Pax Bellona

New RAND report: Security, At What Cost? Quantifying people's trade-offs across liberty, privacy and security

2010-01-14T15:45:00.001-05:00

How much are people willing to endure in the name of "security"? Interestingly, the report is from RAND Europe:

http://www.rand.org/pubs/technical_reports/TR664/index.html

NSF, Coburn, Political Science

2009-10-07T19:27:00.005-04:00

I just now received an alarmed email from a colleague, although if I had read my blogs today, I would have seen it earlier. Apparently Senator Coburn of Oklahoma wants to put an end to NSF funding of political "science" (his quotes, not mine).

Coburn's position statement can be found here (PDF), and it is an interesting read. He states, "NSF spent $91.3 million over the last 10 years on political 'science.'" Unlike Coburn, I am a little shocked, though not surprised, that the figure is so low. There are an awful lot of political scientists, and political science departments in every college and university nationwide. This is a relatively tiny sum to fund the research of many people.

If I studied American politics (disclaimer: I know very little about AP) I would wonder how often Congress attempts to cut funding to the scientific analysis of the political process. It seems counterintuitive to me, since projects like the ANES (which Coburn definitely does not like) produce scientifically valid descriptions of voter behavior with practical application for politicians of any party. Just today, I attended a talk at ISR where Adam Levine presented compelling evidence that reminding voters about their economic woes is not a good way to garner campaign donations. Why wouldn't Senator Coburn want to use this information?

I came to two conclusions from reading the Senator's position statement. First, if the purpose of the NSF is to advance science, then one would expect that the use of scientific methods as applied to any question about which the public is interested to be encouraged. This seems to be the direction that political science is heading, and the examples Coburn cites as problems, such as the data produced by ANES, are actually the best examples of useful political science "products."

Second, I still feel strongly that political science must be policy relevant (and encourage policy relevance through publication and hiring standards) in order to justify an expectation of substantial public support. I am heartened in this respect by the most recent issue of APSR: "Gay Rights in the States", "Myopic Voters and Natural Disaster Policy" and "Partisanship and Economic Behavior" are all rigorous, scientific and interesting articles that, with a little non-scientific political savvy, could be applied to improve the standards of American government. The discipline still needs to make the first move, however, and translate this important research into easy to use formats that poeple in government can actually utilize. Barring that, there are plenty of competing institutions eager to put less rigorous research into the hands of policymakers.

Senator Coburn refers repeatedly to the benefits that come from "real" science funded by the NSF, such as "robotics to help individuals with severe disabilities." If political scientists wish to continue to depend on funding which is under the control of representative politicians, we would be wise to listen to their complaints. I am not suggesting that the discipline produce the next generation of yes-men paid consultants, only that we listen and respond to public concerns. If we want to stay true to "pure" scientific inquiry without concern for (applied policy) outcomes and applications, we should expect to see a future with federal funding on the order of the NEH budget (approximately $144 million) instead of the NSF budget (approximately $6.5 billion.)

New RAND Monograph via JIOX: Social Science for Counterterrorism. Putting the Pieces Together

2009-06-09T08:49:00.003-04:00

JIOX has posted the latest RAND monograph prepared for NDRI and edited by Paul K. Davis and Kim Cragin. I am currently in Germany preparing for a conference, so unfortunately I don't have time to read or summarize it, but Chapter 11 "Social Science for Counterterrorism: Putting the Pieces Together" looks particularly promising.

I look forward to reading reactions.

UNOSAT Spatial Analysis of Somali Pirate Activity in 2009

2009-05-09T05:24:00.002-04:00

I have been trying my best to avoid the pirate topic, but cool graphics get me every time. Check out a short but very interesting time series of pirate attack graphics recently released by UNOSAT:

Academics v. Policymakers Part II

2009-04-13T16:09:00.008-04:00

Joseph Nye, "Scholars on the Sidelines," Washington Post

Mark C. Taylor, "End the University as We Know It," New York Times

Recently, I had coffee with a former boss of mine, an Army Brigadier General, where we discussed one of my favorite topics: the gap between academia and policymaking. We discussed a professor's recent complaint about why the government does not use the excellent work produced by academics, and I shared a couple of really good academic articles on counterinsurgency. The day after that meeting, the Nye piece was published, sparking comment by a number of academic bloggers, including Stephen Walt, Peter Howard, and Henry Farrell, among others. Today, religion professor Mark C. Taylor added another log to the fire, focusing on the problems of graduate academia generally and providing concrete solutions.

Nye makes a compelling case for the academic discipline of political science, specifically international relations, to link its work to the real world needs of politicians and policymakers, stating that, "of the 25 scholars rated as producing the most interesting scholarship during the past five years, only three had ever held policy positions (two in the U.S. government and one in the United Nations)." Academics are insular. There may be a good reason for this, as in retaining the premise of scientific objectivity. This is the same justification for the severe market distortion that is the tenure institution. But, over the long run, most markets self-correct. Whether or not academic IR is preparing for this is a matter of debate.

I cannot fully agree with Nye's assessment that, "The fault for this growing gap lies not with the government but with the academics." Academics should be faulted not for producing complex, theoretical, high-level scholarship but rather with failing in the simple task of translation for a policy audience. As I commented on Drew Conway's blog in March, "academics would need to condense [their work] into 20 bulleted PowerPoint slides and shop it around in personal meetings with relevant organizations ... But it is fruitless to wish that policymakers would make the effort to find and use these self-evidently relevant articles on their own when academia purposefully keeps itself at such a distance from their needs."

At the same time, government has many organizations of varying quality that it is willing to pay to carry out its thinking and policy implementation functions. Consultants and think tanks have no problem presenting information in a format (read: not a densely-worded journal article) that time-pressed policymakers can quickly understand and, more importantly, use. By the time an academic's brilliant idea and thoroughly researched, well-written paper is actually published, government has often moved on to another issue. Government is not blame-free, although their choice to take the easier path should not surprise anyone, especially academics.

Does this explain why the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship pre-doctoral program recently granted over 300 awards to engineering students, but only four to political science students? Engineering produces tangible products that can be readily used by government and the military. I do not know firsthand, but I wonder if the discipline rewards students and faculty for producing such output. Clearly, the market rewards engineers who develop useful products, academia be damned. If the purpose of NSF funding, therefore, is to encourage the development of usable and socially relevant research, it seems academic IR is running itself into the ground.

