Interdependence. 24.  Joanne S. Gowa and Edward D. Mansfield, “Power Politics and International Trade,” American Political Science Review 87, no. 2 (1993): 408–420; Brian M. Pollins, “Conflict, Cooperation, and Commerce: The Effects of International Political Interactions on Bilateral Trade Flows,” American Journal of Political Science 33, no. 3 (1989): 737–761. Other scholars have found no significant effect of trade on conflict; Vesna Danilovic and Joe Clare, “The Kantian Liberal Peace (Revisited),” American Journal of Political Science 51, no. 2 (2007): 397–414; David J. Lektzian and Christopher M. Sprecher, “Sanctions, Signals, and Militarized Conflict,” American Journal of Political Science 51, no. 2 (2007): 415–431. More sophisticated analyses of the trade–conflict relationship show that when dependencies among conflicts are accounted for in statistical tests, trade has a null association with states’ decision to fight; Michael D. Ward, Randolph M. Siverson, and Xun Cao, “Disputes, Democracies, and Dependencies: A Re-examination of the Kantian Peace,” American Journal of Political Science 51, no. 3: 583–601. 25.  Mansfield and Pollins, “Interdependence and Conflict,” 5. 26.  Charles H. Anderton and John R. Carter, “The Impact of War on Trade: An Interrupted Times-Series Study,” Journal of Peace Research 38, no. 4 (2001): 445–457; Katherine Barbieri and Jack S. Levy, “Sleeping with the Enemy: The Impact of War on Trade,” Journal of Peace Research 36, no. 4 (1999): 463–479; Edward D. Mansfield, Jon C. Pevehouse, and David H. Bearce, “Preferential Trading Arrangements and Military Disputes,” Security Studies 9, no. 1/2 (1999/2000): 92–118; Alan S. Milward, War, Economy and Society, 1939–1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977); James D. Morrow, Randolph M. Siverson, and Tressa E. Tabares, “The Political Determinants of International Trade: The Major Powers, 1907–90,” American Political Science Review 92, no. 3 (1998): 649–661; Pollins, “Conflict, Cooperation, and Commerce”; Karen Rasler and William R. Thompson, “War and the Economic Growth of Major Powers,” American Journal of Political Science 29, no. 3 (1985): 513–538. For an overview of this literature, also see Quan Li and David Sacko, “The (Ir)Relevance of Militarized Interstate Disputes for International Trade,” International Studies Quarterly 46, no. 1 (2002): 11–43.

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27.  Joshua S. Goldstein, Long Cycles: Prosperity and War in the Modern Age (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988); Edward D. Mansfield, Power, Trade and War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994). 28.  Omar M. G. Keshk, Brian Pollins, and Rafael Reuveny, “Trade Still Follows the Flag: The Primacy of Politics in a Simultaneous Model of Interdependence and Armed Conflict,” Journal of Politics 66, no. 4 (2004): 1155–1179. 29.  Li and Sacko, “The (Ir)Relevance of Militarized Interstate Disputes for International Trade.” 30.  Copeland, “Economic Interdependence and War”; Morrow et al. “The Political Determinants of International Trade.” 31.  Oneal and Russett, “The Classical Liberals Were Right”; Oneal and Russett, “The Kantian Peace”; Edward D. Mansfield and Rachel Bronson, “Alliances, Preferential Trading Arrangements, and International Trade,” American Political Science Review 91 (1997): 94–107; Haftel, “Designing for Peace.” 32.  Aysegul Aydin, “Choosing Sides: Economic Interdependence and Interstate Disputes,” Journal of Politics 70, no. 4 (2008): 1098–1108; Benjamin O. Fordham, “Power or Plenty? Economic Interests, Security Concerns, and American Intervention,” International Studies Quarterly 52, no. 4 (2008): 737–758; Fordham, “Revisionism Reconsidered”; Dan Reiter and Allan C. Stam, Democracies at War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002). 33.  Robert O. Keohane, “International Liberalism Reconsidered,” in John Dunn, ed., The Economic Limits to Modern Politics (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 170. 34.  Arthur A. Stein, “Trade and Conflict: Uncertainty, Strategic Signaling, and Interstate Disputes,” in Edward D. Mansfield and Brian M. Pollins, eds., Economic Interdependence and International Conflict: New Perspectives on an Enduring Debate (Ann Arbor: University Michigan Press, 2003), 121. 35.  Arthur A. Stein, “Governments, Economic Interdependence, and International Cooperation,” in Philip Tetlock, Jo Husbands, Robert Jervis, Paul Stern, and Charles Tilly, eds., Behavior, Society, and International Conflict (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 249. 36.  Albert O. Hirschman, “Rival Interpretations of Market Society: Civilizing, Destructive, or Feeble?” Journal of Economic Literature 20, no. 4 (1982): 1463–1484. 37.  Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (New York: Harper, 1950). 38.  Doyle, “Liberalism and World Politics.” 39.  Moravcsik, “Taking Preferences Seriously.” 40.  Frieden, “The Economics of Intervention,” 57. 41.  On constituents’ economic interests as a constraint on members of Congress, see James M. Lindsay, “Parochialism, Policy, and Constituency Constraints: Congres-

NOTES TO CHAPTER 3  169

sional Voting on Strategic Weapons Systems,” American Journal of Political Science 34, no. 4 (1990): 936–960. 42.  Gerald Schneider and Gunther Schulze, “The Domestic Roots of Commercial Liberalism: A Sector-Specific Model,” in Gerald Schneider, Katherine Barbieri, and Nils Peter Gleditsch, eds., Globalization and Armed Conflict (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), 103. 43.  Michael J. Hiscox, “Class versus Industry Cleavages: Inter-Industry Factor Mobility and the Politics of Trade,” International Organization 55, no. 1 (2001): 1–46; Rogowski, Commerce and Coalitions. 44.  Some prominent examples include Kerry A. Chase, “Economic Interests and Regional Trading Arrangements: The Case of NAFTA,” International Organization 57, no. 1 (2003): 137–174; Jeffry A. Frieden, Debt, Development, and Democracy: Modern Political Economy and Latin America, 1965–1985 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991); Lawrence R. Jacobs and Benjamin I. Page, “Who Influences U.S. Foreign Policy?” American Political Science Review 99, no. 1 (2005): 1–17; Helen V. Milner and Robert O. Keohane, “Internationalization and Domestic Politics: An Introduction,” in Helen V. Milner and Robert O. Keohane, eds., Internationalization and Domestic Politics (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Milner, Interests, Institutions, and Information; Rogowski, Commerce and Coalitions; Peter Trubowitz, Defining the National Interest: Conflict and Change in American Foreign Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998). Also see Gene M. Grossman and Elhanan Helpman, “Protection for Sale,” American Economic Review 84, no. 4 (1994): 833–850. 45.  Elmer E. Schattschneider, The Semi-Sovereign People: A Realist’s View of Democracy in America (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1960). 46.  Hiscox, “Class versus Industry Cleavages.” Electoral systems in democratic countries have also been argued to explain the varying influence of domestic coalitions in economic policymaking; Ronald Rogowski and Mark A. Kayser, “Majoritarian Electoral Systems and Consumer Power,” American Journal of Political Science 46, no. 3 (2002): 526–539. For an analysis of policymakers’ incentives to distribute pervasive—distorting—rents in republican and nonrepublican regimes, see Mark R. Brawley, “Regime Types, Markets, and War: The Importance of Pervasive Rents in Foreign Policy,” Comparative Political Studies 26, no. 2 (1993): 178–197. 47.  Richard Fleisher, “PAC Contributions and Congressional Voting on National Defense,” Legislative Studies Quarterly 18, no. 3 (1993): 391–409; Fordham, “Power or Plenty?”; Frederick W. Mayer, “Domestic Politics and the Strategy of International Trade,” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 10, no. 2 (1991): 222–246; Timothy J. McKeown, “The Cuban Missile Crisis and Politics as Usual,” Journal of Politics 62, no. 1 (2000): 70–87; Lindsay, “Parochialism, Policy, and Constituency Constraints”; James M. Lindsay, “Testing the Parochial Hypothesis: Congress and the Strategic

170  NOTES TO CHAPTER 3

Defense Initiative,” Journal of Politics 53, no. 3 (1991): 860–876; James M. Lindsay, Congress and Nuclear Weapons (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991). 48.  Papayoanou, Power Ties; Snyder, Myths of Empire; Solingen, Regional Orders at Century’s Dawn. 49.  Papayoanou, Power Ties, 21. 50.  W. M. Mathew, “The Imperialism of Free Trade: Peru, 1820–70,” Economic History Review 21 no. 3 (1968): 563. 51.  John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson, “The Imperialism of Free Trade,” Economic History Review 6, no. 1 (1953): 1–15; John A. Hobson, Imperialism: A Study (London: G. Allen & Unwin, [1902] 1938). In this discussion, I have combined Hobson’s and Gallagher and Robinson’s theories into the economic model of imperialism. However, it is important to note that they are based on different assumptions and distinguish between formal (territorial annexation) and informal empire; see Doyle, “Liberalism and World Politics.” 52.  For illustrative examples, see Gallagher and Robinson, “The Imperialism of Free Trade.” 53.  Mathew, “The Imperialism of Free Trade.” 54.  Private economic interests are defined as exogenous to political decisions, which precludes a two-way relationship between these interests and foreign policy. In reality, states can change the direction of international trade, facilitate firms’ entrance into new markets with preferential trading agreements, or promote existing economic ties for political reasons. Yet liberal IR theory is a bottom-up view of state behavior, where domestic preferences precede politics; Moravcsik, “Taking Preferences Seriously”; Papayoanou, Power Ties. 55.  Ronald Cox, Power and Profits: US Policy in Central America (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1994); Gibbs, The Political Economy of Third-World Intervention; Raymond Bauer, Ithiel de Sola Pool, and Lewis A. Dexter, American Business and Public Policy (New York: Atherton, 1963); Robert A. Dahl, Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1961); Krasner, Defending the National Interest. Marxist theories present an extreme model of interest groups politics where the state simply registers and then fulfills the demands of capitalist classes. 56.  In an economic theory of foreign policy, it is important to know the nature of domestic demands on the table. “Given the stakes in an issue, who will organize to act politically?” See James E. Alt and Michael Gilligan, “The Political Economy of Trading States: Factor Specificity, Collective Action Problems and Domestic Political Institutions,” Journal of Political Philosophy 2, no. 2 (1994): 165–192. The present framework solves this problem with an assumption. In fact, this approach closely follows the general formulation of business–government relations in the political economy literature, where most scholars tend to assume that firms attempt to pressure economic policies to maximize their profit. Woll provides a reformulation of this approach, arguing that

NOTES TO CHAPTER 3  171

firms define and redefine their interests as they interact with government officials in the making of policy simply because they do not have all the information available to act as in the rational action model; Cornelia Woll, Firm Interests: How Governments Shape Business Lobbying on Global Trade (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008). 57.  Rogowski, Commerce and Coalitions; Frieden, Debt, Development, and ­Democracy. 58.  Snyder, Myths of Empire, 18. Depending on how states relate to domestic groups in particular institutional settings, pluralism or the business-conflict model might be special cases in liberalism rather than competing explanations of state– society relations. 59.  Bueno de Mesquita et al., The Logic of Political Survival; Mancur Olson, The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982); William H. Riker, The Theory of Political Coalitions (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1962). 60.  In the democratic peace literature, some scholars have gone beyond the ­democracy–autocracy dichotomy and modeled the variance among democracy subtypes. These studies include Miriam F. Elman, “Unpacking Democracy: Presidentialism, Parliamentarism, and Theories of the Democratic Peace,” Security Studies 9, no. 4 (2000): 91–126; Susan Peterson, Crisis Bargaining and the State: The Domestic Politics of International Conflict (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996); David L. Rousseau, Democracy and War: Institutions, Norms, and the Evolution of International Conflict (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005). 61.  Solingen, Regional Orders at Century’s Dawn. 62.  Snyder, Myths of Empire. 63.  Papayoanou, Power Ties. 64.  Christopher Gelpi and Joseph M. Grieco, “Economic Interdependence, the Democratic State, and the Liberal Peace,” in Edward D. Mansfield and Brian M. Pollins, eds., Economic Interdependence and International Conflict: New Perspectives on an Enduring Debate (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003). 65.  Olson, The Rise and Decline of Nations, 203. 66.  Jacobs and Page, “Who Influences U.S. Foreign Policy?” 67.  Robert H. Jackson and Carl G. Rosberg, “Personal Rule: Theory and Practice in Africa,” Comparative Political Studies 16, no. 4 (1984): 421–442; Michael Bratton and Nicolas van de Walle, Democratic Experiments in Africa: Regime Transitions in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Nicolas Van de Walle, “Presidentialism and Clientilism in Africa’s Emerging Party Systems,” Journal of Modern African Studies 41, no. 2 (2003): 297–321. 68.  Juan J. Linz, “Presidential or Parliamentary Democracy: Does It Make a Difference?” in Juan J. Linz and Arturo Valenzuela, eds., The Failure of Presidential Democracy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994); George Tsebelis, Veto Players: How Political Institutions Work (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002).

