US FOREIGN POLICY WEEK 2 ES. SAY

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Above: In democratic systems, voters can influence foreign policy by removing (or threatening to remove) leaders who make unpopular decisions. In 2014, thousands of protesters in London let their government know how they felt about renewing military engagement in Iraq.

4 Domestic Politics and War T HE PU Z Z L E War is costly for states, but what if there are actors within the state—such as

politicians, businesses, or the military—who see war as beneficial and who expect to pay few or none of its costs? Do states fight wars to satisfy influential domestic interests?

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On March 30, 1982, thousands of demonstrators marched in the streets of Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina, denouncing the country’s military government for its harsh economic policies and oppressive rule. Riot police used tear gas, rubber bullets, and water can- nons to break up the protests, and over 2,000 people were arrested. A week later, the streets of Buenos Aires filled with demonstrators once more, but this time the demonstrations voiced enthusiastic support for the mili- tary regime, as many of those who had earlier called for the government’s ouster now joined in the outpouring of praise. What changed in the course of a week? On April 2, Argentine naval forces invaded a small group of islands 300 miles off the Argentine coast that were the subject of a long-standing dispute between Argentina and Britain. Is there any connection between these events? Did the Argentine government provoke a war with Britain in order to revive its popularity with its people?

In 1954, representatives of the United Fruit Com- pany went to Washington, D.C., to voice concerns about the leader of Guatemala, a man named Jacobo Arbenz. Arbenz had pushed a land reform program that led to the seizure of almost 400,000 acres belonging to the

American company. Arbenz offered to compensate United Fruit to the tune of $1.2 million, the value of the land that the company claimed for tax purposes. The U.S. government insisted on behalf of United Fruit that the company be paid almost $16 million. In June of that year, rebels armed and trained by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) invaded Guatemala. Fearing a full-scale American invasion, parts of the Guatemalan military revolted, Arbenz resigned from office and fled the coun- try, and a pro-American leader was installed. The oper- ation cost the CIA just under $3 million.1 Did the United States overthrow a foreign leader to benefit a single com- pany at the expense of American taxpayers?

Our first look at the puzzle of war in Chapter 3 con- sidered this problem from the perspective of states. We assumed two states in conflict over a particular good, such as a piece of territory, and trying to arrive at a settlement that would avoid the costs of war. This kind of analysis is very common in international relations scholarship, where

1. U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, “CIA’s Role in the Overthrow of Arbenz,” Job 79-01025A, Box 153, Folder 3, www.state.gov/r/pa/ ho/frus/ike/guat/20181.htm (accessed 11/07/07).

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Thinking Analytically about Domestic Politics and War To answer the questions posed here, we must con- sider the different interests that domestic actors have in terms of war and peace. Simply identifying these interests is not enough, however, since not all actors within the state have equal say over foreign policy choices and hence not all interests are represented equally. Which domestic interests drive foreign policy choices depends on two factors: the strategic inter- actions between actors, which determine which indi- viduals and groups can exert effective influence and which cannot; and the institutions within the state, which determine how different actors have access to the decision-making process. Further, we have to recall that war is not the choice of a single state, but rather an outcome of the interaction between or among multiple states. Hence, as we consider domestic influences on foreign policy, we need to examine how these factors shape bargaining at the international level.

it is often referred to as the unitary state assumption: the treatment of states as coherent actors with a set of inter- ests that belong to the state. While this assumption can be a useful starting place for analysis, we must remember that states are legal and political constructs, not beings capable of taking actions. The choices and actions of states are made by people. Decisions about waging war are made by a state’s political leaders. Military plans are drawn up by military officials and carried out by soldiers.

Others within the country may also be able to influ- ence foreign policy choices, even if they have no direct say over them. There may be interest groups such as business or ethnic lobbies that influence decision mak- ing through their organizational and financial resources. In democratic systems, voters influence policy decisions because of their ability to remove leaders who make unpopular choices. Looking inside the state reveals new actors with varied interests, as well as variation across states in the political institutions that determine who affects decision making.