As one of my professors pointed out, however, political science is not necessarily doomed because it does not produce commercially market ready products. His example was Michigan and Stanford's American National Election Studies (ANES), which receives NSF funding and has a ready market of politicians eager to decipher its scientifically rigorous results. Taylor suggests abolishing academic departments and creating interdisciplinary and temporally relevant "problem-focused programs," addressing the problems of water, or terrorism, or crystal meth. Why couldn't international relations, of all fields, take the lead on creating such a center across universities? Many of the leading academics in this subfield already know each other, and in fact are running journals, departments and conferences, refereeing articles, and making job placement and tenure decisions. This relatively small group seems to have the most potential leverage to make these kinds of changes.

At the end, it comes down to incentives and objectives. Academia gets the output it rationally expects from a system that rewards scholars, particularly graduate students and new faculty seeking tenure for producing unbiased, obscure, non-policy-relevant work. It should therefore expect the kind of public backlash and low levels of government funding that will eventually result in a market correction. To this end, I fully agree with Walt's comment:

"Scholars naturally respond to incentives, and the incentive structure today discourages . . .a concern with policy relevance. But the norms that establish these professional incentives are not divinely ordained; they are collectively determined by the members of the discipline itself. The scholarly community gets to decide what it values, and there is no reason why policy relevance cannot be elevated in our collective estimation, along with the traditional criteria of creativity, rigor, and empirical validity."

The BBDM Talk on Iran

2009-04-11T13:09:00.003-04:00

Intro to game theory and how Bruce Bueno de Mesquita uses it to predict the future. Very non-technical, but TED Talks are always interesting as they bring scientific ideas to a broder audience.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/bruce_bueno_de_mesquita_predicts_iran_s_future.html

2009 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Results

2009-04-10T10:05:00.005-04:00

Some preliminary results and the full list of winners. Congratulations!

China’s Military Strategy in the Context of Globalization

2009-04-05T23:35:00.001-04:00

China has become one of the world’s foremost proponents of globalization, embracing the free trade that has allowed it to develop rapidly. China, whose GDP has grown from $256 billion in 1984 to $10.17 trillion today, shares common economic interests with almost every nation. In his 1984 book, After Hegemony, Robert Keohane posited that just this type of system of economic “complex interdependence” would displace realist theoretical assumptions of reliance on military force as the required component for state security and continued survival.

Yet, China has concurrently been expanding its military capabilities at a rapid pace. Although the number of personnel in the PRC has declined since the 1980s (from about 4 million to a current 2.8 million, De Rouen and Heo eds. 2005. Defense and Security: A Compendium of National Armed Forces and Security Policies: Volume I. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO), the investment in new technology has dramatically increased, under the doctrine of preparing to fight an “informationized” or “high technology local war.” (Cliff et. al. 2007, Entering the Dragon’s Lair: Chinese Antiaccess Strategies and Their Implications for the United States. Santa Monica: RAND Corporation)

From both a theoretical and practical standpoint, this expansion begs the question of which influence would dominate in a crisis – the stabilizing power of economic interdependence, as posited by Keohane, or the need for military dominance in the interest of self-protection, as the realists propose. China is sending mixed signals that are difficult for policymakers in other countries to interpret. On the one hand, China has initiated the development of numerous economic trade agreements, both with regional neighbors and trade partners worldwide, which have resulted in economic linkages that would be economically detrimental if broken. On the other hand, China’s unexpected January 2007 anti-satellite missile test was a potentially destabilizing military signal. China’s lack of strategic military agreements with the United States (Shi 2008, “U.S. Power, China’s Rise, and World Order,” Journal of Renmin University of China, 3:1) prompt suspicion that China may be not only ready but willing to use force in a confrontation, most likely over a regional issue. The purpose of this analysis is to explore this interaction from both the theoretical and strategic perspectives.

Keohane, China and the Role of Globalization

A major proposition of Keohane’s work on international relations is that states interact rationally with each other in an iterative fashion. Thus, states seek cooperation because current actions will have a direct effect on the state of future relations, also known formally as “reputation.” Regional trade agreements such as those initiated by China serve to provide an institutional framework for securing China’s reputation with its selected partners over time. This is reinforced by the actual material benefits that flow to the private sector, which in turn exerts pressure on the respective governments to maintain the status quo necessary to ensure continued material benefits. Overholt (2005 “China and Globalization,” Testimony presented to the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, May 19, 2005) states, “China’s globalization successes are profoundly influencing its neighbors. India has learned from China the advantages of a more open economy. Asians schooled in antipathy to foreign government investment and Latin Americans with protectionist traditions are going to have to be more open to foreign investment and less dependent on loans in order to compete with China. This will transform third world strategies of development and create broader global opportunities.” China has therefore not only developed a positive international reputation due to its continued active involvement in the global economic arena, it has further augmented the system of global economic trade in such a way that increases benefits to all involved.

At the same time, the United States and the European Union seek to enhance globalization and economic development through their own institutions such as the IMF and WTO. Keohane’s book, premised on the theory that state cooperation will persist after the collapse of the former hegemonic dominance of the Soviet Union and the United States, thus proposed a refined definition of hegemony is a situation where “’one state is powerful enough to maintain the essential rules governing interstate relations, and is willing to do so.’” As the relative power of the United States and the European Union, and their western institutions, declines relative to China, the question arises if China, as a rising hegemon, is both powerful enough and willing to maintain the rules of the cooperative economic system. China is certainly willing. The question of power in this context gives rise to the next discussion of China’s development and use of military power in the context of globalization.

Military Doctrine and Capabilities, and a Trigger to War

For many years, the Chinese military was preoccupied with the possibility of war on the mainland and planned strategically for such an event by placing its major defense industries in the interior (DeRouen and Heo 2005) and developing military plans based on this premise (Cliff 2008). At the time, this was not unjustified, as until the collapse of the Soviet Union, the major threat came from their extensive shared border in the West. When that threat abated, however, the Chinese military was slow to change its traditional doctrine. The very public use of high technology power by the United States military in 1991 was a catalyst for change that apparently altered the goals of military commanders. According to DeRouen and Heo (2005), “After the Gulf War of 1991, China became more aware of the technology gap and began to modernize its military forces by such means as cutting the military’s size, increasing R&D inputs, and procuring modern weapons and technologies from abroad.” According to some of the most recent work on Chinese military doctrine (Cliff 2007), the use of high technology equipment in both weapons and command and control systems is now a high priority for the military.

The January 2007 anti-satellite missile test and the recent successful spacecraft launch have been clear public signals that China has developed its technological military capabilities, although both the United States and China acknowledge that these remain far behind those of the United States (Cliff 2007). The question is how these new technologies could be deployed, or more importantly, why?

