Major Powers and Militarized Conflict

This article attempts to answer the question of why major powers engage in more active foreign policy behaviors than minor powers. It does so by comparing two explanations for the increased conflict propensity of major powers. The first explanation focuses on major powers’ observable capabilities, while the second stresses their different behavior. We incorporate both into an ultimatum model of conflict in which a state’s cost of conflict consists of both observable and behavioral components. Using data from the period from 1870 to 2001, we empirically illustrate the observable and behavioral differences between major and minor powers. We then utilize a decomposition model to assess the relative significance of the two explanations. The results suggest that most of the difference in conflict propensity between major and minor powers can be attributed to observable differences

Deterrence and the Arms Race: The Impotence of Power

So much has been done in the name of nuclear deterrence, so much destructive power built by ourselves and the Russians that it may seem rather late in the day, not to say absurd, to wonder whether or not mutual deterrence really occurs and ask what evidence can be adduced to prove it. Yet such a question may be essential to an understanding of international nuclear politics. The problems thus posed are difficult, however, and cannot be solved by direct means. What one needs to do is to establish empirically whether the conditions necessary for deterrence to be taking place are present. A brief review of the reasons why this should be so ought to, on the other hand, give us some clues as to alternate paths we would need to take in seeking our answers

A Mark in Time Saves Nein

A method for predicting political interactions and policy outcomes based on two political theorems is presented and illustrated with an examination of the decision to merge the two German currencies. Political perceptions and actions are anticipated by combining the substantive knowledge of area experts with the theoretical insights embedded in the median voter theorem and a monotonicity theorem that links expectations to probabilistic statements of action. The proposed model has proven accurate about 90 percent of the time. The proposed forecasting method identifies a sequential strategy that may have been followed by Chancellor Kohl in forging the coalition needed to merge successfully the two German currencies. Using comparative statics, the analysis suggests how subtle and sophisticated Chancellor Kohl had to be to succeed in getting the policy outcome he desired despite stiff opposition.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/66924/2/10.1177_019251219201300106.pd

StormSense: A New Integrated Network of IoT Water Level Sensors in the Smart Cities of Hampton Roads, VA

Propagation of cost-effective water level sensors powered through the Internet of Things (IoT) has expanded the available offerings of ingestible data streams at the disposal of modern smart cities. StormSense is an IoT-enabled inundation forecasting research initiative and an active participant in the Global City Teams Challenge, seeking to enhance flood preparedness in the smart cities of Hampton Roads, VA, for flooding resulting from storm surge, rain, and tides. In this study, we present the results of the new StormSense water level sensors to help establish the “regional resilience monitoring network” noted as a key recommendation from the Intergovernmental Pilot Project. To accomplish this, the Commonwealth Center for Recurrent Flooding Resiliency’s Tidewatch tidal forecast system is being used as a starting point to integrate the extant (NOAA) and new (United States Geological Survey [USGS] and StormSense) water level sensors throughout the region and demonstrate replicability of the solution across the cities of Newport News, Norfolk, and Virginia Beach within Hampton Roads, VA. StormSense’s network employed a mix of ultrasonic and radar remote sensing technologies to record water levels during 2017 Hurricanes Jose and Maria. These data were used to validate the inundation predictions of a street level hydrodynamic model (5-m resolution), whereas the water levels from the sensors and the model were concomitantly validated by a temporary water level sensor deployed by the USGS in the Hague and crowd-sourced GPS maximum flooding extent observations from the sea level rise app, developed in Norfolk, VA

External Subsidies and Lasting Peace

Third parties are thought to face a trade-off in that those actions most likely to bring peace in the short run appear least likely to ensure its long-run stability. Yet the trade-off between conflict management and conflict resolution may be overstated. Analyzing an iterated three-player bargaining model with both information and commitment problems, we first demonstrate two conditions under which third parties may produce lasting peace through conditional subsidies, even without addressing underlying informational or commitment problems. Second, we illustrate this possibility by analyzing the impact of US foreign aid on patterns of conflict and peace between Israel and her neighbors. Our analysis indicates that the termination of the rivalry between Israel and Egypt was most likely not brought about by the Camp David accords or peacekeeping operations, but by sustained foreign aid provision. We discuss the implications for both this conflict and conflict management more broadly. </jats:p

Alliances in the Shadow of Conflict

Victorious alliances often fight about the spoils of war. This paper presents an experiment on the determinants of whether alliances break up and fight internally after having defeated a joint enemy. First, if peaceful sharing yields an asymmetric rent distribution, this increases the likelihood of fighting. In turn, anticipation of the higher likelihood of internal fight reduces the alliance’s ability to succeed against the outside enemy. Second, the option to make non-binding declarations on non-aggression in the relationship between alliance members does not make peaceful settlement within the alliance more likely. Third, higher differences in the alliance players’ contributions to alliance effort lead to more internal conflict and more intense fighting

Confrontational Behavior and Escalation to War 1816-1980: A Research Plan

The understanding of international war, like many complex social events, may be - and has been - ap proached from a range of theoretical perspectives and via a variety of research strategies. Outside of the work of Bloch (1898), Sorokin (1936), Richardson (1941), and Wright (1942), however, there was little re search of a scientific nature until the mid-1960s. And while these past fifteen years have certainly not given us a compelling theory of international war, they have seen a steady growth in cumulative knowledge regar ding the correlates of war. These results, despite the expected mix of inconsistencies and anomalies, provide us with some sense of the factors that are most consistently associated with war over the last century and a half, along with some tentative insights into the rising and declining potency of these factors.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/68556/2/10.1177_002234338201900104.pd

The Political Economy of US Military Spending

The causes of the dramatic rise in military spending in the post-war era have been the subject of much political and academic controversy. No extant formulation seems to provide a compelling explanation of the dynamics involved in the levels of, and rates of change in, such spending. In light of this, the authors develop a new model, based mainly on a political-business cycle argument, to account for these dynamics. The basic proposition in this model is that variations in national defense spending arise from political considerations which are related to real and desired conditions within the national economy. Applying this model to the experience of the United States 1948-1976, the authors show that it has a large measure of empirical validity. If one removes the effects of war-time mobilization, it is clear that for the United States the principal driving forces in military spending dynamics were (1) the perceived utility of such spending in stabilizing aggregate demand, (2) the political or electoral value of the perceived economic effects arising out of such spending, and (3) the pressures of institutional-constituency demands.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/68958/2/10.1177_002234337901600202.pd

Modernization and Its Discontents

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/67022/2/10.1177_000276427702100208.pd