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69.  Ronald Wintrobe, The Political Economy of Dictatorship (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 4. 70.  Mark Peceny, Caroline C. Beer, and Shannon Sanchez-Terry, “Dictatorial Peace?” American Political Science Review 96, no. 1 (2002), 18. 71.  Michael Herb, All in the Family: Absolutism, Revolution, and Democracy in the Middle Eastern Monarchies (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999); Weeks, “Autocratic Audience Costs.” 72.  Peceny et al., “Dictatorial Peace?” 73.  James T. Quinlivan, “Coup-Proofing: Its Practice and Consequences in the Middle East,” International Security 24, no. 2 (1999): 131–165. 74.  Barbara Geddes, “Authoritarian Breakdown: Empirical Test of a Game Theoretic Argument,” Paper presented at the 95th Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Atlanta, GA, September 2–5 (1999). 75.  Wintrobe, The Political Economy of Dictatorship, 165. 76.  John P. Willerton, “Patronage Networks and Coalition Building in the Brezhnev Era,” Soviet Studies 39, no. 2 (1987): 175–204. 77.  Carles Boix and Milan Svolik, “The Foundations of Limited Authoritarian Government: Institutions and Power-Sharing in Dictatorship,” unpublished manuscript (2009). 78.  Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Bueno de Mesquita et al., The Logic of Political Survival. Chapter 4 1.  Quoted in John J. Stremlau, “Clinton’s Dollar Diplomacy,” Foreign Policy 97, no. 4 (1994–1995): 18–35. 2.  Finnemore, The Purpose of Intervention; Jeffry A. Frieden, “International Investment and Colonial Control: A New Interpretation,” International Organization 48, no. 4 (1994): 559–593; Lipson, Standing Guard; Gallagher and Robinson, “The Imperialism of Free Trade.” 3.  Haftel, “Designing for Peace”; Mansfield et al., “Preferential Trading Arrangements and Military Disputes.” 4.  For a similar argument in the context of neotrusteeship, see James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin, “Neotrusteeship and the Problem of Weak States,” International Security 28, no. 4 (2004): 5–43. 5.  Quoted in Christopher Layne, The Peace of Illusions: American Grand Strategy from 1940 to the Present (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006), 131. 6.  Frieden,“International Investment and Colonial Control.” 7.  Christopher Layne and Benjamin Schwarz, “American Hegemony—Without an Enemy,” Foreign Policy 92 (Fall 1993), 5.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 4  173

8.  Li and Sacko, “The (Ir)Relevance of Militarized Interstate Disputes for International Trade.” 9.  D. R. Humphrey, “Belligerent Interdiction of Neutral Shipping in International Armed Conflict,” Journal of Conflict and Security Law 2, no. 1 (1997), 36. 10.  Oneal and Russett, “The Classical Liberals Were Right.” 11.  Stephen G. Brooks, Producing Security: Multinational Corporations, Globalization, and the Changing Calculus of Conflict (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005). 12.  Erik Gartzke, Quan Li, and Charles Boehmer, “Investing in the Peace: Economic Interdependence and International Conflict,” International Organization 55, no. 2 (2001): 391–438; Richard Rosecrance and Peter Thompson, “Trade, Foreign Investment, and Security,” Annual Review of Political Science 6 (2003): 377–398. 13.  See, for instance, Barbieri and Levy, “Sleeping with the Enemy.” 14.  Richard M. Preece, The Iran–Iraq War: Implications for US Policy. (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Publications, No. IB84016, 1987), 17. 15.  Economic variables such as FDI and trade institutions have largely been neglected in economic peace research. For an exception, see Gartzke et al., “Investing in the Peace.” The analysis presented in this chapter expands on the economic peace literature by redefining the explanatory variables to draw explicitly from the theoretical framework in Chapter 3. 16.  Eugene Staley, War and the Private Investor: A Study in the Relations of International Politics and International Private Investment (New York: H. Fertig, 1967). For instance, Frieden argues that foreign investment was closely related to unilateral use of force by the home country; Frieden, “International Investment and Colonial Control.” 17.  For a review of the economic theory of imperialism, see P. J. Cain, “Hobson, Wilshire and the Capitalist Theory of Capitalist Imperialism,” History of Political Economy 17, no. 3 (1985): 455–460; prominent studies that are based on Hobson’s framework include Lipson, Standing Guard; Frieden, “The Economics of Intervention”; and Frieden, “International Investment and Colonial Control.” Rosen and Kurth’s edited volume presents a collection of essays that empirically assess models of economic imperialism; Steven J. Rosen and James R. Kurth, Testing Theories of Economic Imperialism (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1974). 18.  Frieden, “International Investment and Colonial Control,” 560. 19.  Charles Montesquieu, The Spirit of Laws (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, [1748] 1989), 389. 20.  Nathan M. Jensen, “Democratic Governance and Multinational Corporations: Political Regimes and Inflows of Foreign Direct Investment,” International Organization 57, no. 3 (2003), 588. 21.  Witold J. Henisz, “The Institutional Environment for Multinational Investment,” Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 16, no. 2 (2000): 334–364; Jensen,

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“Democratic Governance and Multinational Corporations”; Stephen Knack and Philip Keefer, “Institutions and Economic Performance: Cross-Country Tests Using Alternative Institutional Measures,” Economics and Politics 7, no. 3 (1995): 207–227; John R. Oneal, “The Affinity of Investors for Authoritarian Regimes,” Political Research Quarterly 47, no. 3 (1994): 565–588; Thomas L. Brewer and Pietra Rivoli, “Politics and Perceived Country Creditworthiness in International Banking,” Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking 22, no. 3 (1990): 357–369. 22.  Nathan M. Jensen, Nation-States and the Multinational Corporation: A Political Economy of Foreign Direct Investment (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006); Nathan M. Jensen and Daniel J. Young, “A Violent Future? Political Risk Insurance Markets and Violence Forecasts,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 52, no. 4 (2008): 527–547; Quan Li, “Political Violence and Foreign Direct Investment,” in Michele Fratianni and Alan M. Rugman, eds., Research in Global Strategic Management (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2006). 23.  Donald J. Mathieson and Garry J. Schinasi, International Capital Markets: Developments, Prospects, and Key Policy Issues (Washington, DC: International Monetary Fund, 2001), 42. 24.  On the mechanisms through which private investors may attempt to influence government policy, see Staley’s impressive work, War and the Private Investor, specifically chapter 8. It is also important to note from Staley that home governments frequently used private attainments to attain political goals and encouraged investment in areas of strategic interest. While this is an important point, especially for studies on economic theories of expansionism, the present framework draws on the liberal theory of international relations and its economic liberalism variant, which is a bottom-up view where domestic preferences precede politics. On a related note, scholars commonly assume that it takes decades to build strong economic ties with other nations; Moravcsik, “Taking Preferences Seriously”; Papayoanou, Power Ties, 18. 25.  Brooks, Producing Security. 26.  Gartzke et al., “Investing in the Peace,” 394. 27.  Fordham, “Power or Plenty?”; James D. Morrow, “How Could Trade Affect Conflict?” Journal of Peace Research 36, no. 4 (1999): 481–489; Li and Sacko, “The (Ir) Relevance of Militarized Interstate Disputes for International Trade.” 28.  Barbieri and Levy, “Sleeping with the Enemy”; Li and Sacko, “The (Ir)Relevance of Militarized Interstate Disputes for International Trade.” 29.  Haftel, “Designing for Peace”; Hafner-Burton and Montgomery, “Power Positions”; Edward D. Mansfield and Helen V. Milner, “The New Wave of Regionalism,” International Organization 53, no. 3 (1999): 589–627; Edward D. Mansfield and Jon C. Pevehouse, “Trade Blocs, Trade Flows, and International Conflict,” International Organization 54, no. 4 (2000): 775–808; Zeev Maoz, “The Effects of Strategic and Economic Interdependence on International Conflict on Levels of Analysis,” American

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Journal of Political Science 53, no. 1 (2009): 223–240; Bruce R. Russett, John R. Oneal, and David Davis, “The Third Leg of the Kantian Tripod for Peace: International Organizations and Militarized Disputes 1950-85,” International Organization 52, no. 3 (1998): 441–467. 30.  Few studies have adopted this approach: Gelpi and Grieco, “Economic Interdependence, the Democratic State, and the Liberal Peace”; Patrick J. McDonald, “Peace through Trade or Free Trade?” Journal of Conflict Resolution 48, no. 4 (2004): 547–572; Papayoanou, Power Ties. 31.  “Americans Control Guatemala Riches,” New York Times, June 3, 1911. 32.  Zeev Maoz and Bruce Russett, “Normative and Structural Causes of Democratic Peace, 1946–1986,” American Journal of Political Science 87, no. 3 (1993): ­624–638; Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, James D. Morrow, Randolph M. Siverson, and Alastair Smith, “An Instititutional Explanation of the Democratic Peace,” American Journal of Political Science 93, no. 4 (1999): 791–807. 33.  Also see Snyder, Myths of Empire, for a similar conclusion about the relationship of democracy and overexpansion. 34.  Riker’s size principle lucidly explains this point and is also the logic behind Bueno de Mesquita and his coauthors’ influential argument on public goods provision and coalition size: “When a coalition includes everybody, the winners gain nothing simply because there are no losers”; William H. Riker, The Theory of Political Coalitions (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1962), 39. In Riker’s main argument, as the size of the coalition increases, so do the number and diversity of demands that leaders receive from domestic constituencies, which is precisely the problem. Every coalition has internal conflicts over the division of spoils, but the competition is much more intense in large coalitions, which may lead to deadlock in policymaking. According to Riker, three elections in the United States (1816, 1852, and 1872) made the Republican Party the coalition of the whole and led to the disappearance of the opposing parties (the Federalist Party, the Whig Party, and the Democratic Party, respectively). The Republican statesmen interpreted their victory rather pessimistically: “With our overwhelming majority, there are so many and so conflicting interests in the party that none can be satisfied”; Riker, The Theory of Political Coalitions, 65. 35.  This is in line with Bueno de Mesquita et al., The Logic of Political Survival, where democracies, given the size of their winning coalition, are argued to have centripetal tendencies in public spending to benefit different segments of the society. Similarly, Brawley suggests that “more representative regimes find expanding liberal economic relations more attractive than pursuing imperialism”; Mark R. Brawley, “Regime Types, Markets, and War: The Importance of Pervasive Rents in Foreign Policy,” Comparative Political Studies 26, no. 2 (1993): 178–197. These arguments consistently point to the idea that representative regimes prioritize broad domestic demands rather than parochial ones. Yet one should also consider the possibility that interest group