Although military planners by necessity must prepare for every possible type of conflict, policymakers in both China and the United States, given limited resources, must focus on the most likely. Here, Taiwan is a clear point of potential military conflict for both countries. While the status quo remains in support of the “One China” policy (notably, with the most recent elections in Taiwan indicating a move towards a more moderate stance), the United States is still bound by its obligations under the Taiwan Relations Act. It is not clear what level of Taiwanese declaration or Chinese military action would trigger United States involvement, but any military action would not only be destabilizing, but also trigger a cascading set of tactical reactions on both sides.

With the Chinese military operating at a technological disadvantage vis a vis the United States, they must resort to other tactics in the event of overt military conflict. (Cliff 2007) One of these is what military planners call “antiaccess strategies,” specifically, limiting the ability of an opponent to access resources in the geographic area of conflict. In this respect, China has a substantial geographic advantage over the United States, which is reliant on forward support bases in the territory of allies such as Korea and Japan. Even with a technological disadvantage, China has the ability to limit United States access to these critical facilities, which would even the playing field in the event of military conflict. Despite being impressed with US technological superiority during the 1991 Gulf War, Cliff (2007) indicates that Chinese military planners believe that the over-reliance on information technology is a weakness of the United States.

The Chinese are not alone in this belief, as the United States military has its own critics, some of whom are former high-level commanders. (Naylor 2002 "War Games Rigged? General Says Millennium Challenge 02 ‘Was almost Entirely Scripted,’" Army Times, 16) The possibility of over-reliance on technology was illustrated dramatically in the first large-scale exercise of the Transformation doctrine, Millennium Challenge 02. According to Army Times, “Gen. William ‘Buck’ Kernan, head of Joint Forces Command, told Pentagon reporters on July 18 that Millennium Challenge was nothing less than ‘the key to military transformation.’” Yet the exercises’ Red Team, led by retired Marine Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper, was able to inflict substantial damage to the Blue Team using methods (such as messaging via motorcycle courier instead of cell phone) that simply skirted the military’s known dependence on technology. In part as a result of the damage inflicted by the Red Team, the exercise was re-started and re-run, resulting in Van Riper’s resignation from the exercise. He claimed that the focus on technological innovation and superiority does not adequately prepare fighting forces for asymmetric tactics.

The Cascading Effect of Military Conflict and Balancing Effect of Economic Cooperation

Knowing this, if the Chinese military were to deploy antiaccess strategies, they would necessarily involve countries that have military alliances with the United States and economic alliances with China. Japan, Korea and the Philippines are all countries that would find themselves in the middle of such a conflict between military and economic interests. Thus, this tension already exists in the international relations strategies of these nations. A military conflict between the United States and China would be highly destabilizing to the entire region, both politically and economically.

A critical question for China then, is how to balance its military and economic interests. Under Keohane’s economic cooperation theory, China should be highly concerned about its reputation in iterative interactions with its neighbors. Note that in Keohane’s conception, reputation is not simply an external perception but is also fundamentally tied to rational economic self-interest. Economic destabilization of the region for any reason could seriously harm China’s plans for economic growth and future development. Whether or not economic concerns are strong enough to have a balancing effect against theses military contingencies should be a question of the utmost priority for Chinese policymakers.

Research Proposal Shorts IV: Equities Markets and War

2009-03-28T12:14:00.000-04:00

Note: Fourth in an occasional series of short research proposals on various topics in international relations.

Fearon (1995, "Rationalist Explanations for War," International Organization 49:379-414) presents a number of interesting arguments to support the rationalist explanation for why state leaders initiate wars. While providing evidence from formal modeling and, to a lesser extent, case studies, he provides a number of logically consistent reasons for this phenomenon. Nonetheless, further information can likely be gleaned from empirical analyses of available data.

The component of interest for this proposed research is the method of signaling. Here, the proposal departs from the rational unitary actor model in proposing that military signaling can also be accomplished through by observing the actions of non-state actors, specifically, the activities of equities markets. In their most elemental sense, equities markets serve as a purveyor of almost perfect information because they force participants to reveal their true preferences for prices of the equities being traded. Recently, this phenomenon has been expanded to the more general concept of markets which trade, not equities, but information which similarly reveals the hidden information of participants.

Observations of the predictive power of information markets has been documented in popular works such as The Wisdom of Crowds (Surowiecki 2004) and is only recently entering the realm of academic literature through journals such as the Journal of Prediction Markets, which began in 2007. Economists such as Manski (2005, "Interpreting the Predictions of Prediction Markets. NBER Working Paper No. W10359) and Gjerstad (2004, "Market Dynamics in Edgeworth Exchange," Eller College Working Paper No. 04-03) have analyzed the mechanisms at work in information markets and have found mixed results. Nonetheless, the relative newness of this field makes it ripe for application to theoretical explanations for war.

This research proposes combining readily available stock market data with data from the Inter- and Extra-State War data available from the Correlates of War project. Although market data is available for trading floors worldwide, this research will focus only on US equities markets, due to their size and breadth of trade. The New York Stock Exchange, for example, is the world’s largest stock exchange in the world by dollar volume. Both the Inter- and Extra-State War data are chosen because they track wars along multiple dimensions of interest, including not only the duration and intensity of war, but also the presence of outside intervention and non-state actors.

The hypothesis of this proposed research is that stock markets will exhibit fluctuations in equities with interests, such as natural resource pipelines or major manufacturing facilities, in the regions or states which eventually go to war. Stock market data would therefore be lagged by a certain time period of six months against Correlates of War data. Theory does not suggest whether the sign would be positive or negative, as equities traders could either fear future losses or anticipate gains from conflict. Nonetheless, the vehicle of equities markets could serve as another signal for potential conflict for states to consider in their expected value calculations.

Research Proposal Shorts III: Public and Private Goods Provision in Ethan Bueno de Mesquita's model of Government Concessions to Terrorists

2009-03-23T10:16:00.000-04:00

Note: Third in an occasional series of short research proposals on various topics in international relations.

In his 2005 article, “Conciliation, Counterterrorism, and Patterns of Terrorist Violence,” (International Organization 59,1:145-176) Ethan Bueno de Mesquita develops a model that explains why government concessions increase militancy of terrorist groups, based on a premise of group homogeneity. Early in the model (149) he discusses the nature of concessions offered to terrorist groups, assigning some portion of (β∈ (0,1)) to represent the public goods associated with the concession portion of payoffs to terrorists generally, where (1- β) represents the private goods associated with concessions to the accepting moderates.

