The Effect of Aerial Bombardment on Insurgent Civilian Victimization

Security Studies, Volume 30, Issue 3, Pages 450-483

Abstract:

Little is known about how air strikes influence insurgent behavior toward civilians. This study provides evidence that air strikes against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) by counterinsurgency forces were a contributing factor in its civilian victimization. I theorize that air strikes expanded the distribution of insurgent fatalities to include higher-echelon membership and, at the same time, imposed psychological impairments on its fighters. As a consequence, these changes relaxed restraints on civilian abuse at the organizational and individual levels. This theory is informed by interviews of ISIS defectors and translations of ISIS documents and tested through a statistical analysis of granular-level data on air strikes and one-sided violence during ISIS’s insurgency. These findings contribute to our knowledge of insurgent behavior and provide important policy implications in the use of air strikes as a counterinsurgency (COIN) tool.

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Pre-Print

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Reputation in Deterrence and Decision-Making

Oxford Research Enclyclopedia of International Studies

(with Zuhaib Mahmoud, Kyle Beardsley, Christopher Newton, Chhandosi Roy, & Jacob Kathman)

Abstract:

Reputation in the context of international relations is an actor’s attribute as assessed by others from its past behavior. Interest in how reputational concerns can affect the dynamics of conflict arose in the canonical works by Schelling and the subsequent wave of deterrence research. Concerned primarily with the Cold War strategic issues, with some exceptions such as Huth who in 1988 analyzed it in the broader historical scope, scholarly attention to the role of reputation declined in the immediate post-Cold War period only to resurge in the 21st century. The last two decades witnessed a renaissance that resulted in unpacking the notion of reputation into several types and examining its influence in a number of areas, ranging from deterrence, compellence, to other types of militarized conflicts, civil wars, alliance choices, and sanctions, as well as issues of compliance with international commitments in institutional and cooperative studies. In such richness of research, the role of reputation in deterrence and strategic conflict in general, where it originated, still draws the largest amount of research as well as controversies. Besides several different conceptual and theoretical approaches, especially in the rationalist and psychological literature, there is methodological diversity as well, encompassing formal-theoretic models, large-N quantitative analyses, and survey experiments.

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Perceptions of Adversary Preferences for Accommodation and Coercion and their Effect on Conflict

Ph.D. Dissertation, University at Buffalo (State University of New York)

Abstract:

Is war unavoidable? It is no mystery that the issues nations confront each other over sometimes result in violence and unnecessary human suffering, while others are resolved peacefully through diplomacy. The question as to why one and not the other has always remained at the forefront of international relations research. In fact, it was in the ashes of two world wars, of which destroyed over 100 million lives, where this inquiry earnestly began. Like so many before, this dissertation seeks to contribute to our collective knowledge – even if incrementally – as to why nations may traverse farther onto the path of war. I contend that the foreign policy decisions of nations seized by international disputes are influenced, in part, by perceptions of how inclined their adversaries are in resolving interstate issues through accommodation or coercion. Specifically, I hypothesize that nations rely on information derived from their adversaries’ conflict history and public statements to respond in accordance with a strategy of reciprocation. This translates to nations pursuing more accommodative policies – like appeals for negotiation, mediation, or adjudication – when adversaries covey a willingness for such reconciliation processes, and more coercive policies – like the issuing of military threats, the imposition of economic sanctions, or the use of armed force – when adversaries project a predilection towards bullying. Through a survey experiment and statistical analysis of real conflict data, I provide evidence to support my theory.

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