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demands can no longer be called parochial if they can successfully generate a public opinion effect. Mark A. Smith, American Business and Political Power: Public Opinion, Elections, and Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000). 36.  For a similar discussion in the democratic peace literature, see Elman, “Unpacking Democracy”; Brandon C. Prins and Christopher Sprecher, “Institutional Constraints, Political Opposition, and Interstate Dispute Escalation: Evidence from Parliamentary Systems, 1946–89,” Journal of Peace Research 36, no. 3 (1999): 271–287; Rousseau, Democracy and War. 37.  Bratton and van de Walle, Democratic Experiments in Africa, 63. 38.  Similarly, Cheibub argues that presidentialism is bound to fail and attributes its failure to the political environment: “The instability of presidential democracies is due to the fact that we observe presidential institutions in countries where democracy of any type would be unstable . . . it is not the institution itself but rather the conditions under which it exists that lead to the instability of presidential democracies”; Jose A. Cheibub, Presidentialism, Parliamentarism, and Democracy (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 7. For a discussion of presidential powers in Latin American countries, see Scott Mainwaring and Matthew S. Shugart, “Presidentialism and Democracy in Latin America: Rethinking the Terms of the Debate,” in Scott Mainwaring and Matthew S. Shugart, eds., Presidentialism and Democracy in Latin America (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 39.  Bratton and van de Walle, Democratic Experiments in Africa, 63–64. 40.  Linz, “Presidential or Parliamentary Democracy,” 63. 41.  Krasner, Defending the National Interest, 215. 42.  Tsebelis, Veto Players, 75. 43.  In more sophisticated analysis of political institutions, not only the number per se but also the distribution of preferences among political actors would matter in understanding the fragmentation of the system. 44.  This effect would be magnified in oversized coalitions characteristic of highly fragmented party systems. For a review of the literature on public spending and budget deficits under coalition governments based on this logic, see Tsebelis, Veto Players. 45.  Cheibub, Presidentialism, Parliamentarism, and Democracy. 46.  Torbjorn Bergman, Wolfgang C. Muller, Kaare Strom, and Magnus Blongren, “Democratic Delegation and Accountability: Cross-National Patterns,” in Kaare Strom, Wolfgang C. Muller, and Torbjorn Bergman, eds., Delegation and Accountability in Parliamentary Democracies (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2003), 110. 47.  Wintrobe, The Political Economy of Dictatorship. 48.  Quinlivan, “Coup-Proofing.” 49.  Peceny and his coauthors suggest for the post–World War II period that personalist regimes are significantly less likely to fight each other precisely because they are ineffective on the battlefield, whereas other autocracy types do not present a clear pattern; Peceny et al., “Dictatorial Peace?”

NOTES TO CHAPTER 4  177

50.  Frederic S. Pearson, “Foreign Military Interventions and Domestic Disputes,” International Studies Quarterly 18, no. 3 (1974), 434. 51.  David H. Clark and William Reed, “The Strategic Sources of Foreign Policy Substitution,” American Journal of Political Science 49, no. 3 (2005), 612. 52.  Regan, Civil Wars and Foreign Powers. 53.  Barbara Walter, Committing to Peace: The Successful Settlement of Civil Wars (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001); Regan and Aydin, “Diplomacy and Other Forms of Intervention in Civil Wars.” 54.  Baldwin, Economic Statecraft. 55.  Gary C. Hufbauer, Jeffrey Shott, and Ann Elliott, Economic Sanctions Reconsidered (Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics, 1990); Robert Pape, “Why Economic Sanctions Do Not Work,” International Security 22, no. 2 (1997): 90–136; Nikolay Marinov, “Do Economic Sanctions Destabilize Country Leaders?” American Journal of Political Science 49, no. 3 (2005): 564–576. 56.  Werner and Yuen, “Making and Keeping Peace”; Jacob Bercovitch and Scott Sigmund Gartner, “Is There Method in the Madness of Mediation? Some Lessons for Mediators from Quantitative Studies of Mediation,” International Interactions 32, no. 4 (2006): 329–354. 57.  Kyle Beardsley, “Agreement without Peace? International Mediation and Time Inconsistency Problems,” American Journal of Political Science 52, no. 4 (2008): ­723–740; Robert Rauchhaus, “Asymmetric Information, Mediation and Conflict Management,” World Politics 58, no. 2 (2006): 207–241; Isak Svensson, “Bargaining, Bias and Peace Brokers: How Rebels Commit to Peace,” Journal of Peace Research 44, no. 2 (2007): 177–194. 58.  Altfeld and Bueno de Mesquita, “Choosing Sides in War.” 59.  Jessica L. Weeks and Dara K. Cohen, “Red Herrings: Fishing Disputes, Regime Type and Interstate Conflict,” unpublished manuscript (2007). 60.  Randall Schweller, “Bandwagoning for Profit: Bringing the Revisionist State Back In,” International Security 10, no. 1 (1994), 72. 61.  Altfeld and Bueno de Mesquita, “Choosing Sides in War”; Paul K. Huth, “Major Power Intervention in International Crises, 1918–1988,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 42, no. 6 (1998): 744–770; Suzanne Werner and Douglas Lemke, “Opposites Do Not Attract: The Impact of Domestic Institutions, Power, and Prior Commitments on Alignment Choices,” International Studies Quarterly 41, no. 3 (1997): 529–546. 62.  Schweller, Unanswered Threats. 63.  Powell, In the Shadow of Power. For an empirical application of Powell’s theoretical model, see William Reed, David H. Clark, Timothy Nordstrom, and Wonjae Hwang, “War, Power, and Bargaining,” Journal of Politics 70, no. 4 (2008): 1203–1216. 64.  Schweller, Deadly Imbalances. 65.  Altfeld and Bueno de Mesquita, “Choosing Sides in War.” 66.  Walt, Origins of Alliances.

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67.  Werner, “Deterring Intervention.” 68.  Randall Schweller, “Neorealism’s Status-Quo Bias: What Security Dilemma?” in Benjamin Frankel, ed., Realism: Restatements and Renewal (New York: Frank Cass, 1996), 119. 69.  Lieber and Alexander, “Waiting for Balancing.” 70.  Layne, The Peace of Illusions. 71.  An initial analysis of the data shows that there is a slight tendency among interveners to support the target side when the attacker has revisionary goals (defensive intervention). See Table 2.1 in Chapter 2. However, when “offensive intervention” and “both sides are supported” categories are combined, aggressors appear to be receiving outside support almost on equal grounds with their targets. In Table 2.1, the “Both Sides Are Supported” category refers to cases in which both the aggressor(s) and its victim(s) have received third-party support. The “Intervention, No Aggressor” category refers to cases where the attacker is not coded as a revisionist state and intervention can happen on either the attacker or the target side. 72.  Dong-Joon Jo and Erik Gartzke, “Determinants of Nuclear Weapons Proliferation,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 51, no. 1 (2007): 167–194. 73.  Walt, Origins of Alliances. 74.  Robert G. Kaufman, “To Balance or to Bandwagon? Alignment Decisions in 1930s Europe,” Security Studies 1, no. 3 (1992): 417–447. 75.  Reiter and Stam, Democracies at War. 76.  Huth, “Major Power Intervention in International Crises”; Werner and Lemke, “Opposites Do Not Attract.” 77.  Andrew Kerner, “Why Should I Believe You? The Costs and Consequences of Bilateral Investment Treaties,” International Studies Quarterly 53, no. 1 (2009): 73–102. 78.  Kristian S. Gleditsch, “Expanded Trade and GDP Data,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 46, no. 1 (2002): 712–724. 79.  Kerner, “Why Should I Believe You?” 83. 80.  Judith L. Goldstein, Douglas Rivers, and Michael Tomz, “Institutions in International Relations: Understanding the Effects of GATT and the WTO on World Trade,” International Organization 61, no. 1 (2007): 37–67. 81.  See Appendix for the data design. 82.  Jones et al., “Militarized Interstate Disputes, 1816–1992.” 83.  See Clark and Reed, “The Strategic Sources of Foreign Policy Substitution” on the multinomial choice model. I used the CLARIFY software to generate predicted probabilities; Gary King, Michael Tomz, and Jason Wittenberg, “Making the Most of Statistical Analyses: Improving Interpretation and Presentation,” American Journal of Political Science 44, no.2 (2000): 341–355. 84.  John S. Odell, “Correlates of US Military Assistance and Military Intervention,” in Steven J. Rose and James R. Kurth, eds., Testing Theories of Economic Im-

NOTES TO CHAPTER 5  179

perialism (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1974); Krasner, Defending the National Interest. 85.  See Chapter 2 for an extensive discussion. 86.  Operationalization of the control variables and other aspects of the research design are discussed in the Appendix of this chapter. 87.  Altfeld and Bueno de Mesquita, “Choosing Sides in War.” 88.  Krasner, Sovereignty. 89.  Siverson and Starr, The Diffusion of War. 90.  Cheibub, Presidentialism, Parliamentarism, and Democracy, 32. 91.  Adam Przeworski, Michael E. Alvarez, Jose Antonio Cheibub, and Fernando Limongi, Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and Well-Being in the World, 1950–1990 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 92.  Geddes, “Authoritarian Breakdown,” 20. 93.  Weeks, “Autocratic Audience Costs,” 48. 94.  In this model, nondemocracies are the base category. All models reported in Table 4.2 adopt the three-category choice of sides variable previously described. 95.  In Table 4.2, the base category is other nondemocracies. 96.  Corbetta and Dixon, “Danger beyond Dyads.” 97.  See Chapter 1. I adopted a similar approach in the analysis of civil war intervention (Chapter 6). Chapter 5 1.  Quoted in Christopher Layne, “The Unipolar Illusion: Why New Great Powers Will Rise,” International Security 17, no. 4 (1993), 50. 2.  For a similar argument on the strategic logic behind interventions, see Benjamin Miller, “The Logic of U.S. Military Intervention in the Post–Cold War Era,” Contemporary Security Policy 19, no. 3 (1998): 72–109. Miller effectively argues that most U.S. interventions were driven by cost-benefit calculations and regional constraints, casting doubt on self-defense or considerations of international security as reliable explanations. On selective interventionism, see Richard Haass, Intervention: The Use of American Military Force in the Post–Cold War World (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment, 1994). 3.  Christopher Layne, The Peace of Illusions: American Grand Strategy from 1940 to the Present (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006). 4.  Fordham, “Power or Plenty?”; Gilpin, U.S. Power and the Multinational Corporation; Krasner, Defending the National Interest; Layne, The Peace of Illusions. 5.  Frieden,“International Investment and Colonial Control.” 6.  Quoted in Robert Sobel, Coolidge: An American Enigma (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 1998), 344. 7.  Staley, War and the Private Investor, 211.

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8.  More recent studies on U.S. military involvement in Latin American affairs also based their analysis on similar grounds. Grandin, for instance, argues that the United States attempted to build an ideological and economic empire in Central America; Greg Grandin, Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006). Also see David Healy, US Expansionism: The Imperialist Urge (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1970); Peter H. Smith, Talons of the Eagle: Dynamics of US–Latin American Relations (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). 9.  Economic motives behind U.S. military involvement in the Caribbean have been challenged in several important works; Lester D. Langley, The Banana Wars: United States Intervention in the Caribbean, 1898–1934 (Wilmington, DE: SR Books, 2002); Dana G. Munro, Intervention and Dollar Diplomacy in the Caribbean, ­1900–1921 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1964). Specifically, Munro rejects the notion that the U.S. actions were influenced by business interests opposed to the Nicaraguan president Zelaya in 1909. 10.  Gilpin, U.S. Power and the Multinational Corporation, 143–144. 11.  Abraham F. Lowenthal, The Dominican Intervention (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972), 18. 12.  Krasner, Defending the National Interest, 221. 13.  Ibid., 209–213. 14.  Ibid., 153. 15.  Layne, The Peace of Illusions, 23. 16.  “The economic Open Door tracks with commercial liberalism—a set of propositions developed by liberal international relations scholars about how economic openness purportedly causes peace . . . By helping to defuse the causes of war and revolution, the Open Door is supposed to generate the very international relations order and stability it requires”; Layne, The Peace of Illusions, 33. 17.  Thomas D. Schoonover, The United States in Central America, 1860–1911: Episodes of Social Imperialism and Imperial Rivalry in the World System (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991). 18.  Hesitancy to protect private interests with military strategies could also be observed in the nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian oil company in 1951. Truman brought a civil suit rather than criminal action against Iran, and Eisenhower supported Truman’s decision “that the enforcement of the antitrust laws of the United States against the western oil companies operating in the Near East [were to be] deemed secondary to the national interest,” as quoted in Burton I. Kaufman, The Arab Middle East and the United States: Inter-Arab Rivalry and Superpower Diplomacy (London: Prentice Hall, 1996), 29–30. 19.  Gowa, Allies, Adversaries, and International Trade, 10. 20.  For an exception, see Fordham, “Power or Plenty?”