However, Bueno de Mesquita does not elaborate on this division of public and private goods associated with concessions anywhere else in his model, simply collapsing them into the β term in later equations describing payoffs to violence, level of violence and deal acceptance (151, 154, 159.) This division of goods is not elaborated upon any further in this paper.

However, it may be important to consider the implications of this division of public and private goods in order to test the model. This proposal seeks to explore the implications of making these divisions more explicit throughout the stages of the model and test this modification on the case used in the paper.

If the benefit of government concessions is unequal between moderate and extremist groups, they could be expected to respond differently in their actions. After a concession, where moderate groups receive a combination of public and private goods, extremist groups receive only public goods. However, economic theory suggests that government provision of public goods creates multiple market failures, specifically the free-rider problem, which may in turn undermine the “effectiveness” of those goods. In this model, when the government provides concessions such as political autonomy (the example given on p. 149) to moderate factions as a public good, this benefit also accrues to free-riding extremists. This exacerbates the problem of remaining extremists groups devoting more resources to terrorism, whether or not cooperative moderates choose to assist in counterterrorism activities.

Another potential public goods problem is suggested by the crowd-out hypothesis, where government provision of a public good, such as political autonomy to terrorist groups generally, offsets private contributions to that good. In this model, private contributions can be associated with moderating activities undertaken by non-government groups or within structure of the terrorist organization itself. A public good grant of political autonomy that applies to both moderate and extremist terrorist organizations can actually undermine this moderating process. This, too, may only make the remaining extremists even more extreme. The conditional distribution of concessions as private goods may alleviate this problem by removing the unearned benefit to extremists.

The implications of explicating the public goods problem presented here bolster Ethan Bueno de Mesquita’s conclusions about concessions increasing extremism and terrorist violence. This is testable by examining cases where concessions such as autonomy or other benefits were not distributed as public goods. One statistical test of the hypothesis for different results for public and private goods could be to examine cases, such as Malaysia’s response to the increasing threats from the KMM Kumpulan Militan Malaysia in early 2002, where concessions were explicitly conditional and made available to different factions of terrorist groups. A brief overview of this case appears to reinforce Ethan Bueno de Mesquita’s conclusions, as the Megawati government’s concessionist policy towards the group was followed by the Bali discotheque bombing in October of the same year. Other examples may be found in Nigeria (responses to the declining power Izala versus the strength of Islamic movement of Nigeria) and modern Iraq.

Summary of Geoffrey Blainey’s The Causes of War

2009-03-17T12:49:00.002-04:00

The Causes of War illuminates one of the central questions of international relations through an historical analysis of the origins of war and peace. Unlike previous authors who take as given some set of power and preferences that drive a nation to war, Blainey focuses on perception within the dyad of two states in the midst of “rivalry and tension.”

Like poker players in a high stakes game, how do these states assess not only their own hand, but also guess at that of their opponent? This is his main point: “Wars usually begin when two nations disagree on their relative strength, and wars usually cease when the fighting nations agree on their relative strength.” (p. 293)

The explanation of imbalance of power as a contributing factor to war is not new – in The History of the Peloponnesian War, the Athenians point out their clear military superiority to the Melians as they lay out their case– but the relative perception, and its potential for inaccuracy, is an important contribution. So, too, is the commitment problem illustrated by the Melian Dialogue. By Blainey’s account, had the Athenians (even erroneously) believed their chances of winning to be slim, peace, not war, may have been the result.

In his discussion on the causes of peace, Blainey finds that a decisive war victory is the only clear answer, debunking popular 19th century notions of mutual international understanding, and reinforcing realist traditions. To this end, Blainey notes that the causes of war and peace are the same.

What, therefore, are the roots of misperception between states facing the possibility of war? Assigning the decision-making process to the state leader, Blainey focuses on seven factors related to assessments of internal strength (military power, public discord, nationalism, economic strength), external factors (world and ally reactions), and personal factors (unrealistic exuberance before war as with WWI, personal characteristics.) Any of these is subject to miscalculation, and when leaders attempt to calculate these factors for potential opponents, misperception is more likely.

Since opponents are unwilling to share private information before war, it can only be revealed through the process of fighting. In the end, accurate perception of relative strength provides the basis for peace.

Research Proposal Shorts II: Preference Clustering in Decentralized Cooperation Models

2009-03-16T01:36:00.000-04:00

Note: Second in an occasional series of short research proposals on various topics in international relations.

Decentralized cooperation models, in the process of stylizing state interactions, appear to treat states approaching a negotiation as randomly distributed along dimensions of state preferences. However, the real world provides testable examples of states that may exhibit patterns of preference clustering, by geography, religion, or other extra-legal norms that could be expected to reduce some of the informational problems of cooperation. The states of the European Union share a set of norms that have helped facilitate “deep cooperation” (Downs et. al. 1996 "Is the Good News about Compliance Good News about Cooperation?," International Organization 50:379-406) agreements. Similarly, former colonies and their respective former colonial powers may share both legal standards and cultural norms that may provide the basis for deeper cooperation through greater prior certainty.

However, in the issue area of foreign aid, Abbott and Snidal (1998, “Why States Act Through Formal International Organizations,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 42:3-32) claim that, “States may prefer development assistance from an independent financial institution over direct aid from another state, especially a former colonial power or one seeking political influence.” This claim appears to be related to the functionalist argument elucidated by Simmons and Martin (2002, “International Organizations and Institutions,” pp. 192-211 in Carlsnaes et. al., Handbook of International Relations.) that delegation to an international institution can be beneficial if domestic institutions pose a barrier to realization of benefits by transferring policymaking to an international level.

The assumption that former colonies may prefer to reject support from former colonizers is empirically testable. If Abbott and Snidal’s claim is true, an analysis of foreign aid to former colonial countries should be expected to reflect a preference away from direct aid from a former colonizer and towards aid from IFIs. For example, publicly available data from the Philippines, a United States colony from 1935-1946, could be used to compare aid received from USAID versus IFIs such as the IMF and World Bank. An analysis across many more former colonies and colonial powers would, of course, be necessary. Two caveats to this type of test should be noted. First, foreign aid received may not fully reflect state preferences, but rather exogenous factors such as the availability of funds from the donor country. Second, a careful distinction should be made between direct assistance and loans, as states may respond differently to the conditions attached to each.

Decentralized cooperation models could also be specialized to sharpen the analysis of clarity of information between former colonies and former colonial powers. Shared history may not provide the only basis for this solution to the information problem. Since many former colonies gained sovereignty through colonial wars, the information collected by both parties through battle, negotiation and settlement may also serve to clarify information in future negotiations. Building on Axelrod and Keohane’s (1985, “Achieving Cooperation Under Anarchy,” World Politics 38:226-54) conception of a shadow of the future, which promotes long-term cooperation in iterated interactions, the postcolonial relationship can be characterized as creating a “shadow of the past,” where greater cooperation comes not from iterated future threats but from multiple levels of intertwined past experience.