How does our understanding of the causes of war change when we look inside the state and consider the interests, interactions, and institutions within it? In Chapter 3, we argued that to understand why wars hap- pen, we need to understand why states at times cannot solve their conflicts peacefully, in a way that avoids the costs associated with fighting. This argument rested on the assumption that war is costly to those engaged in the interaction. These costs create a bargaining range, or a set of deals that both states prefer over fighting. The assumption that war is costly makes sense when we think of the state as a unitary actor, but once we look inside the state, it is clear that the costs and benefits of war are not distributed equally within the country.

Different actors within the state may place more or less value on the issue in dispute. A disputed territory might represent a source of livelihood, profit, or national pride to some, a tract of worthless land to others. The persecution of a minority group in a foreign country might arouse outrage in some, perhaps owing to ethnic attach- ment to the victims, while others greet it with indiffer- ence. Most Americans in 1954 had little or no stake in the land reform policies of the Guatemalan government; to the United Fruit Company, however, millions of dollars’ worth of land were at risk.

The costs of war are also distributed unevenly. Some people, such as those who might be drafted to serve in the military, can expect to pay very high and direct costs

from war. Others may see the costs of war in economic terms, if the need to finance the conflict leads to higher taxes. In contrast, there are some groups within a coun- try that may profit from war financially or professionally: arms manufacturers benefit from increased purchases of their products; for military officers, combat experi- ence leads to opportunities for medals and promotions; and for unpopular governments, such as the Argentine junta in 1982, war can build support domestically and solidify their hold on power.

These observations raise a number of questions: To what extent is war rooted not in the information and com- mitment problems discussed in Chapter 3, but rather in the interests of domestic actors who see personal benefit and little or no cost to war? Do wars serve the national inter- est or the narrow interests of office-hungry politicians, multinational companies, and/or a “military-industrial complex” composed of glory-seeking militaries and profit- seeking arms merchants? How do domestic institutions, such as democracy, influence a government’s decisions and the likelihood of war between states?

141Whose Interests Count in Matters of War and Peace?

Whose Interests Count in Matters of War and Peace? In the previous chapter, we observed that international disputes generally arise over territory, policies, and the characteristics of countries’ domestic regimes. Why these conflicts of interest arise in the first place is a complicated question with no single answer. One view, referred to in this book’s Introduction as realism, is that states’ interests are largely, if not entirely, dictated by external factors. States want to preserve their sovereignty and territorial integrity. To do so, they need power—primarily, military power. Hence, they seek opportunities to expand their own power and/or to diminish the power of those that threaten them. In this view, states’ interests are fixed, determined largely by their material resources and geo- graphic position, and they are not shaped by domestic factors.

Although this argument is sometimes useful in understanding sources of con- flict in the world, it is also overly simplistic. The interactions among states at the international level can be fundamentally affected by interactions among actors at the domestic level.2 Look inside any country, and there are a large number of indi- viduals and groups motivated by a variety of different interests: workers who want a job and secure income, companies that want to increase their profits, organizations that want to further a cause they care about or extend the reach of their ideology or religion, and politicians who want to wield political power for personal or ideologi- cal ends. The interaction of these interests within the context of domestic political institutions can fundamentally affect the interests that the national government pursues and the choices it makes when dealing with other countries.

National versus Particularistic Interests In considering the kinds of domestic interests that can influence foreign policy, it is useful to distinguish between general interests and narrow or particularistic inter- ests. A general interest is something that most, if not all, actors within the country share. For example, virtually everyone has an interest in the country’s physical secu- rity and economic well-being. If most people within the state share a common reli- gious or ethnic identity, then the state’s foreign policy interests likely reflect those identities. It makes sense to refer to such interests as national interests, or interests that are so widely shared that they can be attributed to the state as a whole. Narrow or particularistic interests are those held by only a relatively small number of actors within the country, such as a particular business, an ethnic minority group, or indi- viduals within government.

To make this distinction concrete, consider the case of oil. The United States has long professed, and acted on, an interest in ensuring a steady supply of oil,

2. Robert D. Putnam, “Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-Level Games,” International Organization 42 (1988): 427–60.