NOTES TO CHAPTER 5  181

21.  William O. Walker, “JFK, Democracy, and US Security Policy in the Americas,” Diplomatic History 25, no. 1 (2002), 159. 22.  Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America (New York: W. W. Norton, 1993); John E. Findling, Close Neighbors, Distant Friends: United States–Central American Relations (New York: Greenwood Press, 1987); Thomas M. Leonard, Central America and the United States: The Search for Stability (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1991). 23.  Quoted in Louis A. Perez, “Intervention, Hegemony, and Dependency: The United States in the Circum-Caribbean, 1898–1980,” Pacific Historical Review 51, no. 2 (1982), 168. 24.  Data are adopted from Melvin Small, “The United States and the German ‘Threat’ to the Hemisphere, 1905–1914,” The Americas 28, no. 3 (1972): 252–270. 25.  Finnemore, The Purpose of Intervention. 26.  James L. Dietz, “Destabilization and Intervention in Latin America and the Caribbean,” Latin American Perspectives 11, no. 3 (1984): 3–14. What was later referred to as “dollar diplomacy” during the Taft presidency (1909–1912) was based on the idea of creating national currencies equivalent to dollar in debt-stricken Latin American countries. These policies gave U.S. business interests an upper hand against their European competitors, and they supported them during the 1900–1915 period. Perhaps the best-known case is the Dominican intervention between 1916 and 1924; Bruce J. Calder, The Impact of Intervention: The Dominican Republic during the US Occupation of 1916–1924 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1984). 27.  Mary H. Mourra, “The Conflicts and Controversies in Latin American TreatyBased Disputes,” in Mary H. Mourra, ed., Latin American Investment Treaty Arbitration: The Controversies and Conflicts (Hague: Kluwer Law International, 2008), 7. 28.  Eric Roorda, The Dictator Next Door: The Good Neighbor Policy and the Trujillo Regime in the Dominican Republic, 1930–1945 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998), 12; “Franco-Dominican Difficulty,” in Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, with the Address of the President to Congress, December 2, 1895. 29.  Brian S. McBeth, Gunboats, Corruption, and Claims: Foreign Intervention in Venezuela, 1899–1908 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001), 84. 30.  Kris J. Mitchener and Marc Weidenmier, “Empire, Public Goods, and the Roosevelt Corollary,” Journal of Economic History 65, no. 3 (2005): 658–692. 31.  Larman C. Wilson, “The Monroe Doctrine, Cold War Anachronism: Cuba and the Dominican Republic,” Journal of Politics 28, no. 2 (1966), 323. 32.  Benjamin R. Beede, The War of 1898, and US Interventions, 1898–1934: An Encyclopedia (New York: Garland, 1994). For other corollaries of the Monroe Doctrine, also see Mourra, “The Conflicts and Controversies in Latin American Treaty-Based Disputes.”

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33.  Lowenthal, The Dominican Intervention. 34.  Morris H. Morley, Washington, Somoza, and the Sandinistas: State and Regime in US Policy toward Nicaragua, 1969–1981 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 1. 35.  John F. Gallagher, senior chairman of the Council of the Americas and vice president of Sears Roebuck; as quoted in Luciano Martins, “The Politics of U.S. Multi­ national Corporations in Latin America,” in Julio Cotler and Richard R. Fagen, eds., Latin America and the United States: The Changing Political Realities (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1974), 379. 36.  Thomas L. Karnes, The Failure of Union: Central America, 1824–1960 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1961). 37.  LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions, 32. 38.  Tense relations with Nicaragua started early in the twentieth century with the contention between the Zelaya administration (1890–1909) and the U.S. government. Zelaya’s overthrow with a CIA-organized military coup was followed by years of political instability and domestic unrest in Nicaragua. 39.  Michael J. Schroeder, “Horse Thieves to Rebels to Dogs: Political Gang Violence and the State in the Western Segovias, Nicaragua, in the Time of Sandino, ­1926–1934,” Journal of Latin American Studies 28, no. 2 (1996): 383–434. 40.  Morley, Washington, Somoza, and the Sandinistas. 41.  Dietz, “Destabilization and Intervention in Latin America and the Caribbean,” 3. 42.  Kyle Longley, “Peaceful Costa Rica, the First Battleground: The United States and the Costa Rican Revolution of 1948,” The Americas 50, no. 2 (1993): 149–175. Previously in Costa Rica’s internal conflict, which escalated in March 1948, Costa Rican President Figueres was supported by the United States against his predecessor Picado, who was allegedly assisted by the Soviets. 43.  Tord Hoivik and Solveig Aas, “Demilitarization in Costa Rica: A Farewell to Arms?” Journal of Peace Research 18, no. 4 (1981): 333–351. 44.  “The Tensest Border,” The Economist, October 29, 1983. 45.  “A Sinister Role for Honduras in US Policy?” New York Times, December 9, 1986; Michael Walzer, “Bleeding Nicaragua: Justice and the Contras,” The New Republic 194, no. 17 (1986): 15–16. 46.  “Cables Show Central Negroponte Role in ‘80s Covert War against Nicaragua,” New York Times, April 13, 2005; Stephen Schlesinger, “Reagan’s ‘Secret’ War on Nicaragua,” The Nation 236, no. 1 (1983): 9–11. 47.  William M. Leogrande, “Making the Economy Scream: US Economic Sanctions against Sandinista Nicaragua,” Third World Quarterly 17, no. 2 (1996), 329. 48.  Quoted in Larry Hufford, “The US in Central America: The Obfuscation of History,” Journal of Peace Research 22, no. 2 (1984), 94.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 5  183

49.  “Nicaragua Leader Warns of Risks in Use of U.S. Forces in Honduras,” New York Times, March 29, 1986. On the “rollback” doctrine, see William M. Leogrande, “Rollback or Containment? The United States, Nicaragua, and the Search for Peace in Central America,” International Security 11, no. 2 (1986): 89–120. 50.  Nicaraguan President Ortega blamed the United States for border incursions: “The mercenary forces in Honduran territory, which are financed and advised by the United States Government, are the ones who crossed the border to kill our people and to destroy. Our forces are only defending themselves in the border area”; in “Nicaragua Leader Warns of Risks,” New York Times, March 29, 1986. 51.  “The Tensest Border,” The Economist. 52.  Such close relations between Honduras and the United States, as well as hosting Contras who easily outnumbered Honduran armed forces, worried Honduran President Suazo Cordova. In a letter to President Reagan, he stated: “Our people are beginning to ask with greater vigor if it is convenient to our own interests to be so intimately linked to the interests of the United States if we receive so little in exchange”; Tim L. Merrill, Honduras: A Country Study (Washington, DC: Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, 1995), 52. 53.  R. B. St. John, Libya and the United States (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002). 54.  Mahmoud G. ElWarfally, Imagery and Ideology in US Policy toward Libya, 1969–1982 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1988). Of Libyan exports, 53.4 percent went to the United States and 75 percent to OECD countries, and they were heavily concentrated in petroleum and petroleum products; Nicholas Laham, American Bombing of Libya: A Study of the Force of Miscalculation in Reagan Foreign Policy (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2008). 55.  H. F. Jackson, From the Congo to Soweto: US Foreign Policy toward Africa since 1960 (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1982). 56.  “Libya’s Special Oil May Sweeten US Distaste for Qaddafi’s Terrorism,” The Washington Post, March 21, 1981; “America’s African Dilemma Pits Anti-­Communism, Human Rights,” The Washington Post, March 6, 1981. 57.  ElWarfally, Imagery and Ideology in US Policy toward Libya. Rather than domestic opposition, what rendered U.S. actions mostly ineffective was lack of support from European countries that had extensive economic relations with Libya. Diplomatic and economic measures undertaken by Europeans, such as an arms embargo, staff reduction at the Libyan People’s Bureaus, and travel restrictions targeting Libyans and Libyan diplomats were too soft to produce the results that the United States was seeking. These measures aimed to delay U.S. military response to Libyan aggression, though unsuccessfully. Tensions between the United States and Libya culminated in aerial bombing of targets in Tripoli and Benghazi in April 1986, and falling oil prices brought about the Lockerbie settlement with Libya.

184  NOTES TO CHAPTER 5

58.  St. John, Libya and the United States. There were also significant economic costs of the embargo and the decision had been delayed for another year in 1981; J. T. Stanik, El Dorado Canyon: Reagan’s Undeclared War with Qaddafi (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2003). 59.  St. John, Libya and the United States, 130. 60.  “Africans Disturbed by Libyan Advance,” New York Times, December 18, 1980. 61.  Stanik, El Dorado Canyon, 64. 62.  Quoted in Brian L. Davis, Qaddafi, Terrorism, and the Origins of the US Attack on Libya (New York: Praeger, 1990), 46. 63.  Princeton N. Lyman, “Libyan Involvement in Sudan and Chad: In Many Parts of Africa, Libya Is Acting as a Force for Instability,” Department of State Bulletin 82 (1982): 27–29; “Qaddafi on Verge of Significant Military Win in Chad,” The Washington Post, November 25, 1980; “The Bitter Life of Chad,” New York Times, September 4, 1983. 64.  Davis, Qaddafi, Terrorism. 65.  “On July 18 [1983], the United States announced that it was sending $10 million in military supplies to Chad, mostly in the form of clothing and transport equipment . . . On August 5, an additional $15 million was obligated from a foreign aid contingency fund. Two AWACs, with support crew and fighter and reconnaissance escort planes, were sent to Sudan, to await possible deployment in conjunction with French combat aircraft . . . It was estimated by news sources that total American presence in the AWACs operation could be over 500”; Chad Crisis: Background and US Policy. Foreign Affairs and National Defense Division, Ninety-Eighth Congress, First Session, August 18, 1983, Publication No. 83-553 F (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 1983), 10–11. 66.  Stanik, El Dorado Canyon, 173–174. 67.  P. Woodward, US Foreign Policy and the Horn of Africa (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2006). 68.  Sudan, Problems and Prospects, Hearings before the Subcommittee on Africa of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, House of Representatives, Ninety-Eighth Congress, Second Session, March 28, 1984 (Washington, DC: U.S. G.P.O., 1984), 77. 69.  Davis, Qaddafi, Terrorism, 48. 70.  Ibid. 71.  “Soviet Drive Alarms Egypt,” The Washington Post, April 17, 1977; “Sadat Seeking Arms, Broader Pro-West Role,” The Washington Post, February 21, 1979; and “The Mideast: A Struggle for More Than Oil in the Pivotal Middle East,” Business Week, March 12, 1979. 72.  Jackson, From the Congo to Soweto. 73.  Michael Brecher and Jonathan Wilkenfeld, A Study of Crisis (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997).

NOTES TO CHAPTER 5  185

74.  Madawi Al-Rasheed, A History of Saudi Arabia (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 75.  Michael P. Zirinsky, “Imperial Power and Dictatorship: Britain and the Rise of Reza Shah,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 24, no. 4 (1992): 639–663. 76.  Brecher and Wilkenfeld, A Study of Crisis. 77.  Homayoun Katouzian, “The Campaign against the Anglo-Iranian Agreement of 1919,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 25, no.1 (1998): 5–46. 78.  T. B. Millar and Robin Ward, Current International Treaties (New York: New York University Press, 1984), 410. 79.  Al-Rasheed, A History of Saudi Arabia, 42. 80.  Ibid. 81.  Peter W. Wilson and Douglas F. Graham, Saudi Arabia: The Coming Storm (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1994). 82.  Aaron D. Miller, Search for Security: Saudi Arabian Oil and American Foreign Policy, 1939–1949 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980), 24. 83.  Irvine H. Anderson, ARAMCO, The United States, and Saudi Arabia: A Study of the Dynamics of Foreign Oil Policy, 1933–1950 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981), 199. 84.  Quoted in Miller, Search for Security, 90. 85.  Rachel Bronson, Thicker Than Oil: America’s Uneasy Partnership with Saudi Arabia (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). 86.  Daniel Crecelius, “Saudi–Egyptian Relations,” International Studies 14, no. 4 (1975), 574. 87.  William J. Burns, Economic Aid and American Policy toward Egypt, 1955–1981 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985). 88.  Frieden explains Britain’s historical interest in the Canal and illustrates it with the British intervention in Egypt in 1882: “cotton cultivation and exports, the large community of resident investors, and the Suez canal—all of which contributed to British concern. Indeed, it might well be argued that the Suez Canal was the ultimate example of an overseas asset whose value was site-specific and whose protection by the use of force was particularly feasible”; Frieden, “International Investment and Colonial Control,” 591. 89.  Burns, Economic Aid and American Policy toward Egypt, 100–101. 90.  Ibid. 91.  Kaufman, The Arab Middle East and the United States. 92.  Robert R. Bowie, “Eisenhower, Dulles, and the Suez Crisis,” in Roger W. Louis and Roger Owen, eds., Suez 1956: The Crisis and its Consequences (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1989). 93.  Brecher and Wilkenfeld, A Study of Crisis. 94.  Bronson, Thicker Than Oil. 95.  Kaufman, The Arab Middle East and the United States.