The concept can be further expanded to sanctioning and monitoring models. If former colonies and former colonial powers in fact share certain norms, this might modify the punishment strategies available both actors. For example, the former colony may punish defection more harshly (retribution) or be unable to punish at all, while the former colonial powers may be restricted in range or severity punishments due to domestic audiences of immigrants or international norms (in the sense conveyed by Chayes and Chayes 1993, “On Compliance,” International Organization 47:175-206) which discourage a re-enactment of the previous power imbalance.

More generally, if the relationship between colonial and post-colonial states alleviates the information problem in negotiations, both parties would be expected to have lower transaction costs and therefore be more likely to enter cooperative agreements instead of resorting to IFIs or other IOs, another empirically testable supposition hinted at by this motivating area of research.

Research Proposal Shorts I: Could POW Treaties Encourage Interstate War?

2009-03-14T08:53:00.001-04:00

Note: First in an occasional series of short research proposals on various topics in international relations.

Morrow (2001, “The Institutional Features of the Prisoners of War Treaties,” International Organization, 55:971-91), in examining the strategic problems addressed by Prisoner of War (POW) treaties, discusses the corollary effects of entrance into such jus in bello treaties which standardize practices for the treatment of POWs. Although the importance of a “single standard of conduct” as a screening mechanism is discussed, some further implications of the signing of such treaties are not fully explored.

One empirically testable implication involves the influence of these treaties on the propensity of states to go to war. Specifically, an empirical study might pose the question: Within dyadic conflict pairs, is there a greater propensity for war initiation between treaty signatories than from signatories to non- signatories? Morrow indicates that, “Joint membership by warring parties has been a strong signal that both parties will generally honor their obligations under the treaties.” One potential hypothesis, therefore, is that treaty signatories would ex ante be more likely to initiate war with other treaty signatories than with non- signatories, as the reduction in the information problem helps to signal that any captured “home-country” combatants are more likely to be treated in a humane fashion as per the POW treaties agreed to by both sides. This hypothesis addresses both Morrow’s rational design problem of uncertainty about behavior as well as the related but discrete argument about the ability of states to raise a mass army. This hypothesis is interesting as it proposes the unexpected idea that signatories to treaties concerning humane behavior would nonetheless initiate necessarily brutal acts of war.

The Correlates of War (COW) dataset, which uses dyadic comparisons for analysis, is a logical base for empirical testing. Specifically, a new variable could be added to this dataset indicating whether the target and initiator states were signatories to a POW treaty at the time of war initiation. Statistical testing could highlight whether the existence of such treaties was historically correlated with a propensity for war. Of course, states have many more important reasons to go to war. A multivariate regression analysis holding these other independent variables constant may help isolate the effects of POW treaty status on initiation behaviors. One challenge posed by this approach is that almost all UN Nations are signatories to the 1949 “Convention (IV) relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War,” the current standard for POW treatment.

An historical analysis along multiple dimensions may help to illuminate the issue with existing data. First, in addition to the current treaty, the proposed variable added to the COW dataset would consider the Geneva and Hague Conventions of 1864, 1906, and 1929, reflecting in event study analyses the signatories, non-signatories, and their propensities for war initiation at those discrete time intervals.

Second, International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) data specifies the dates of signature, ratification, and whether states added their own statements reservation or declaration. With regards to the current Conventions, while some states (France, Lebanon, Uruguay and many others) signed the treaty almost immediately, others waited much longer. The Middle East countries of Saudi Arabia, Oman and Qatar, for example, did not sign until the mid-1970s. An additional empirical question of interest would examine propensity for war in the intervening time periods until the initiator state became a Convention signatory. Of more interest, although beyond the scope of this proposal, is why these states chose to wait.

Potential problems with this analysis include difficulty in quantifying the marginal effect of the presence of the POW treaty on war initiation due to omitted variable bias, the exclusion of analyses of war initiation between two non-signatories, the absence of analyses of POW agreements outside the Geneva and Hague Conventions, and the potentially differentiating impacts of the specific requirements in the language of each Convention.

Money Can't Buy Love: Perceptions of US Support for Democracy in the Muslim World

2009-03-13T11:48:00.005-04:00

I have Tufte on my mind today...

The following chart from Sociological Images is apparently trying to tell a (hardly surprising) story that people in the Muslim world are somewhat skeptical of claims that the US seeks to promote democracy throughout the world. I think this story might be somewhat more compelling, however, if was laid out in a more thoughtful way, for example largest to smallest percentages believing in unconditional support (Indonesia to Turkey), conditional support (Azerbaijan to Pakistan) or opposition (Jordan to Pakistan/Azerbaijan).

Some quick correlations from The Greenbook which may hint at the conditional figures above:

Until about 2004, USAID assistance to Indonesia was around $100 million per year, and Azerbaijan was around $50 million. Assistance to Jordan was around $200 million per year, spiking sixfold in 2003 and leveling out at around $400 million. Despite substantially more aid, Jordanians have lower perceptions of conditional support for democracy than either Indonesia or Azerbaijan and much higher perceptions of US opposition to democracy in the Muslim world.

This data is of course an extremely basic cut at causality, but what is the take away? If this were an investment portfolio, I would say Indonesia is the significantly better investment.

Summary of A.F.K. Organski's World Politics

2009-03-10T16:56:00.002-04:00

As a new entrant to the field of international relations (my background is in economics and public policy), I really enjoy the process of reading old classics in the field with new eyes. Many of my colleagues seem to have read these books as undergraduates, but for me they are novel and quite interesting. I'll post a few of my summaries here over the course of the next few weeks, starting with Michigan's very own.

