Coauthors: Charlie McGillis, Richard Newton
Abstract: China’s rapid rise and Russia’s dogged aggression have fixated security strategists, military practitioners, and scholars. In a stark pivot from two decades of counterterrorism and counterinsurgency, the pacing scenario features a great power war in the Indo-Pacific that must be avoided. Since superpower deterrence, the most dangerous national security scenario, soaks up most of the attention, analysis, discourse, and funds, we leave that problem set to the majority. This paper focuses on the rest of the national security conundrum facing the U.S. and its allies and partners. While the flashpoints in the Taiwan Strait and Suwalki Gap cannot and should not be ignored, we anticipate that sparks will fly more often in the periphery. Furthermore, how the U.S. manages small, often irregular, and more likely future conflicts in the global South critically matters for how things unfold along the ultimate fault lines. We propose that using special operations forces SOF to bolster security force assistance and foreign internal defense in the air and space domains would rightly balance the current disproportionate focus on deterring a disastrous war between superpowers that will hopefully never happen.
Coauthor: J Andrés Gannon
Abstract: How do domestic politics influence the conduct of war? Conventional wisdom suggests that politicians select into war and military institutions fight them with some independence. This article argues that domestic political considerations, namely electoral vulnerability, significantly shape how wars are fought. We posit that presidents facing electoral risks intensify their control over military operations, prioritizing politically safer approaches that afford greater operational oversight, control over optics, and casualty aversion. Insofar as high-tech military platforms, such as drone strikes and precision munitions, minimize the military footprint and can fall directly under executive discretion, we theorize that presidents perceive them as politically safer. Using a new dataset capturing the means of force employed in United States military operations from 1989 to 2021, we provide robust evidence that political vulnerability — measured by presidential disapproval and proximity to elections — correlates with an increased bias toward high-tech warfare. These findings contribute to scholarship on public opinion in foreign policy, democratic warfighting, civil-military relations, and the politics of emerging technologies, demonstrating that electoral constraints systematically influence the employment of force in ongoing conflicts.
Coauthor: Ryan Shandler
Abstract: Foreign policy is a perpetually low salience issue for voters. Yet emerging technologies are upending public opinion toward foreign affairs by making modern warfare salient to the public in small but tangible, regular doses. We propose and experimentally test two distinct mechanisms by which emerging technologies increase the salience and certainty of foreign policy attitudes. The first is a participatory mechanism. The decentralization of technological prowess has generated conditions in which the public can more directly engage with international security issues. The second is an exposure mechanism. States’ heightened willingness to deploy new technologies that operate below the threshold of armed conflict exposes the public to security threats that once would have occurred behind the military veil. To test these mechanisms, we conduct a survey experiment that engages voters in vivid and interactive experiences relating to cyber warfare and aerial drones, two platforms with high public engagement. The experimental stimuli were designed to closely resemble the manner of participation with and exposure to emerging technologies in conflict situations. The results confirm that mounting public interaction with emerging technologies is compelling voters to formulate stronger, clearer, and more independent foreign policy positions.
Coauthor: J Andrés Gannon
Abstract: Conventional wisdom holds that history is written by victors. In the modern information environment, however, narratives on all sides are published and updated on easily accessible online forums. In this context, the role of publicly available information during and after conflict is more prominent, ranging from mis- and disinformation campaigns to stoke public animus and resilience amid wars to competing accounts of their prosecution and impact in the aftermath. While the amplified effects of this copious open-source information are well-acknowledged in academic and policy circles, its construction and distinctions are underexamined. Leveraging a novel dataset of United States military operations from 1989 to 2021 scraped from Wikipedia, we compare objective and subjective covariates to the foreign language Wiki pages of actors listed as adversaries in each operation. With information on the time, content, and location of edits, we identify the attributes of common agreement and disagreement and explain the conditions under which contradictory records emerge. This contributes to literatures examining the public constituents and political consequences of modern warfighting.
Coauthor: J Andrés Gannon
Abstract: Research on force structures in modern warfare is prolific, but siloed. While some examine boots on the ground, others focus on aerial bombing or unmanned platforms. Consequently, few studies consider them in conjunction. Meanwhile, modern warfare features an increasingly broad spectrum of combatants and technologies. With civil war now constituting more than 90% of contemporary armed clashes, diverse nonstate actors regularly contest state powers through terrorism, insurgency, and irregular warfare. Yet interstate wars endure and great power competition persists, compelling states to prepare for these higher-stakes antagonisms accordingly. As a result, advanced modern militaries are cross-pressured to equip and train for dramatically dissimilar security threats. At the same time, political leaders face domestic constraints to avert risks and costs. The United States, with a sharp qualitative military edge and enemies ranging from ragtag rebels to global powerhouses, is a paragon of this challenge. In this paper, we analyze US force structure combinations by their commonness and context. Leveraging original data on the means of force used in all US military interventions from 1989 to 2019, we describe and explain how war planners tailor applications of force to balance military efficacy with domestic and resource constraints.
Coauthor: Ori Swed
Abstract: Most modern wars, especially those involving state combatants, have been limited or low-intensity conflicts. With intervals and investments to refurbish equipment and replenish supplies, militaries do not suffer attrition. In fact, if the perception of external threats persists the military is likely to grow in quantity or quality in the context of limited war when demand and supply dovetail. In total war, attrition is likely to surpass this pace and thereby degrade military capabilities over time. With novel data on captured, damaged, or destroyed equipment in the Russia-Ukraine War, we demonstrate and quantify the degree of degradation that has occurred since the conflict’s onset. From this foundation, we theorize on how this has affected three aspects of combat. First, we describe a shift in tempo as remaining assets must be spread thinner across time and space. Second, as combatants resort to dated or inferior platforms that remain, military effectiveness decreases and casualties—both soldier and civilian—increase. Third, states are compelled to substitute depleted equipment with commercial analogs or import military-grade replacements, which might entail more variability of the tools of conflict, external political pressures, or the forging of geopolitically destabilizing partnerships. As great power competition grows in salience, we contribute to studies on modern and future war and force planning.
Coauthor: Ori Swed
Abstract: In the last few years, there has been a rise in the drone threat from violent nonstate actors (VNSAs). Across multiple arenas, VNSAs now use these platforms frequently, broadly, and to great effect. Though the phenomenon is widespread and increasing, it is not ubiquitous. Cross-sectional analyses of the factors driving their use reveal that the strongest predictor is whether an organization is networked with other VNSA drone users. This implies that the malicious nonstate drone threat is diffusing through social networks over time. We leverage social network analysis tools to map these affiliations and temporally trace the diffusion pathways. We find that prior to the commercial market’s cascade into society in 2014, intrinsic innovation, external sponsorship, and cooperative ties to seeds in the network are the most important factors predicting adoption. Once commercial drone manufacturers began to lower the costs, risks and technical requisites for adoption, there were fewer gatekeepers controlling the flow of material and nonmaterial goods in the network. Consequently, the variety and interaction of internal and external influences becomes more complex after 2014 with transnational terror ties, emulation of enemies, and peripheral influence increasing in importance. This study demonstrates the independent effect of social network diffusion for a key contemporary technological innovation.