186  NOTES TO CHAPTER 5

96.  Roby C. Barrett, The Greater Middle East and the Cold War: US Foreign Policy under Eisenhower and Kennedy (London: I. B. Tauris, 2007), 38. 97.  John P. Miglietta, American Alliance Policy in the Middle East, 1945–1992: Iran, Israel, and Saudi Arabia (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2002). 98.  Robert G. Rabil, Syria, the United States, and the War on Terror in the Middle East (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006), 42. 99.  Ivan Pearson, “The Syrian Crisis of 1957, the Anglo-American ‘Special Relationship,’ and the 1958 Landings in Jordan and Lebanon,” Middle Eastern Studies 43, no. 1 (2007): 45–64. 100.  Later it was argued by ex-CIA operatives that the United States was cooperating with Syrian intelligence service members in an operation called “Straggle,” and, in another account, the United States was organizing an operation called “Wakeful” that would involve only CIA operatives; Pearson, “The Syrian Crisis of 1957.” It is also important to note U.S. distaste for Quwatli. In 1949, Quwatli was overthrown by the United States and replaced by General Husni al-Za’im, who approved the TAPLINE (Trans-Arabian Pipeline) concession and was willing to accept Western assistance; David W. Lesch, Syria and the United States: Eisenhower’s Cold War in the Middle East (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992). However, Al-Za’im could stay in power for only five months and was again replaced by Quwatli. 101.  Nigel J. Ashton, Eisenhower, Macmillan, and the Problem of Nasser: AngloAmerican Relations and Arab Nationalism, 1955–59 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996); Kaufman, The Arab Middle East and the United States. 102.  Anthony C. Brown, Oil, God, and Gold: The Story of ARAMCO and the Saudi Kings (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999). 103.  Alasdair Drysdale, “Political Conflict and Jordanian Access to the Sea,” Geographical Review 77, no. 1 (1987): 86–102. 104.  With the creation of Israel, “Jordan was completely cut off from Haifa and Jaffa . . . Alternative routes to the Mediterranean Sea through Syria and Lebanon have been subjected to frequent political disruption”; Drysdale, “Political Conflict and Jordanian Access to the Sea,” 86–87. According to Drysdale, 90 percent of Jordanian imports and more than 95 percent of its exports passed through these two countries in 1950s. 105.  Ashton, Eisenhower, Macmillan, and the Problem of Nasser, 42–43. 106.  Rabil, Syria, the United States, and the War on Terror in the Middle East. 107.  Andrew Rathmell, Secret War in the Middle East: The Covert Struggle for Syria, 1949–1961 (London: I. B. Tauris, 1995). 108.  Pearson, “The Syrian Crisis of 1957.” 109.  Rathmell, Secret War in the Middle East. 110.  Philip Anderson, “ ‘Summer Madness’: The Crisis in Syria, August–­October 1957,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 22, no. 1/2 (1995): 21–42; George

NOTES TO CHAPTER 5  187

­Lenczowski, American Presidents and the Middle East (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990). 111.  Rabil, Syria, the United States, and the War on Terror in the Middle East. 112.  Ibid. 113.  Nigel J. Ashton, “A ‘Special Relationship’ Sometimes in Spite of Ourselves: Britain and Jordan, 1957–73,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 33, no. 2 (2005), 235. 114.  Rabil, Syria, the United States, and the War on Terror in the Middle East. 115.  Burns, Economic Aid and American Policy toward Egypt. 116.  Bronson, Thicker Than Oil, 87. 117.  Saeed M. Badeeb, The Saudi-Egyptian Conflict over North Yemen, 1962–1970 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1986); Kaufman, The Arab Middle East and the United States. 118.  Barrett, The Greater Middle East and the Cold War. 119.  Kaufman, The Arab Middle East and the United States; Robert Vitalis, America’s Kingdom: Mythmaking on the Saudi Oil Frontier (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007). 120.  Fawaz A. Gerges, “The Kennedy Administration and the Egyptian–Saudi Conflict in Yemen: Coopting Arab Nationalism,” Middle East Journal 49, no. 2 (1995): 292. 121.  Ahmed N. Almadhagi, Yemen and the United States: A Study of a Small Power and Super-State Relationship, 1962–1994 (New York: I. B. Tauris, 1996). 122.  Gerges, “The Kennedy Administration and the Egyptian–Saudi Conflict in Yemen.” 123.  Rouhollah K. Ramazani, The Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz (Alphen aan den Rijn: Sitjhoff & Noordhoff, 1979), 41. 124.  Rouhollah K. Ramazani, The Gulf Cooperation Council: Record and Analysis (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1988), 9. 125.  George P. Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State (New York: Maxwell Macmillan, 1993), 931. The U.N. Security Council Resolution 540 in October 1983 also expressed U.S. concern with the potential closure of Hormuz. 126.  According to Graz, in the spring of 1980, an average of seventy-seven ships passed through the straits every day in both directions, one every nineteen minutes. On the outbound, 97 percent of their cargo was oil, about 40 percent of all the oil extracted in the world. The tanker traffic carried 60 percent of Western countries’ and 80 percent of Japan’s oil supply; Liesl Graz, The Omanis: Sentinels of the Gulf (New York: Longman, 1982). However, oil was not the complete story in the Gulf. Starting in mid-1970s, Gulf states were not only a major source of oil but also the fastest growing market for U.S. goods and services, whereas the relative position of American direct

188  NOTES TO CHAPTER 5

investment in oil declined in 1980s; Vo Xuan Han, Oil, the Persian Gulf States, and the United States (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1994). 127.  Ramazani, The Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, 5. 128.  Hermann F. Eilts, “Security Considerations in the Persian Gulf,” International Security 5, no. 2 (1980): 79–113; Graz, The Omanis. 129.  Ramazani, The Gulf Cooperation Council, 5. 130.  Preece, The Iran–Iraq War, 1. 131.  Ibid. 132.  It was reported that covert arms deals with Iran through third-party states amounted to between $30 and $87 million between 1985 and 1986 and reduced U.S.’s credibility; Anthony H. Cordesman, The Iran–Iraq War and Western Security 1984– 1987: Strategic Implications and Policy Options (London: Jane’s, 1987). Reagan later acknowledged that this was an effort to reach moderate elements in the Iranian regime. 133.  According to Freedman, over 241 licenses were approved in this period. Trade increased from $571 million to $3.6 billion dollars between 1983 and 1989, and $730 million worth of sensitive technology was exported to Iraq; Lawrence Freedman, A Choice of Enemies: America Confronts the Middle East (New York: Public Affairs, 2008). 134.  Ibid. 135.  D. R. Humphrey, “Belligerent Interdiction of Neutral Shipping in International Armed Conflict,” Journal of Conflict and Security Law 2, no. 1 (1997), 33. 136.  There were also protests: The United States prevented the search of President McKinley and resurrected the right of neutral convoy in 1987; the Soviets protested the search of Pyotr Emtsov and later prevented the search of Krivak-class; and the Netherlands accepted the right to search only if the ship were headed to or from the belligerent ports; Humphrey, “Belligerent Interdiction of Neutral Shipping in International Armed Conflict.” 137.  Freedman, A Choice of Enemies. 138.  Martin S. Navias and E. R. Hooton, Tanker Wars: The Assault on Merchant Shipping during the Iran–Iraq conflict, 1980–1988 (New York: I. B. Tauris, 1996). The United States decided to reflag Kuwaiti vessels in 1987, to which Iran responded by escalating its attacks; Humphrey, “Belligerent Interdiction of Neutral Shipping in International Armed Conflict.” 139.  Corbetta and Dixon, “Danger beyond Dyads.” Chapter 6 1.  “Confronting Piracy off the Coast of Somalia,” Hearing before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, 111th Congress, First Session, April 30, 2009. 2.  Glennon, “The New Interventionism.” 3.  Research on intervention has been flourishing in the civil war literature; for example, see Doyle and Sambanis, “International Peacebuilding”; and Regan, Civil Wars and Foreign Powers.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 6  189

4.  Ronald Cox, Power and Profits: US Policy in Central America (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1994); John J. Stremlau, The International Politics of the Nigerian Civil War (1967–1970) (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977). 5.  For instance, attacks on offshore facilities by Niger Delta militants have led to a 0.4 million bpd decrease in the oil that Nigeria produced as of summer 2008; David L. Goldwyn, “Pursuing U.S. Energy Security Interests in Africa,” in Jennifer G. Cooke and J. Stephen Morrison, eds., U.S. Africa Policy beyond the Bush Years (Washington, DC: CSIS Press, 2009). 6.  Regan, Civil Wars and Foreign Powers. 7.  Gibbs, The Political Economy of Third-World Intervention. 8.  Gilpin, U.S. Power and the Multinational Corporation; Lipson, Standing Guard; Stanley Lebergott, “The Returns to U.S. Imperialism, 1890–1929,” Journal of Economic History 40, no. 2 (1980): 229–252. 9.  Frieden, “The Economics of Intervention.” 10.  Michael Tanzer, The Political Economy of International Oil and the Underdeveloped Countries (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969); Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer, Bitter Fruit: The Story of American Coup in Guatemala (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005). 11.  Fordham, “Power or Plenty?” 740. 12.  Ibid. 13.  J. David Singer, Stuart Bremer, and John Stuckey, “Capability Distribution, Uncertainty and Major Power War, 1820–1965,” in Bruce Russett, ed., Peace, War and Numbers (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1972). 14.  Ibid.; Jo and Gartzke, “Determinants of Nuclear Weapons Proliferation.” 15.  I tested Model 1 in Table 6.1 with Democracy, Democracy × Trade, New Democracy, and New Democracy × Trade variables to test for H4 formulated in Chapter 4 (Model 4 of Table 4.3). Both institutional variables and interaction terms have insignificant coefficients, indicating that economic interests have little effect on the probability that a democracy intervenes in an ongoing civil war. 16.  Baseline probabilities reported in this chapter are calculated by setting dichotomous variables at zero and continuous variables at their mean. 17.  Also see Chapter 4 for the operationalization of the choice of strategy variable for international conflicts. 18.  Patrick M. Regan, “Third-Party Interventions and the Duration of Intrastate Conflicts,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 46, no. 1 (2002): 55–73. 19.  Regan et al., “Diplomatic Interventions.” 20.  In findings not reported in Table 6.2, trade volume slightly increases the probability of a military intervention, but it is not significantly related to nonmilitary forms of intervention. 21.  Regan, Civil Wars and Foreign Powers; Carment and Harvey, Using Force to Prevent Ethnic Violence.