A.F.K. Organski's World Politics (1958) fills in the conceptual gaps left by major works of international relations theory in preceding years by providing more precise definitions of national goals, interests, and power. National goals, unique to industrialized nations, are dynamic and defined broadly as “power, wealth, cultural welfare, and peace.” They can be objective or relative (i.e. competitive) in nature. He is careful to note that universalist humanitarian goals, including peace, are in fact a facet of national goals, even when a state, such as Britain, fully believes they are acting in the best interests of humanity. In contrast to other goals, however, idealistic appeals make humanitarian and peace goals easier to achieve by enlisting the cooperation of other states. Organski defines national power as the ability to influence other states to the benefit of ones own state, and it is therefore necessarily relative. Like earlier authors such as Carr and Waltz, Organski agrees that natural determinants of power, such as geography, natural resources, and especially population, are important in conjunction with economic and political development, but emphasizes the importance of their relative and dynamic nature. For this reason, Organski is highly critical of the balance of power theory, specifically its core assumption that all states are interested in maximizing power and will do so through war, alliances and territorial expansion. Instead, he points out that, at the time of writing, the US was the dominant power, and the majority of history was marked by the dominance of one state. This is the foundation for probably his most influential theory. Under power transition theory, one state retains dominance over other powerful and weak states, and power shifts through industrialization, which changes the relative pace of internal development and amplifies the role of public opinion to bind states to international institutions. Peace or war arise from relative levels of satisfaction with the status quo and inherent state power to incite change. Given this, cooperation as evidenced in international organizations reflects exogenous distributions of power.

Intel in Academic Discourse

2009-02-27T04:16:00.000-05:00

State intelligence is important because it influences relative power and the outcomes of interstate asymmetric information conflicts. However, it presents a unique theoretical and empirical problem for international security scholars. While indisputably a critical component of state power, the role of intelligence collection, analysis and subsequent policy implementation has received light treatment in critical scholarship. As Robert Jervis noted in 1987 (“Intelligence and Foreign Policy: A Review Essay.” International Security 11:141-161) “For all its glamour, intelligence has also been a stepchild to academics. In a way, this is odd: much of social science consists of analyzing other countries and so parallels the general mission of intelligence organizations… But academic neglect there has been, in large part because of the difficulty of gathering reliable information.”

The widely perceived failure of the United States intelligence community before 9/11 and Iraq has prompted sharp rebuke from policymakers, important changes to national laws and substantive self-reflection inside its component bureaucratic structures. Yet the academic community of international security scholars, which should be concerned with the causal mechanisms that led to these perceived failures, has largely remained silent. This is surprising since the difficulties in collecting classified data, which would have stymied quantitative analysis in the past, have become somewhat less central to analysis with the advent of formal models as an important tool of theoretical development and refinement in the field. Eleven years after Jervis’ comment, the topic of intelligence as a defensive state function has become a more important question with a greater paucity of answers.

One of my favorite quotations that explains the reasons for the centrality of intelligence comes from former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Although it is often held up as a joke of some sort, I think it actually makes the point somewhat succinctly:

“Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”
- Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing

This speaks directly to empirical models, where the dependent variable can be difficult to construct for multiple reasons. First, if the purpose of research is to measure effectiveness of intelligence as a state defensive measure, the effects of intelligence must be distinguished from those of counterintelligence, suggesting a fixed effects model. Second, the limits of the available data suggest that any model will suffer from an omitted variable problem which cannot be solved by differencing models. Perhaps most importantly, if the intelligence system is accurate in predicting and deflecting threats to state security, no outcome will be recorded, at least not publicly, tempting some researchers to sample on the dependent variable.

Unfortunately, in the place of rich sources of data, formal modeling, too, has not fully developed the concept of intelligence, although it lends itself to such an analysis through its purposive approach to information asymmetry. Logically, intelligence has the capability to clarify the signal of an opponent in an imperfect information game. For example, James D. Morrow’s (1994 "Modeling the Forms of International Cooperation," International Organization 48:387-423) examination of decentralized cooperation models with an informational problem could have different results with the introduction of intelligence and counterintelligence actions by states. With symmetry of intelligence capabilities and utilization, such actions could solve the informational problem for both sides by clarifying signals, increasing the probability of cooperation.

In the larger sense of institutionalized constraints on state behavior, the effective utilization of intelligence services may help states achieve their policy preferences outside of the norms of multilateral treaties and international institutions. Counterintelligence, however, could worsen this problem for offensive states, if, as Jennifer Sims (2008 "A Theory of Intelligence in International Politics," unpublished draft) claims, “Offensive counterintelligence doesn’t so much block the opponent’s operations as it distorts his thinking to the perpetrator’s advantage, whether or not the perpetrator’s own intelligence assets are at risk from the opposing service.”

In terms of scholarship and practitioners, one suspects (or hopes) that a tremendous amount of meta-analysis is being done in the field of intelligence by individuals who cannot publish their findings due to classification. At the same time, students and academics who are concerned with objectivity and maintaining a publication record are unlikely to agree to the conditions necessary to fully study the processes and effects of intelligence.

In the meantime, these are a few open sources that I refer to when necessary:
CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence
JIOX Intelligence Tradecraft and Analysis Blog
RAND Intelligence Policy Center

Digital Diplomacy? The State Department Engages the Public

2009-02-22T19:41:00.000-05:00

I am not quite sure what to make of this. According to this recent AFP article, Secretary Clinton is rapidly engaging the State Department in popular internet technologies, including a blog, a Flickr photostream, a YouTube channel, a Twitter feed, and a Facebook page. Of these, the Flickr photos make the most sense to me as they are excellent professional photographs of interesting locations.

It is tempting to write this off as popular propaganda until one considers that public diplomacy is, in fact, part of the mission of the State Department. The Secretary herself is quoted on the blog as saying, "There is no doubt in my mind that we have barely scratched the surface as to what we can use to communicate with people around the world." However, a brief perusal of these sites seem to me like their audience is less like that of Radio Free Europe and more targeted at the American public. This is fine, as President Obama promised greater transparency in his administration than President Bush. But it seems to me that this is public diplomacy for Americans, not for the world.

What would Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty "2.0" look like? In other words, what would a CIA-funded strategic propaganda campaign look like in the age of the Dirty Kuffar video? I recently read "Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy: The Human Development Sequence," by Ronald Inglehart and Christian Welzel, which might provide a clue. One of their main premises is that stable, liberal democracies arise from a combination of physical security through high levels of economic development and a social inclination towards values which support human autonomy and liberty. Although it is not discussed in the book, one can imagine that some of RFE/RL's success arose because it was broadcasting into a country of people who were in fact experiencing high (enough) levels of economic development under the Soviet Union. If Inglehart and Welzel's premise is correct, then a strategic cyber campaign to promote the values of liberty might make sense - those with access to the internet and computers are at some subsistence level where they might be persuadable.

