CIAO DATE: 03/2011
Volume: 35, Issue: 3
Winter 2010/2011
Two Cheers for Bargaining Theory: Assessing Rationalist Explanations of the Iraq War (PDF)
David A. Lake
The Iraq War has received little sustained analysis from scholars of international relations. This article assesses the rationalist approach to war - or, simply, bargaining theory - as one possible explanation of the conflict. Bargaining theory correctly directs attention to the inherently strategic nature of all wars. It also highlights problems of credible commitment and asymmetric information that lead conflicts of interest, ubiquitous in international relations, to turn violent. These strategic interactions were central to the outbreak of the Iraq War in 2003.
The Rise of Muslim Foreign Fighters: Islam and the Globalization of Jihad (PDF)
Thomas Hegghammer
Why has transnational war volunteering increased so dramatically in the Muslim world since 1980? Standard explanations, which emphasize U.S.-Saudi support for the 1980s Afghan mujahideen, the growth of Islamism, or the spread of Wahhabism are insufficient. The increase in transnational war volunteering is better explained as the product of a pan-Islamic identity movement that grew strong in the 1970s Arab world from elite competition among exiled Islamists in international Islamic organizations and Muslim regimes.
Who Lost Vietnam? Soldiers, Civilians, and U.S. Military Strategy
James McAllister
Scholars have long argued about why the United States pursued a conventional military strategy during the Vietnam War rather than one based on counterinsurgency principles. A recent article in this journal by Jonathan Caverley presents a bold challenge to the historiography of the Vietnam War. Rejecting the standard historical focus on the organizational culture and strategic perspective of Gen. William Westmoreland and the U.S. Army, Caverley argues that the roots of the United States' strategy in Vietnam can be traced to the direct influence of civilian leaders and the strong constraint of public opinion. Caverley's main arguments are a welcome challenge to the established wisdom, but they are not supported by the historical evidence
Explaining U.S. Military Strategy in Vietnam: Thinking Clearly about Causation
Jonathan D. Caverley
Cost distribution theory suggests that the costs to the median voter in a democracy of fighting an insurgency with firepower are relatively low compared to a more labor-intensive approach. Therefore, this voter will favor a capital intensive counterinsurgency campaign despite the resulting diminished prospects of victory. Primary and secondary sources show that President Lyndon Johnson and his civilian aides were very much aware that, although they considered a main force-focused and firepower-intensive strategy to be largely ineffective against the insurgency in South Vietnam, it was politically more popular in the United States.
Strange Bedfellows: U.S. Bargaining Behavior with Allies of Convenience
Evan Resnick
Despite the ubiquity of the term "alliance of convenience," the dynamics of these especially tenuous alliances have not been systematically explored by scholars or policymakers. An alliance of convenience is the initiation of security cooperation between ideological and geopolitical adversaries in response to an overarching third-party threat; they are conceptually different from other types of alliances. Neorealist, two-level games, and neoclassical realist theories all seek to explain the outcome of intra-alliance bargaining between the United States and allies of convenience since 1945.
Correspondence: Life Sciences and Islamic Suicide Terrorism
Mia Bloom, Valerie M. Hudson, Bradley Thayer
Mia Bloom responds to Bradley Thayer and Valerie Hudson's Spring 2010 International Security article, "Sex and the Shaheed: Insights from the Life Sciences on Islamic Suicide Terrorism."