142 Chapter 4 Domestic Politics and War

particularly from the oil-rich countries in the Middle East. In 1943, President Franklin Roosevelt declared that the defense of Saudi Arabia was vital to the defense of the United States, and an American com- pany, the Arabian-American Oil Company (Aramco), became the main player in developing and exploiting the oil fields there. The commitment to defend Saudi Arabia was reinforced on a number of occasions. In 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, putting Soviet forces on the doorstep of the Middle East and American allies in the Persian Gulf. President Jimmy Carter responded by articulating what became known as the Carter Doctrine: “Any attempt by an outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.” And the need to preserve stability and American influence in this region was cited to justify both the 1991 Persian Gulf War and the 2003 Iraq War.3

Why has the United States had such a consistent interest in oil and the Middle East? A national interest– based argument hinges on the observation that oil is vital to U.S. power because a modern military of tanks and airplanes consumes large quantities of fuel.

It is no coincidence that Roosevelt’s concern for Saudi Arabia arose during World War II, at a time when American war planners were worried about running out of gas. The Cold War that followed did nothing to alleviate concerns about maintain- ing access to this strategically valuable material that was crucial to the economic and military might of the United States and its allies. In this view, the U.S. interest in oil stems from a national interest in ensuring its military power and security.

An alternative argument, also based on general interests, revolves around the U.S. economy’s dependence on stable and plentiful oil supplies. The U.S. economy runs on oil—to fuel cars, to transport goods around the country, to heat homes and power businesses. Shocks to the price of oil can thus have substantial effects on the economic welfare of U.S. citizens, influencing inflation, unemployment, and dispos- able income. As Figure 4.1 shows, the price of oil over time has been highly sensi- tive to events in the Middle East, with major spikes occurring during times of war and revolution. Such dramatic price increases can affect people in a variety of ways, sparking inflation and unemployment and eating into consumers’ pocketbooks.

When the Guatemalan government seized property belonging to the United Fruit Company in 1954, arguing that it belonged to the workers of Guatemala, United Fruit asked the U.S. government to intervene. Here, a banner by Guatemala’s General Confederation of Workers hangs in front of a United Fruit hiring hall.

3. For a comprehensive history of the role of oil in international politics, see Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power (New York: Free Press, 1991).

143Whose Interests Count in Matters of War and Peace?

Hence, American citizens have a general interest in ensuring stability in the Middle East in order to prevent oil price shocks that would hurt the economy.

Set against these views of the United States’ national interest is one that sees the pursuit of oil as benefiting a small group of businesses: oil companies. After World War II, U.S. companies like Aramco played a direct role in pumping and selling Mid- dle Eastern oil, making huge profits. Since the 1960s and 1970s, producer countries have generally nationalized their oil industries, meaning that oil companies have to negotiate deals with these governments. U.S. firms like ExxonMobil profit from their participation in the exploration, drilling, refining, and marketing of oil, but their access to these activities depends on the willingness of foreign governments to do business with them. It is possible, then, that U.S. foreign policy toward the Middle East is driven by these companies’ desire to expand and protect their profits.

In this view, firms use their influence over policy makers to ensure that the United States defends friendly regimes (like that of Saudi Arabia) and undermines hostile regimes (like that of Iraq under Saddam Hussein) that are bad for business. Because these policies can impose costs on American soldiers and taxpayers, this view sees U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East as benefiting a narrow set of inter- ests within the country at the expense of everyone else.

As this discussion suggests, the distinction between national and particularistic interests is easy to make in the abstract but harder to observe in practice. While oil clearly influences U.S. policy in the Middle East, it is difficult to say with confidence whether the general or narrow interests are more important. Nonetheless, the distinction is crucial for thinking about what causes war. Recall from Chapter 2 that an actor is a group of individuals with similar interests. To the extent that groups or individuals within the state have different interests over the outcomes of international bargaining, the analytical utility of assuming that the state is an actor diminishes—and we have to start looking within the state for new actors.

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Iranian revolution/ Onset of Iran-Iraq War

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Iraq War

Arab Spring uprisings

FIGURE 4.1 The Price of Oil, 1960–2018

Figure source: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Spot Crude Oil Price: West Texas Intermediate (WTI) [WTISPLC], retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; https://fred. stlouisfed.org/series/WTISPLC, March 19, 2018.

* In 2017 U.S. dollars.