Given the possibility of a strategic cyber campaign to influence world values, what specific technologies could be adopted? With established senior scholars such as Gary Becker and Stephen Walt blogging, this medium is considered positively staid by some. But what of the hot new technologies - YouTube, Twitter and Facebook - specifically? In fact, the US Army recently released a rather alarmist report on Twitter, theorizing as to how it could be used by terrorists (and, oddly, vegetarians) as an operational tool. Despite reading the Army report, I am still trying to understand how Twitter can be used in a productive fashion for my profession. I started a Twitter feed (which you can follow here), but the difficulty in finding the people I would like to hear from (academics and gradaute students in my field, international affairs reporters and the like) limits its usefulness at this point. YouTube is more or less a one-way communication medium much like RFE, so the technology would not seem to affect the content of the message. The interactive and clustering nature of Facebook makes it one place to find others who share the same interests, but it appears to be very interpersonal in nature, linking specific individuals to each other instead of to ideas.

In sum, it seems that the message remains of primary importance over the medium. Nonetheless, the constant development of new types of social media invite novel approaches to public diplomacy. Here are a few new technologies that I am watching, even if I am not actually using them professionally:

BlogTV - Allows users to create their own live streaming webcams
BitBomb - A text message reminder service that sends reminders to your cell phone
Sendible - Allows users to schedule email and text messages (such as for birthdays)
Doodle - An extremely simple scheduling/coordination program that requires no signup (I did use this to schedule my first year review with two busy professors - I was able to schedule and confirm in about two days, which I think is quite good)

Conflict Zone Screenshots: Bukavu, Congo

2009-02-22T10:30:00.001-05:00

Blogging IR Bloggers

2009-02-19T08:09:00.000-05:00

As a (really) new entrant to the field of international relations, I enjoy reading blogs by authors of the books and articles I read for class. For me, blog postings complement the arguments made in published work and often illuminate new applications of an authors' thesis when they comment on current events. Since even journal articles take a substantial amount of time to reach publication, blogging seems like a natural forum for working through ideas which are new or too limited in scope for a journal article.

So I was surprised today to read this post on Duck of Minerva indicating that academic blogging in the field of international relations has a somewhat controversial history. While clearly blogging is no replacement for the rigorous refinements associated with publication, it can potentially be a useful forum for the type of informal intellectual engagement which is a regular feature of academic conferences. Based on what I read, the best blogs are characterized less by breaking news chit-chat and more by thoughtful short essays extending specific arguments. Perhaps the stamp of legitimacy from publications such as Foreign Policy, which recently launched a collection of blogs from prominent IR academics and professionals under one banner, will help legitimize the limited but useful role academic blogs can play in the scholarly profession.

UK: The Counter-Terrorism Act of 2008 and a Free Press

2009-02-17T02:05:00.000-05:00

My own photo, taken while on vacation in London in 2006.

I just found this story, but it has apparently been getting a lot of attention in England. The press claims that this new law is a threat to journalistic integrity, potentially opening photojournalists to criminal conviction up to and including prison. Section 76 of the Counter-Terrorism Act of 2008 states, in part:

"(1) A person commits an offence who -
(a) elicits or attempts to elicit information about an individual who is or has been -
(i) a member of Her Majesty's forces, (ii) a member of any of the intelligence services, or (iii) a constable,which is of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism, or
(b) publishes or communicates any such information.
(2) It is a defence for a person charged with an offence under this section to prove that they had a reasonable excuse for their action."

As I read this, the charges center on "eliciting information" which might be useful to potential terrorists and publishing it. That seems very broad. One can imagine any number of things which constables know which might be useful to terrorists, such as directions to the British Museum. Note: this information may also be useful to tourists or people who are simply lost. Of course, you are certainly able to defend yourself by pointing out this information, once you are already charged with the crime.

This does seem like an overreach which will probably be tested in the courts very soon. These types of laws were proposed in the United States very soon after 9/11, and, almost as quickly, the point was made that tourists frequently take photos of major landmarks and government buildings. What is possibly of more interest is that much of London, for example, is already patrolled by thousands of CCTV cameras which are owned by the state. Although not mentioned in the article, I wonder if part of the concern is over implications of a government monopoly on images of police activity.

Conflict Zone Screenshots: Mogadishu, Somalia

2009-02-16T08:20:00.000-05:00

Grozny, Grand Rapids, and Google Earth: Conflict Zone Screenshots

2009-02-11T14:37:00.000-05:00

What exactly does war do to a city in ways that we can easily observe? Google Earth provides at least some insight by providing satellite images of conflict zones that are difficult if not impossible for scholars to visit. These remote photographs show not only the terrain and levels of development in different areas, but also hint at infrastructure damage potentially caused by war.

These are screenshots of Grozny, Russia, a city of approximately 200,000 residents which has been ravaged by war for most of the past decade.

For comparison, note this screenshot of Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA, a city of similar size.

A closer comparative view of Grozny and Grand Rapids, focusing on roads and infrastructure near the center of each city.

Finally, an even closer view utilizing Google's overmapping of user-submitted ground-level photographs in each city.

Although this is by no means a scientific approach to comparative analysis of cities within and outside of conflict zones, the tools available to anyone through Google Earth certainly suggest some interesting approaches. I have downloaded a few more screenshots of active conflict zones in Somalia, Congo and Iraq, which I will post over the course of the next week.

Mercenaries, Ghurkas and the Swiss Guard

2009-02-05T11:39:00.000-05:00

This article from Marginal Revolution is a very interesting look into the practical aspects of hiring mercenaries in modern times. Instead of Blackwater, however, the article focuses on the longstanding relationship between the British government and Nepalese Ghurkas, originally hired as mercenaries for the British colonial wars of the 19th century. The Ghurkas continue to perform military service for the British, including police forces in Brunei and Singapore, and are apparently well-compensated for doing so.

The post interested me for two reasons. First, according to the Geneva Conventions, Ghurkas are not technically mercenaries. This is, of course, convenient for the British who were instrumental in drafting the Conventions. A closer reading of the Conventions indicates that this is a very slippery technicality, as it relies on the fact that the Ghurkas are paid less than their British Army regular counterparts. According to the Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949:

"Art 47. Mercenaries
1. A mercenary shall not have the right to be a combatant or a prisoner of war.
2. A mercenary is any person who:
(a) is specially recruited locally or abroad in order to fight in an armed conflict;
(b) does, in fact, take a direct part in the hostilities;
(c) is motivated to take part in the hostilities essentially by the desire for private gain and, in fact, is promised, by or on behalf of a Party to the conflict, material compensation substantially in excess of that promised or paid to combatants of similar ranks and functions in the armed forces of that Party;
(d) is neither a national of a Party to the conflict nor a resident of territory controlled by a Party to the conflict;
(e) is not a member of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict; and
(f) has not been sent by a State which is not a Party to the conflict on official duty as a member of its armed forces."

In all other ways, the Ghurkas would appear to fit the definition of mercenary.

