Allies, Partners and Proxies: Managing Support Relationships in Armed Conflict to Reduce The Human Cost of War

The publication Allies, Partners and Proxies: Managing Support Relationships in Armed Conflict to Reduce the Human Cost of War, launched on 14 April 2021, presents a framework developed by the International Committee of the Red Cross to encourage decision makers to take a holistic view of support relationships and their humanitarian impact. The point of this publication is to generate a comprehensive understanding of the stakes involved in support relationships and guide the decision-making process.

Family Matters: Trauma and the Legacy of War in James Allen Moad II’s Outside Paducah: The Wars at Home

Outside Paducah: The Wars at Home (2016), a play written and performed solo by James Allen Moad II, a former Air Force pilot, explores the enduring effects of war on American veterans and their families after soldiers return home from the battleground. The play moves beyond the individual representation of a traumatized veteran by addressing two intertwined issues: the collective and transgenerational burden of war, both in the form of physical wounds and/or moral injuries. Outside Paducah contributes to promoting the stage as a dynamic place to think about the war legacy and to question and challenge war itself by stressing the importance of understanding the cost of war on both personal and societal levels. The play shows that the scenes of war fought in foreign lands are brought back to the home territories and families, who become equally demoralised by the perpetuation of war in their homelands. The soldiers return as ghosts of their previous selves and haunt their families and friends from one generation to the next. Therefore, war remains an open wound at the core of the American nation. At the same time, the play sheds some light on the harsh realities of the underprivileged and how joining the military often seems to provide a way out of the world of poverty and lack of resources.

Preventive war and sovereign debt

The preventive motive for war arises because states cannot commit to limit the use of their growing power. This commitment problem can lead to war when there are not enough resources available to compensate the declining state for their expected losses. In this article, we show how capital markets affect preventive war incentives by introducing a profit-maximizing bond market to the canonical bargaining model of war. We find that the nature of the power shift and fundamentals of the market for debt interact to determine when a preventive motive is more likely to lead to war. Two main results show that (1) less probable but more extreme power shifts are most dangerous and (2) unlike the direct effect of interest rates on the cost of war, higher interest on sovereign debt makes war more likely. We present evidence for the latter effect by extending Lemke’s (2003) study of preventive war for major-power dyads between 1816 and 1992.

Training Foreign Militaries for Peace – U.S. IMET and Militarized Interstate Disputes 1976-2007

How do U.S. International Military Education and Training programs affect the recipient states` behavior in militarized interstate disputes? While the relationship between U.S. military aid in the form of arms and equipment transfer and MID involvement has been studied extensively in international relations literature the effects of U.S. IMET programs on the same phenomena has been largely ignored. This study intends to fill some of this gap. This paper proposes that American educated and trained foreign military personnel return home with a better understanding about the role of the military as an instrument of national power, civil-military relations, and the cost of war. These military personnel advise their political masters against the use of military force during international disputes leading to a decreased probability of both MID initiation and escalation. To test this argument the analysis employs a merged dataset from the Correlates of War Projects and the most prominent U.S. IMET and coups data. Using logistic regression analysis this study finds that more U.S. IMET support a country receives the less likely it initiates MIDs. The analysis also finds that countries that receive U.S. IMET support are less likely to escalate ongoing MIDs to higher levels of hostility.

Casualties and the Concept of Grandness

This chapter reflects on the Korean War, considering how casualties affect American perceptions of the cost of war. It was the first large-scale overseas US war that was not declared or authorized by Congress, and the war's greatest impact was on Korean civilians. Using the example of Korean War casualties, the chapter explores the tension between the idea of “grandness” in grand strategy and the importance of granular, concrete consequences. The “grandness” of grand strategy relates both to the scale of strategizing and to the ideas that inform it. For American policymakers, it proceeds from a broad theory of the United States’ role in the world. On the ground, however, a strategy can result in mass death. Therefore, an understanding of the concrete human experience of the use of force should be firmly incorporated into grand strategy—both the practice and the pedagogy.

Democracy, Conscription, and War: The Effects of Political Regimes and Types of Military Recruiting on the Initiation of Militarized Interstate Disputes

This paper presents an analysis of the impact of political regimes and type of military recruitment on the probability of the occurrence of international conflicts. In the last few years, the (re) introduction of military conscription has been a focus of public debate, but empirical analysis of the issue remains limited. We argue that democratic nations with conscription-based military recruitment in place are less likely to initiate international conflicts than those with voluntary recruitment because public opinion will estimate a higher probability of direct involvement in disputes, causing political leaders to refrain from conflicts, even though stable military resources are in place. On the other hand, authoritarian nations with conscription-based recruitment systems are more likely to engage in conflicts than those with voluntary recruitment systems because political leaders are not accountable to the people, even though the cost of war is calculated in the same manner as that in democratic nations. To test this reasoning, we use directed-dyadic data from 1816 to 2005. Our analysis strongly supports our theoretical expectations.

The Cost of War

War has shaped Australian society profoundly. When we commemorate the sacrifices of the Anzacs, we rightly celebrate their bravery, but we do not always acknowledge the complex aftermath of combat. In The Cost of War, Stephen Garton traces the experiences of Australia’s veterans, and asks what we can learn from their stories. He considers the long-term effects of war on returned servicemen and women, on their families and communities, and on Australian public life. He describes attempts to respond to the physical and psychological wounds of combat, from the first victims of shellshock during WWI to more recent understandings of post-traumatic stress disorder. And he examines the political and social repercussions of war, including debates over how we should commemorate conflict and how society should respond to the needs of veterans. When the first edition of The Cost of War appeared in 1996, it offered a ground-breaking new perspective on the Anzac experience. In this new edition, Garton again makes a compelling case for a more nuanced understanding of the individual and collective costs of war.