190  NOTES TO CHAPTER 6

22.  Regan and Aydin, “Diplomacy and Other Forms of Intervention in Civil Wars.” Kydd shows that mediators can be biased in their relation to the war combatants. Quite contrary to the conventional wisdom, such bias adds credibility to the information mediators provide and facilitates the termination of war; Andrew Kydd, “Which Side Are You On? Bias, Credibility, and Mediation,” American Journal of Political Science 47, no. 4 (2003): 597–611. 23.  Regan and Aydin, “Diplomacy and Other Forms of Intervention in Civil Wars.” 24.  In the model of choice of sides, the trade volume variable has not reached conventional levels of statistical significance and is not reported in Table 6.2. 25.  For more discussion on interveners’ choice of strategy in international conflicts, see Chapter 4. 26.  Idean Salehyan, “The Delegation of War to Rebel Organizations,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 54, no. 3 (2010): 493–515. 27.  Corbetta and Dixon, “Danger beyond Dyads.” 28.  Reports of the Monitoring Group and the Panel of Experts on Somalia Submitted through the Security Council Committee Established Pursuant to Resolution 751 (1992) Concerning Somalia, S/2006/913, 22 November 2006. This committee was established to report on states’ observance of the 1992 U.N. embargo on arms into Somalia (UN Security Council Resolution 733). All reports can be found at www.un.org/ sc/committees/751/mongroup.shtml. The U.N. Monitoring Group on Somalia reports, After declaring piracy illegal, ICU took over Harardheere (central coast), which has been the pivotal area for the main group of Somali pirates—the Somali Marines, also referred to as the Defenders of Somali Territorial Waters—which had been the principal threat to maritime shipping in Somali coastal waters. Since the elimination of that pirate group, there have been no acts of piracy along the central and southern coastal area. (U.N. Monitoring Group Report S/2006/913: 39, November 22, 2006) 29.  The U.N. Monitoring Group describes the Ethiopian attack on Somalia as a . . . conventional military attack by Ethiopia against ICU military forces in Somalia. The Ethiopian military operation, which started in about mid-December 2006, rapidly shoved aside ICU forces that confronted them in set-piece conventionalstyle battles, capturing quantities of arms as they moved from the western border area of Somalia into the coastal cities of Mogadishu and Kismaayo. The Ethiopian operation took place in cooperation with Transitional Federal Government militias; however, the Ethiopians were the primary fighting force. (U.N. Monitoring Group Report S/2007/436: 11, July 18, 2007) 30.  These rebel strategies were unheard of in Somalia before Ethiopian incursion and were harbingers of the ferocity and technological sophistication in a new and upcoming episode of civil war in Somalia.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 6  191

31.  “Somalia: Current Conditions and Prospects for a Lasting Peace,” Congressional Research Service, RL33911, December 18, 2008. 32.  Other groups include the Somali Islamic Front (Jabhadda Islaamiga Soomaaliyeed); militias in the Bay and Bakool regions, in South Central Somalia and Mogadishu, and in Puntland and Somaliland; forces of Hassan Turki (the commander of the Juba Valley); the Lower Shabelle Administration; and the Digil Mirifle Liberation Army, which have varying affiliations with each other (U.N. Monitoring Group Report, S/2008/769, December 10, 2008). 33.  “Somalia: Current Conditions and Prospects for a Lasting Peace,” Congressional Research Service. 34.  U.N. Monitoring Group Report, S/2008/769, 40. 35.  U.N. Monitoring Group Report, S/2006/913, 43. 36.  U.N. Monitoring Group Report, S/2006/913, 42. 37.  Ibid. 38.  “Stuck in Somalia: Ethiopian Prime Minister Discusses How the U.S. Helped His Country Oust the Islamists from Mogadishu,” Newsweek, April 10, 2008. 39.  John L. Hirsch and Robert B. Oakley, Somalia and Operation Restore Hope: Reflections on Peacemaking and Peacekeeping (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 1995); Ioan M. Lewis, Understanding Somalia and Somalialand: Culture, History, Society (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008). 40.  “U.S. Proposing Regional Force to Monitor Somali Violence,” New York Times, December 1, 2006. The proposal excluded biased external states, such as Somalia’s neighbors Kenya, Djibouti, and Ethiopia, from the peacekeeping force. As of November 2008, there were 3,400 African Union peacekeeping troops in Somalia, mainly coming from Uganda and Burundi in observance of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1725. 41.  This is the self-proclaimed “Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and CounterTerrorism” created on February 18, 2006, with U.S. financial assistance to warlords who had lost their fiefdoms to the ICU in the latest of Somalia’s recurrent civil wars. 42.  “Efforts by CIA Fail in Somalia, Officials Charge,” New York Times, June 7, 2006. 43.  William M. Bellamy, “Making Better Sense of U.S. Security Engagement in Africa,” in Jennifer G. Cooke and J. Stephen Morrison, eds., U.S. Africa Policy beyond the Bush Years (Washington, DC: CSIS Press, 2009), 23–24. 44.  “U.S. Used Base in Ethiopia to Hunt Al Qaeda,” New York Times, February 22, 2007; “U.S. Strikes Inside Somalia, Bombing Suspected Militant Hide-Out,” New York Times, June 3, 2007. 45.  Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles announced, “Ethiopian defense forces were forced to enter into war to protect the sovereignty of the nation . . . We are not trying to set up a government for Somalia, nor do we have an intention to meddle in Somalia’s internal affairs. We have only been forced by the circumstances”; “Ethiopia Hits Somali Targets, Declaring War,” New York Times, December 24, 2006.

192  NOTES TO CHAPTER 6

46.  “How U.S. Forged an Alliance with Ethiopia over Invasion,” The Guardian, January 13, 2007. 47.  “U.S. Signals Backing for Ethiopian Incursion into Somalia,” New York Times, December 26, 2006. 48.  “Bush’s Somalia Strategy Enables an Ethiopian Despot,” The Nation, February 14, 2007. 49.  According to one account, Ethiopia has received $20 million military aid since 2002; “U.S. Support Key to Ethiopia’s invasion,” USA Today, August 1, 2007. 50.  A skeptic of U.S. involvement in Somalia, Salim Lone, who is also a former spokesman for the U.N. mission in Iraq after the U.S.-led occupation argues, [The Bush administration’s] real goal appears to be to obtain a direct foothold in a highly strategic area of the world through a client regime . . . The Horn of Africa, at whose core Somalia lies, is newly oil-rich. It is just miles across the Red Sea from Saudi Arabia and Yemen, overlooking the daily passage of large numbers of oil tankers and warships through that waterway. (In “Destabilizing the Horn,” The Nation, January 4, 2007) 51.  “Countering Piracy off the Horn of Africa: Partnership and Action Plan,” National Security Council Report, December 2008, 4. 52.  “Piracy against U.S.-Flagged Vessels: Lessons Learned,” Hearing before the Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, House of Representatives, 111th Congress, First Session, May 20, 2009. 53.  Ibid. 54.  “International Piracy on the High Seas,” Hearing before the Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, House of Representatives, 111th Congress, First Session, February 4, 2009. 55.  Ibid. 56.  Some political analysts see U.S. efforts as misplaced when the overall cost of the piracy is only $50 billion to the industry’s $7 trillion annual revenue and argue that the media attention, rather than its actual economic costs, has driven maritime patrolling efforts;“Countering Piracy in the Modern Era: Notes from a RAND Workshop to Discuss the Best Approaches for Dealing with Piracy in the 21st Century,” RAND National Defense Research Institute, 2009. 57.  Ibid. Representatives of the shipping industry such as Captain Phil M. Davies, director of OCIMF (Oil Companies International Marine Forum), and Giles Noakes, of the Chief Maritime Security Office of BIMCO (The Baltic and International Maritime Council), also welcome U.S. security measurements against piracy in the Gulf of

NOTES TO APPENDIX  193

Aden. They also plead for better coordination and the maximization of international efforts in the region. Chapter 7 1.  Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, The War Trap (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981), 5. 2.  Ibid., 19. 3.  Powell, In the Shadow of Power, 3. 4.  Snyder and Jervis, “Civil War and the Security Dilemma”; Jack Snyder and Keir A. Lieber, “Correspondence: Defensive Realism and the ‘New’ History of World War I,” International Security 33, no. 1 (2008): 174–185. 5.  Gary Goertz and Paul F. Diehl, “The Initiation and Termination of Enduring Rivalries: The Impact of Political Shocks,” American Journal of Political Science 39, no. 1 (1995): 30–52. 6.  Michael G. Findley and Tze Kwang Teo, “Rethinking Third-Party Interventions into Civil Wars: An Actor-Centric Approach,” Journal of Politics 68, no. 4 (2006): 828–837. 7.  “U.S. Implies Soviet Fosters Laos Strife to Keep Asia Tense,” New York Times, August 12, 1959. 8.  “U.S. Statement on Laos,” New York Times, September 6, 1959. 9.  “Soviet Says Laos Violates Accord,” New York Times, August 18, 1959. 10.  Huth, “Major Power Intervention in International Crises.” 11.  Jack Levy and Michael Barnett, “Domestic Sources of Alliances and Alignments: The Case of Egypt, 1962–73,” International Organization 45, no. 3 (1991): 369–395; Jack Snyder, The Ideology of the Offensive: Military Decision Making and the Disasters of 1914 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984). 12.  Layne and Schwarz, “American Hegemony.” 13.  Kenneth N. Waltz, Man, the State, and War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959). 14.  Moravcsik, “Taking Preferences Seriously.” Appendix 1.  Corbetta and Dixon, “Danger beyond Dyads.” 2.  Singer et al., “Capability Distribution, Uncertainty and Major Power War.” 3.  Ibid. 4.  Curtis S. Signorino and Jeffrey M. Ritter, “Tau-b or Not Tau-b: Measuring the Similarity of Foreign Policy Positions,” International Studies Quarterly 43, no. 1 (1999): 115–144.

194  NOTES TO APPENDIX

5.  Jones et al., “Militarized Interstate Disputes, 1816–1992,” 178. 6.  Jo and Gartzke, “Determinants of Nuclear Weapons Proliferation,” 172. 7.  John M. Owen, “Transnational Liberalism and US Primacy,” International Security 26, no. 3 (2001/02): 117–152. 8.  Keith Jaggers and Ted Robert Gurr, “Tracking Democracy’s Third Wave with the Polity III Data,” Journal of Peace Research 32, no. 4 (1995): 469–482. 9.  Douglas M. Gibler and Meredith R. Sarkees, “Measuring Alliances: The Correlates of War Formal Interstate Alliance Dataset, 1816–2000,” Journal of Peace Research 41, no. 2 (2004): 211–222. 10.  Ron E. Hassner, “The Path to Intractability: Time and the Entrenchment of Territorial Disputes,” International Security 31, no. 3 (2007): 107–138. 11.  James D. Fearon, “Rationalist Explanations for War,” International Organization 49, no. 3 (1995): 379–414.