Second, it reminded me of the ongoing global presence of unusual military forces (I hesitate to use the term "irregular" as it is generally associated with guerrilla units engaged in asymmetric conflict). A recent discussion with a colleague centered around the Swiss Guard, a branch of the Swiss military who guard not Switzerland but The Vatican, as they have since the 15th century. They, too, appear to be mercenaries in the general if not the technical sense, as they are more like professional bodyguards than combat troops. Nonetheless, they do have professional military training, including on the use of assault rifles. To me, one of the most interesting things about this unit are their colorful uniforms, which are almost Disney-esque in their color and style.

Photo by roblisameehan

Although I have heard of journalistic and public concern about the role of Blackwater in the recent US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I have not yet seen positivist questions about their role in modern warfare tackled by social scientists. Instead, here is a sampling of several recent articles on mercenaries from the field of international law:

Scoville (2006) "Toward an Accountability-Based Definition of Mercenary"

Chesterman and Lenhardt (2007) "From Mercenaries to Market: The Rise and Regulation of Private Military Companies"

Hoppe (2009) "Passing the Buck: State Responsibility for Private Military Companies"

PBS Documentary About Chechnya

2009-02-03T08:31:00.000-05:00

I just wrote a seminar paper about Chechnya and what should I find in my RSS reader the next day? Hat tip to War and Health for this excellent reference.

Video: Greetings from Grozny

About 1 hour running time, an outstanding introduction to the protracted conflict and insurgency in Chechnya.

My only criticism is that it has an apparently pro-Chechen bias. The atrocities of the Russian military against civilians were and are brutal and repressive, and their full extent will probably never be known. However, the Chechen insurgents did not limit their reprisals to attacks on the Russian army as shown in the documentary. They, too, targeted civilians in a series of mass hostage taking events, including hospitals in Kizlyar-Pervomayskoye and Budyonnovsk, a theater in Moscow, and an elementary school in Beslan, North Ossetia.

Whither Sub-States?

2009-02-03T06:50:00.000-05:00

Although my field is international relations, I am very interested in the topics of sub-states, units of government such as states, cities, and counties, and international borders. Although the realist unitary actor assumption has long been unpacked, the focus of scholarship in this area appears to rely primarily on analyzing the internal workings of a state in terms of appeals by various interest groups to the national level.

Yet, in most places, sub-state units of government retain significant autonomous agency, often explicit in national law. This is especially true in federations of formerly independent states, such as Germany. In the US, Constitutionally enshrined police powers are one mechanism by which states exercise agency independent of nation-state mandates. The 10th Amendment states, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Although periodically tested throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, key decisions such as Sligh v. Kirkwood (1915) reinforced the ability of sub-states to largely act as they see fit within the bounds of their own constitutions for the purposes of protecting the health, safety and welfare of their citizens, separate from the actions of the national government. As such, police power is the crucial legal mechanism which allows sub-states to act, even across international borders.

And they do. Long before the USA PATRIOT Act attempted to impose strict federal control over US borders, law enforcement and other public safety officials in border communities, such as Detroit-Windsor or Buffalo-Niagara, regularly cooperated across international lines, sharing intelligence and pooling resources. This trend continues in the post 9-11 era, as well.

What does this mean for international relations? From the standpoint of the discipline, existing literature on the influence of sub-states, in examining how variation between nation-states can be accounted for by internal factors, retains the nation-state as the dependent variable of analysis. Yet there are important cases of legitimate sub-state actors vested with the independent legal authority granted by police powers to respond to terrorist threats. Collapsing the variance in behavior among sub-states without statistical justification into the traditional nation-state paradigm can create imprecise and incomplete measurements of response to non-state terrorist actors, inference problems due to omitted variables, and a limiting generalized conception of state behavior in the dynamic world of stateless organizations, competing ideologies, and technological opponents.

There are further implications as well, which I will discuss in future posts. Beginning with a methodological justification, however, opens the door for developing a theory to account for this phenomenon.

Beslan

2009-01-11T22:28:00.000-05:00

My first academic article, co-authored with Brigadier General Michael C. McDaniel, has just been published. In the article entitled "The Beslan Hostage Crisis: A Case Study for Emergency Responders," General McDaniel and I seek to explain what happened in Beslan, North Ossetia in 2004 as a case study for school administrators, homeland security officials and emergency planners in the United States. It is our primary hope that this situation would never occur, but that practitioners should be prepared to consider the differences in response needed to this type of attack.

The Beslan school siege first caught my attention shortly after it occurred, specifically when I saw a rather disturbing photo of a Russian soldier carrying a wounded child on the cover of Jane's Intelligence Review. The photo was extremely graphic and shocking. (More such photos can be found here.) As we mention in the article, school hostage situations are extremely rare. One can think of recent domestic events such as Columbine and Virginia Tech, each of which triggered re-evaluations of school safety procedures.

Beslan was remarkably different in a number of important ways. First, it was carried out by well-trained militia members instead of disturbed teenagers. While both had substantial weaponry, the training of the hostage takers, as well as their numbers (at least 30) gave them a huge advantage over both the hostages (who were mostly elementary school students and their parents) and the responders. Second, the hostage takers had spent much of the summer rigging up explosives inside the school. This reduced the amount of materiel they needed to carry into the school and again gave them an enormous tactical advantage in their ability to credibly carry out their threats. Finally, the response of the Russian special forces was poor and likely contributed to additional deaths. Spesnatz finally stormed the school on the third day, and the hostage takers carried out their threats and detonated their bombs in response. Among spesnatz' many failures was the lack of maintenance of a proper security perimeter, which, unbelievably, allowed some of the hostage takers to escape, and some of the furious armed parents to enter and get caught in the crossfire. Over 300 hostages were killed in the fracas that occurred on the final day.

As I was reviewing the proofs for this article, one of my classmates commented that a terrorist attack of this nature, targeting elementary school children in a multi-day siege, would trigger a no-holds-barred military response on the perpetrators possibly beyond the response to 9/11. I tend to agree. The Chechen conflict has created a situation so desperate that it is in some ways unique. The tactics of the Riyadus Salihiin Reconnaissance and Sabotage Battalion of Chechen Martyrs, which have included other mass hostage taking events, are novel in both scope and violent intensity. As I begin to learn formal modeling, I wonder if this situation is amenable to such methodology and, if so, where I would even begin.

McDaniel, M.C. & Ellis, C.M. (2009). The Beslan Hostage Crisis: A Case Study for Emergency Responders. Journal of Applied Security Research, 4: 1-15. (Accessible via InformaWorld)