Logics of War

Most wars between countries end quickly and at relatively low cost. The few in which high-intensity fighting continues for years bring about a disproportionate amount of death and suffering. What separates these few unusually long and intense wars from the many conflicts that are far less destructive? In Logics of War, Alex Weisiger tests three explanations for a nation’s decision to go to war and continue fighting regardless of the costs. He combines sharp statistical analysis of interstate wars over the past two centuries with nine narrative case studies. He examines both well-known conflicts like World War II and the Persian Gulf War, as well as unfamiliar ones such as the 1864–1870 Paraguayan War (or the War of the Triple Alliance), which proportionally caused more deaths than any other war in modern history

Logics of War

Most wars between countries end quickly and at relatively low cost. The few in which high-intensity fighting continues for years bring about a disproportionate amount of death and suffering. What separates these few unusually long and intense wars from the many conflicts that are far less destructive? In Logics of War, Alex Weisiger tests three explanations for a nation’s decision to go to war and continue fighting regardless of the costs. He combines sharp statistical analysis of interstate wars over the past two centuries with nine narrative case studies. He examines both well-known conflicts like World War II and the Persian Gulf War, as well as unfamiliar ones such as the 1864–1870 Paraguayan War (or the War of the Triple Alliance), which proportionally caused more deaths than any other war in modern history

An Annotated Bibliography for the Correlates of War Interstate Wars Database

We provide an annotated bibliography for the Correlates of War Interstate Wars dataset. The availability of such a bibliography should help scholars to address several obstacles to valid inference, including over-reliance on well-known or highly salient cases, concerns about whether proxy variables accurately capture the variable they are intended to measure, problems assessing the theoretical and empirical significance of outliers, and concerns about whether observed statistical relationships exist for the reason that theory leads us to expect. This document should also be helpful for scholars who are interested in coding new variables or in evaluating the appropriateness of existing variables for their research. The bibliography includes military and political/diplomatic sources and, where pertinent, highlights potential concerns with certain works

Logics of War: Explanations for Limited and Unlimited Conflicts

Most wars between countries end quickly and at relatively low cost. The few in which high-intensity fighting continues for years bring about a disproportionate amount of death and suffering. What separates these few unusually long and intense wars from the many conflicts that are far less destructive? In Logics of War, Alex Weisiger tests three explanations for a nation’s decision to go to war and continue fighting regardless of the costs. He combines sharp statistical analysis of interstate wars over the past two centuries with nine narrative case studies. He examines both well-known conflicts like World War II and the Persian Gulf War, as well as unfamiliar ones such as the 1864–1870 Paraguayan War (or the War of the Triple Alliance), which proportionally caused more deaths than any other war in modern history. When leaders go to war expecting easy victory, events usually correct their misperceptions quickly and with fairly low casualties, thereby setting the stage for a negotiated agreement. A second explanation involves motives born of domestic politics; as war becomes more intense, however, leaders are increasingly constrained in their ability to continue the fighting. Particularly destructive wars instead arise from mistrust of an opponent’s intentions. Countries that launch preventive wars to forestall expected decline tend to have particularly ambitious war aims that they hold to even when fighting goes poorly. Moreover, in some cases, their opponents interpret the preventive attack as evidence of a dispositional commitment to aggression, resulting in the rejection of any form of negotiation and a demand for unconditional surrender. Weisiger’s treatment of a topic of central concern to scholars of major wars will also be read with great interest by military historians, political psychologists, and sociologists

Replication data for: Logics of War: Explanations for Limited and Unlimited Conflicts

Documents here consist of the data used in the statistical analysis, a Stata .do file that replicates the results presented in the book, three statistical appendices discussing data generation and robustness checks, and a set of files that are necessary to generate the main datasets

Exiting the Coalition: When Do States Abandon Coalition Partners during War?

When do countries abandon coalition partners during war? Prominent arguments about alliance dissolution focus on peacetime, yet the ability of alliances to influence international politics ultimately hinges on their cohesion or dissolution during war. In this article, I argue that battlefield circumstances heavily influence the likelihood of defection from coalitions. First, countries fighting independently from their partners make attractive candidates for wedge strategies and hence are more likely to defect. Second, coalitions are more likely to collapse when their members see victory in the overall war as less likely. These predictions contrast with common expectations from theories of the balance of power and of collective action. I test hypotheses about wartime developments statistically using new time-varying data on both front-level troop contributions and battle deaths. Consistent with theoretical predictions, countries are more likely to abandon coalition partners if fighting alone and when the coalition fares worse in recent fighting

Replication data for: Victory without Peace: Conquest, Insurgency, and War Termination

Replication data and supplemental appendices for Victory without Peace: Conquest, Insurgency, and War Termination

Fading Friendships Alliances, Affinities and the Activation of International Identities

In international politics ‘friends’ co-ally. But friendship is relational and contextual. Countries are more likely to act on particular common interests if few other actors share that identity. In contrast, new cleavages are likely to emerge as an identity becomes ubiquitous. The tendency for states to form alliances based on certain affinities is thus best thought of as a variable, rather than as a constant. For example, in systems where democracies are scarce, democracies eagerly co-ally. As democracy becomes common, however, incentives binding democratic allies together weaken compared to other definitions of mutual interest. This argument, and the evidence we provide, suggest that the salience of identities as cues to affinity and difference vary with the distribution of types in the system