INDEX

Note: Page numbers followed by f or t indicate figures and tables, respectively. Aall, Pamela, 33 Abizaid, John, 138 Acheson, Dean, 30 Adams, John Quincy, 101 Aden, 120 Afghanistan, 75, 119, 133 AFRICOM, 138 Aggressors: defined, 159n2; intervention against, 83–84; regime type of, 84 Albania, 31, 61 Alexander, Gerard, 77 Algeria, 105, 113 Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia (ARS), 134 Altfeld, Michael F., 74, 76, 83 Amerada Hess, 106 American Farm Bureau, 117 Amoseas, 106 Anaconda Copper, 101 Anderson, Irvine H., 111 Angell, Norman, 45 Angola, 35 Arab Cold War, 112, 115 Arab nationalism, 78, 105, 116–18 Arab Socialist Resurrection (Ba’th Party), 114 ARAMCO, 95, 97, 112, 118 Argentine, 1 Aswan Dam, 112 Attackers, 159n2. See also Aggressors

Autocracies: decision making in, 56–59, 70–72; distribution in, 56–57; intervention decisions of, 68, 72; military in, 58, 71–72; personalist, 57–58, 71–72, 86, 88, 176n49; presidential democracies becoming, 56, 69; single-party, 58–59 Autocratic peace, 58 Aydin, Aysegul, 126, 130 Azerbaijan, 109 Badeau, John, 117 Baghdad Pact, 112 Bahrain, 110 Balance of power, 46 Balance-of-threat theory, 76–78 Baldwin, David A., 4 Balkan wars, 1–2 Bandwagoning, 18–19, 76, 84 Banque Nationale de Saint Domingue, 99 Bargaining model of war, 76 Barre, Siyad, 137 Barrios, Justo Rufino, 102 Ba’th Party, 114 Belgium, 124 Belligerents: defined, 156n8; power of, 83 Al-Bizri, Afif, 115 Blainey, Geoffrey, 19, 28 Bolivia, 52 Bosnia, 24 Bratton, Michael, 69

195

196 INDEX

Brawley, Mark R., 175n35 Brazil, 1 Britain: and civil war intervention, 124; in Crimean War, 1; and Libya, 37; and the Middle East, 109–14, 185n88; and Peru, 51–52; and Venezuela, 100 Bueno de Mesquita, Bruce, 36, 54, 74, 76, 83, 142, 175n35 Buenos Aires conference (1936), 101 Bulgaria, 1–2 Bush, George W., 21, 138 Business conflict model, 53, 171n58 Business Group for Latin America, 101 Cabrera, Manuel José Estrada, 67 Caribbean, United States and, 95, 98 Carter, Jimmy, 104, 106, 119 Carter Doctrine, 119 Castro Ruiz, José Cipriano, 100 Central America, 94, 96 Central America, United States and, 98–102 Central and South America Telegraph Company, 102 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 137 Chad, 31, 97, 107, 122, 124, 131, 132 Chase Manhattan Bank, 101 Cheibub, Jose A., 176n38 Cheney, Dick, 92 Chile, 52 Civil wars, 123–41; choosing sides in, 125–31, 129t; colonialism and, 124; defined, 156n11; economic interests and intervention in, 124–26, 127t, 129t; international conflicts and, 131; intervention in, 3, 123; mediation in, 38; motivations for intervention in, 124–25; strategies for intervention in, 125–31, 129t; studies of, 20, 24; and transnational rebellion, 131–40; United Nations and, 163n60 Claude, Inis L., 29 Clientelism, 58, 69 Coalitions, 32–39; characteristics of, 32–33; civil war diplomacy by, 34t; competition in, 175n34; motivations in, 35; questions for research on, 39; size of, 175n34 Collier, Paul, 28 Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA), 138 Concert of Four Powers, 1 Conflicts: defined, 156n11; economic effects of, 10–11, 65; initiation of, factors in,

27–28; one-day, 74; one-on-one, 19; phases of, 25, 25f; postconflict stage, 28–29; preconflict stage, 26–28; trade effects of, 46–47 Congo, 35, 124 Conoco, 106 Constraints on intervention, 11–13, 41, 52–54, 67–72 Constructivism, 6 Contras, 104–5, 132 Coolidge, Calvin, 94 Corbetta, Renato, 25, 89 Correlates of War Project (COW), Militarized Interstate Disputes (MID) data, 19, 24, 80, 89, 156n11, 156n12, 159n2 Cortright, David, 26 Costa Rica, 103, 122, 131, 182n42 Coup d’état, 161n20 COW Project MID Data. See Correlates of War Project (COW), Militarized Interstate Disputes (MID) Data Credit Mobilier, 100 Crimean War, 1 Croatia, 61 Cuba, 103 Czech Republic, 84 Debt collection, 99 Del Castillo, Graciana, 28 Democracies: coalitions of, 35–37; decision making in, 54–56, 68–70; defining, 85; effectiveness of, as interveners, 36–37; institutional factors influencing intervention by, 13; intervention decisions of, 68, 70, 78–79, 87–88, 147; mixed, 85; mutual interests and assistance of, 35, 79, 84, 144; new, 55–56, 85, 88; parliamentary, 56, 68, 70, 85; pluralism of, 68; political survival in, 68; presidential, 56, 68–70, 85, 176n38; relations between, 36; types of, 56, 68–70 Democracy-autocracy distinction, 13, 16, 59, 68, 88–89 Democratic peace theory, 11, 36, 78–79, 171n60 Denmark, 121 Deterrence, 27–28 Digil Mirifle Liberation Army, 191n32 Al-Din, Nizam, 115 Diplomacy, 89, 128 Disputes. See Conflicts Dixon, William J., 25, 89 Dollar diplomacy, 94, 181n26

INDEX 197

Domestic politics: international politics and, 43; intervention decisions influenced by, 5, 7–9, 11–13, 48–52, 145; liberal theory and, 43, 145–47; power in, 50 Dominican Republic, 99–100, 122, 181n26 Downs, George W., 36 Doyle, Michael W., 35 Dulles, John Foster, 113, 115 DuPont, 101 Dynastic monarchies, 57, 86 Economic determinism, 94 Economic incentives: in postconflict stage, 28–29; in preconflict stage, 26 Economic interests: harms to, from conflict, 10–11; intervention decisions influenced by, 5, 7–11, 41–59, 62–66, 75, 82t, 83t, 86–87t, 124–26, 127t, 129t; military intervention and, 89, 91; policymaking influenced by, 51, 170n54; private actors and, 11–13, 48–53, 67, 81, 170n54; security and, 9–10, 41–42, 47, 61, 96–97, 101–2, 146; strategies and, 90t, 129t; U.S. intervention for, 93–97 Economic interventions, 89, 128 Economic liberalism. See Liberalism and liberal theory Economic peace research, 11, 42, 61, 63, 66, 67, 81, 91, 173n15 Economic policy, private actors’ influence on, 50–51 Economics: international politics and, 45–47; and peace prospects, 45–46, 48–49. See also Trade Economic sanctions, 73 Eden, Anthony, 113 Egypt, 96–97, 106–8, 112–18, 132 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 112–16, 180n18 Eisenhower Doctrine, 114, 115 El Salvador, 35, 102, 124 Enzeli affair, 109 Eritrea, 12, 133, 136, 159n34 Esso, 106 Ethiopia, 5, 133–40, 159n34 F. C. Shaffer & Associates, 12, 159n34 FDI. See Foreign direct investment Fearon, James, 36 Feste, Karen, 23 Figueres Ferrer, José, 182n42 Finland, 85 First Balkan War, 1

Fisher, Louis, 30 Force, in international politics, 45–47 Ford, 101 Ford, Gerald, 106, 112 Fordham, Benjamin O., 125–26, 128 Foreign direct investment (FDI): and civil war intervention, 128, 130; and intervention in international conflict, 64–66, 71, 79–81, 84–85 Foreign policy: domestic policy and, 11; liberal origins of, 42–44 Foreign powers. See Intervention France: and civil war intervention, 124; in Crimean War, 1; and Dominican Republic, 99–100; and Egypt, 113–14; and Libya, 37, 107; mixed executive system of, 85 French Cable Company, 100 Frieden, Jeffry A., 53, 185n88 FSLN (Sandinista National Liberation Front), 104 Gallagher, John, 170n51 Garten, Jeffrey, 60 Gartner, Scott S., 19, 27 Gelpi, Christopher, 55 Geography, intervention decisions and, 10, 84. See also Regional interests of United States Georgia, 31 Germany, 100, 116 Gilan Republic, 109 Gilpin, Robert, 94–95 Gleditsch, Kristian S., 79 Gomez, Juan Vincente, 100 Goukouni Oueddei, 107, 132 Gourevitch, Peter A., 43 Grandin, Greg, 180n8 Great Britain. See Britain Greece, 85 Grenada, 103 Grieco, Joseph M., 55 Guano, 51–52 Guardia, Rafael Calderon, 103 Guatemala, 67, 102, 125 Guatemala Mining and Development Company, 67 Gulf War, 2, 8, 26, 30 Habash, George, 119–20 Habre, Hissen, 107, 132 Hackett, Kenneth, 27

198 INDEX

Haiti, 12, 24, 99 Haitian Tropical Management, 12 Hezbollah, 135 Hitler, Adolf, 36 Hobson, John A., 170n51 Hoeffler, Anke, 28 Holsti, Kalevi J., 156n12 Honduras, 31, 102–5, 122, 131–32, 183n52 Hoover, Herbert, 101 Humphrey, D. R., 120 Hungary, 84 Husayn, Sharif, 110 Hussein, King of Jordan, 115–16 Hussein, Saddam, 26 ICU. See Islamic Courts Union Ideology, in intervention decisions, 78, 133 Imperialism, 7, 51–52 Incentives. See Economic incentives India, 78 Indonesia, 3, 35 Institutional environment: and civil war intervention, 127–28; constraints originating from, 52–54; intervention decisions influenced by, 12–13, 86–87t, 88t; political survival and, 68; public spending and, 69. See also Autocracies; Democracies Institutionalism, 42–44; and intervention, 6 Inter-American Development Bank, 101 Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, 101 Interdependence of states, 9–10 Interest groups. See Private actors Intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), 32, 37 International conflicts, 60–91; civil wars compared to, 131; constraints on intervention in, 67–72; findings on intervention in, 79–91; hypotheses concerning, 62–79; motivations for intervention in, 62–66; security considerations in, 75–79; strategies for intervention in, 72–75 International Court of Arbitration, 100 International law: civil war intervention and, 123; interpretation of, 8; and intervention, 29–30 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 114 International political economy, 41, 53 International politics: domestic politics and, 43; economics and force in, 45–47

International relations (IR) theory: on conflict, 5; intervention neglected in, 40; liberal, 5–7, 14–15, 42, 43; realist, 24; security and economy in, 41; on use of force, 6 International relations, changing context of, 24 International Telephone and Telegraph, 101 Interveners: defined, 156n8; interrelations of, 38–39; types of, 32, 33t Intervention: abstention from, 19, 26–27; changing manifestations of, 7–8, 20; in civil war, 3; coalitional, 32–39; conceptual boundaries of, 22–25; constraints on, 11–13, 41, 52–54, 67–72; costs of, 73–74; defining, 20, 72, 80; diplomatic, 89, 128; domestic aspects of, 11–13, 48–52; early, 162n29; economic, 89, 128; economic aspects of, 45–47, 82t, 83t, 86–87t; economic sanctions as, 73; effectiveness of, 73, 165n82; explanations of, 5–9, 6t; in international conflicts, ­ 60–91; international law and, 29–30; major powers as, 83; military, 73, 89, 91, 98, 128; motivations for, 4–5, 9–11, 41, 62–66; nonmilitary, 73, 89; opportunities/ contexts for, 3–4, 3t, 20–24, 21t, 74, 143; postconflict, 28–29; preconflict, 26–28; scholarship on, 5, 20, 22, 40; significance of, 2; strategies for, 3t, 4, 72–75; timing of, 24–26; unilateral, 30–31, 35 Iran, 31, 64, 92, 109–12, 119–22, 125, 180n18, 188n132 Iran-Iraq war, 63, 119, 120–21, 140 Iraq, 2, 8, 10, 26, 115, 120–21 Iraq War, 77 Irregular warfare, 3 IR theory. See International relations (IR) theory Islamic Courts Union (ICU), 5, 133–39 Israel, 38, 78, 108, 113–14, 116, 133, 186n104 Italy, 1, 100, 110 Jensen, Nathan M., 65 Johnson, Lyndon B., 98 Jones, Daniel M., 19 Jordan, 115–16, 133, 186n104 Kant, Immanuel, 42 Kantian peace theory, 35 Kaufman, Robert G., 78 Kennedy, John F., 97, 101, 116–18, 132 Keohane, Robert O., 45, 46, 48

INDEX 199

Keynes, John Maynard, 45 Kleptocracies, 57, 71 Knox, Philander C., 98 Korea, 84 Korean War, 2, 26, 30–31, 85 Kosovo, 22, 35 Krasner, Stephen, 69, 95–96 Kuwait, 2, 8, 10, 26, 110 Kydd, Andrew, 190n22 LaFeber, Walter, 94 Laos, 35, 145 Latin America, United States and, 94–96, 180n8, 181n26. See also Caribbean, United States and; Central America, United States and Layne, Christopher, 77, 96, 146 Lebanon, 38, 115, 124 Liberalism and liberal theory: assumptions of, in IR theory, 43; bottom-up character of, 48, 170n54; on coercion, 7; on conflict, 42–43; and domestic influences, 48; early, 48; and economic influences, 45–49; empirical expectations from, 62–79; and foreign policy origins, 42–44; on intervention, 6, 8–9; and IR theory, 5–7, 14–15, 42, 43; principles of, 6–7; state role in, 53; value of, for IR theory, 44, 59, 146–47 Liberia, 107 Libya, 31, 37, 92, 97, 105–8, 122, 131, 132, 183n57 Lie, Trygve, 27 Lieber, Keir A., 77 Linz, Juan J., 69 Lipson, Charles, 36 Logrolling, 53, 56, 69 Lone, Salim, 192n50 Long, William J., 26 Lowenthal, Abraham F., 95 Lower-scale conflicts, 21–22, 160n13 Lower Shabelle Administration, 191n32 Lugar, Richard, 61 Major powers, as interveners, 83 Malaysia, 124 Mansfield, Edward D., 46 Marxism, 170n55 Mayall, James, 4 Mazaneran, 109 Mediation: in civil wars, 130; effectiveness of, 27, 38–39, 73, 165n82, 190n22

Mediators, 38, 165n85 Meir, Golda, 118 Meles, Zenawi, 136, 138 Mexico, 84, 85 Middle East, U.S. policies on, 109–21, 132–33; early years, 109–12; Eisenhower years, 112–16; Kennedy years, 116–18; midseventies turning point for, 118–21 Military, in autocracies, 58, 71–72 Military interventions, 73, 89, 91, 98, 128 Miller, Benjamin, 111, 179n2 Milner, Helen V., 13 Mitterand, François, 107 Mixed democracies, 85 Monarchies, 57, 86 Monroe, James, 99, 101 Monroe Doctrine, 99–101 Montesquieu, Charles, 65 Montevideo conference (1933), 101 Moravcsik, Andrew, 6, 15, 43, 48 Most, Benjamin A., 8 Motivations for intervention, 4–5, 9–11, 41, 62–66 Multinomial choice models, 80 Munro, Dana G., 180n9 Muscat, 120 Napoleon III, 1 Nasser, Gamal Abdel, 97, 112–18 National interest, 4, 61. See also States: interests and preferences of National Security Council, 95 National Security Decision Directive, 106 National Security Strategy of the United States of America (George W. Bush administration), 21 Negroponte, John D., 104 Neoliberal institutionalism, 43 Neorealism, 43, 76 New York and Bermudez Asphalt Company, 100 NGOs. See Nongovernmental organizations Nicaragua, 31, 92, 97, 99, 102–5, 122, 124, 131–32, 182n38 Niger, 107 Nigeria, 3, 105, 124 Nimeiri, Gaafar, 107–8 Nixon, Richard, 112, 116 Nondynastic monarchies, 57 Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), 27, 33 Nonmilitary interventions, 73, 89

200 INDEX

Nonstate actors, 3 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 140 Nuclear capabilities, 78 Nye, Joseph S., 45, 46 Oasis (Continental, Amerida, Marathon), 106 Occidental, 106 Odom, William, 61 Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), 136 Oil, 10, 95, 105–6, 109, 111 Olson, Mancur, 54 Oman, 10, 97, 110, 119–20, 122, 132 One-day disputes, 74 Opposition Alliance (Somalia), 136 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 79–80, 84–85 Organization of American States (OAS), 101, 103 Ottoman Empire, 1–2, 109, 110 Overseas Private Investment Cooperation (OPIC), 11–12 Pakistan, 78 Palestinian Liberation Army, 116 Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), 133 Palestinians, 116, 132–33 Pan-Arab nationalism, 78 Papayoanou, Paul A., 55 Paraguay, 1 Parliamentarism, 56, 68, 70, 85 Pathet Lao, 145 Peace, economics and prospects for, 45–46, 48–49 Peace, theories of. See Autocratic peace; Democratic peace theory; Economic peace research; Kantian peace theory Pearson, Frederic S., 72 Peceny, Mark, 88 People’s Democratic Republic (South Yemen), 120 Personalist regimes, 57–58, 71–72, 86, 88, 176n49 Peru, 51–52 Philippines, 12 Philippin Geothermal, 12 Picado, Teodoro, 103, 182n42 Piracy, 3, 134–35, 139–40, 192n56, 192n57 Pluralist theories, 53, 171n58

Poland, 36, 84, 85 Policymaking and policymakers: bottomup view of, 12, 170n54; in democracies, 54–56; influences on, 13, 50–51, 170n54; responsiveness of, to constituents, 44 Political economy, 170n56 Political survival, 68 Political systems. See Institutional environment Pollins, Brian M., 46 Popular Front for the Liberation of Oman and the Arabian Gulf, 119 Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, 116, 120 Portugal, 84, 85 Powell, Robert, 19, 142 Power, 75–77 Preemption, 21 Preferential trade agreements (PTAs): and civil war intervention, 128, 130; and intervention in international conflict, 66, 80–83 Presidential democracies, 56, 68–70, 85, 176n38 Press-Barnathan, Galia, 28–29 Private actors: in democracies, 54–56; and economic interests, 11–13, 48–53, 67, 81, 170n54; economic policy influenced by, 50–51; government use of, 174n24; policymaking influenced by, 11–13, 50–54; security policy influenced by, 51; state action benefitting, 13, 47, 49–56, 67, 71–72 Przeworski, Adam, 86 Public spending: in democracies, 54–56, 68; factors influencing, 54; institutional factors influencing, 69; return on, 68 Al-Qaddafi, Muammar, 105–6, 132 Al-Qaeda, 4–5, 133, 137–38 Qatar, 110 Al-Quwatli, Shukri, 114, 186n100 Reagan, Ronald, 104, 106–7, 188n132 Realism: defensive vs. offensive, 18–19, 75–76, 144; on domestic politics, 43; on economics and peace prospects, 45–46; and international relations, 24, 40, 42; on intervention, 3, 5–6, 8, 41, 75–79, 143–44; shortcomings of, 18–19; value of, for IR theory, 44. See also Neorealism Regan, Patrick M., 25, 73, 126, 130

INDEX 201

Regional interests of United States: Central America, 98–102; Middle East, 109–21; Nicaragua, 102–5 Reiter, Dan, 79 Religious fundamentalism, 133 Republican Party, 175n34 Revisionist states, 77 Richardson, Lewis F., 19 Riker, William H., 54, 175n34 Robinson, Ronald, 170n51 Rogers, William, 133 Rogowski, Ronald, 53 Roosevelt, Theodore, 100 Roosevelt Corollary, 100 Rosecrance, Richard, 45 Rosenau, James N., 40 Rusk, Dean, 98 Russia and the Soviet Union: and Afghanistan, 119; in Crimean War, 1; intervention by, 31; and Iran, 109–10; and Laos, 145; as single-party autocracy, 58–59; and Syria, 114–16 Sadat, Anwar, 108 Ibn Said, Qabus, 119 As-Sallal, Abdullah, 117, 118 Sandinistas, 102–5 San Domingo Improvement Company, 100 Ibn Sa’ud, 110–11, 132 Saud, King of Saudi Arabia, 95 Saudi Arabia, 10, 95, 96, 110–12, 114, 117, 132 Schattschneider, Elmer E., 50 Schwarz, Benjamin, 146 Schweller, Randall, 76, 159n39 Second Balkan War, 2 Security: considerations in intervention, 75–79; economic interests and, 9–10, 41–42, 47, 61, 96–97, 101–2, 146; private actors’ influence on, 51; realist perspective on, 75–79 Security studies, 5, 9, 13, 18, 24, 40, 41 Selectorate theory, 54 Al-Shabaab, 134–35, 137, 139 Shultz, George, 119 Signaling, 36–37, 73–74 Signorino, Curtis S., 28 Sinclair, 111 Singer, J. David, 160n13 Sisco, Joseph, 118 Siverson, Randolph M., 19, 27 Slovakia, 84 Small, Melvin, 160n13

Smith, Alastair, 27–28 Snyder, Jack, 55 SOCAL (Standard Oil of California), 111 Solano Lopez, Francisco, 1 Solingen, Etel, 55 Somalia, 3, 5, 22, 24, 133–40, 163n60, 191n40 Somali Islamic Front, 191n32 Somoza García, Anastasio, 103 South Africa, 58 Soviet Union. See Russia and the Soviet Union Spain, 84 Spriggs, A. E., 67 Staley, Eugene, 94, 174n24 Stam, Allan C., 79 Standard Oil, 101 Standard Vacuum, 111 Starr, Harvey, 8 States: benefitting private actors, 13, 47, 49–56, 67, 71–72; interdependence of, 9–10, 43; interests and preferences of, 6–7, 9, 15, 35–36, 43–44, 61; interrelations of, 37; intervention by, 32. See also Institutional environment Statism, 95 Status quo, preference for, 31, 36–37, 77 Stein, Arthur A., 48 Strait of Hormuz, 119, 121–22, 187n126 Strategies for intervention, 3t, 4, 72–75, 90t, 129t Suazo Cordova, Roberto, 183n52 Sudan, 31, 97, 106–8, 122 Suez Canal, 112–14, 140, 185n88 Sweden, 103 Syria, 31, 38, 114–16, 132–33, 186n100 Taft, William Howard, 181n26 Taliaferro, Jeffrey W., 23 Tanker War, 119, 121 Tarar, Ahmer, 28 Terrorism, 106, 133, 137–38 TFG. See Transitional Federal Government Threats, 76–78 Trade: beneficiaries of, 50; conflicts’ effects on, 46–47, 64; volume of, and intervention, 63–66, 80–81, 85 Transitional Federal Government (TFG; Somalia), 134–37 Transnational rebellion, 131–40 Treaty of London (1913), 2 Triple Alliance, 1 Truman, Harry S., 30, 180n18

202 INDEX

Tsebelis, George, 70 Turkey, 84, 115–16 Turki, Hassan, 191n32 Unilateral interventions, 30–31, 35 Union Miniére du Haut Katanga, 124 United Fruit, 101 United Nations: Charter, 29, 123; on civil war, 29, 123; on intervention, 29–30; and Libyan intervention, 37; and the Middle East, 113–14, 133; peacekeeping operations, 4, 28; preventive diplomacy of, 27; Security Council, 29, 30, 113; and Somalia, 134–36, 191n40 United States: and Afghanistan, 75; and the Caribbean, 95, 98; and Central America, 94, 96; economic interests of, 16–17; and El Salvador, 124; and Ethiopia, 137–40; and Guatemala, 102, 125; and Gulf War, 2, 8; and Iran, 64, 92, 112, 119–22, 125, 180n18, 188n132; and Korean War, 2, 26, 30–31; and Laos, 145; and Latin America, 94–96, 180n8, 181n26; and Libya, 37, 105–8, 183n57; and the Middle East, 109–21, 132–33; and Nicaragua, 102–5, 124, 132, 182n38; perceptions of, 31, 77; presidential system of, 85; and Al-Qaeda, 4–5; and Somalia, 134, 137–40, 138; and Syria, 186n100; and the Third World, 95; and world wars, 2. See also United States, intervention by United States, intervention by, 2, 61, 179n2; characteristics of, 16–17, 31–32; in civil wars, 132; considerations behind, 101; for economic interests, 92–97, 124; in Gulf War, 8; hegemonic considerations in, 16,

31, 77, 93, 94, 96; for ideological reasons, 92, 98, 134, 139; in Korean War, 30–31; military, 98; for national interests, 92; in non-conflict situations, 23; perceptions of, 31; for preservation of status quo, 92, 102; regional interests in, 97–121 U.S. Naval Forces Central Command (NAVCENT), 140 U.S. State Department, 105–6 U.S. Steel, 101 Uruguay, 1 USS Wachusett, 102 Van de Walle, Nicolas, 69 Venezuela, 99, 100, 122 Walt, Stephen M., 36, 76, 78 Waltz, Kenneth N., 45–46, 75 War participants, 160n13 Wars: defined, 160n13; intervention in, 20–22 Weeks, Jessica L., 86 Werner, Suzanne, 28 Wilbur, Curtis D., 93–94 Wilson, Woodrow, 2 Woll, Cornelia, 170n56 World Bank, 112 World War I, 2, 45 World War II, 2, 45, 111 W. R. Grace, 106 Yemen, 10, 96–97, 110, 117–20, 122, 132 Yom Kippur War, 105, 108 Yugoslavia, 10, 31, 61 Al-Za’im, Husni, 186n100 Zelaya, José Santos, 182n38