144 Chapter 4 Domestic Politics and War

This quest is important because the analysis of war presented in Chapter 3 assumed that war is a costly outcome for the actors engaged in inter- national bargaining. These costs ensure the exis- tence of deals that all sides prefer over war, and they underpin an understanding of war that focuses on the information, commitment, and divisibility problems that can prevent such deals from being reached. If, however, the benefits of war are enjoyed by a different set of actors from those that pay the costs, then this view may need to be revised. Does war arise not because of obstacles to the bargaining interaction, but because war furthers the interests of particular actors within the country?

Interactions, Institutions, and Influence When we drop the unitary actor assumption and look within states, an enormous number of individ-

uals and groups, with a variety of interests, come into focus. Which actors matter, and which interests are likely to influence foreign policy decisions? The answer lies in institutions and interactions. Recall from Chapter 2 that institutions are sets of rules and decision-making procedures.

Within each country, domestic institutions help determine who runs the gov- ernment, how decisions are made, and how disputes are resolved. In a monarchy, for example, the ruler is determined through a system of succession often based on birth order. In other systems, the leader is the person who commands the great- est support within the military and therefore can repress challengers with force. In democratic political systems, leaders are selected through regular elections in which winners are decided by the amount of popular support they can muster. Domestic institutions also determine how much power an individual leader has to make decisions. In some political systems, rulers can dictate the state’s policies on their own or with the support of a relatively small number of key actors. In other systems, the institutions of government may distribute decision-making power among more than one body, such as a president and a legislature.

By shaping how leaders obtain power and make decisions, domestic institu- tions determine which actors’ interests are taken into account. Leaders whose hold on power is unchallenged may not have to consider the interests of anyone else, and they can act on the basis of their personal interests or whims. More commonly, a ruler may only have to worry about maintaining the loyalty of the military by cater- ing to that organization’s interests.

In democratic political institutions, by contrast, the need to win elections forces leaders to think about how the voting public will respond to their policy choices. It also makes them dependent on organized groups that are willing to donate money

In 1973 and 1979, conflicts in the Middle East led to gasoline shortages in the United States, and some stations ran out of gas entirely. The dependence of the U.S. economy on gasoline means that American consumers have an economic interest in the stability of the oil-rich Middle East.

145Whose Interests Count in Matters of War and Peace?

and time to election campaigns. Although voters and organized interest groups are not literally in the room when decisions are made, democratic institutions force those who are in the room to take those actors’ interests into account. Thus, institu- tions determine which actors and interests have a (figurative) seat at the table.

Some domestic actors may also have strategic advantages that magnify their influence. In Chapter 2 we introduced a strategic dilemma known as the collective action problem. This problem arises when a group of individuals with common interests seeks to act collectively to further that interest. As we saw, such efforts can fall short if each individual prefers to free ride on the efforts of others. One implication of this insight is that relatively small groups can be more effective at cooperating to further common interests than large groups are. Indeed, small groups of highly motivated and informed individuals are better able to organize and coordinate their activities and prevent others from free riding. By contrast, large, dispersed groups in which each individual has only a small stake in or knowledge about the policy decision are generally very hard to organize. For example, whereas United Fruit stood to lose millions of dollars of property in Guatemala, the inter- vention cost each U.S. taxpayer only a few pennies. Had taxpayers been opposed to having their money spent this way, they would have had a hard time cooperating, since no individual had any incentive to spend time and money on such an effort. To the extent that a group’s political influence depends on the ability of its members to cooperate, this strategic problem favors the few over the many. Thus, a relatively narrow interest group can successfully demand a policy that benefits that group at the expense of everyone else.

Appreciating the role of institutions and interactions, we can organize a discus- sion of domestic interests around four different kinds of actors, depicted in Figure 4.2.

Leaders

Bureaucracy

Interest Groups

General Public

FIGURE 4.2 Key Domestic Actors in Foreign Policy

146 Chapter 4 Domestic Politics and War

The first type consists of the leaders who make foreign policy decisions. State leaders decide when to make threats, what demands to issue, and ultimately, whether to wage war. These individuals matter the most because, by whatever rules of politics operate in their country, they have the authority to make these decisions. The next type com- prises organized groups that have sufficient resources and information to influence the decisions made by the political leaders. Two such groups are of particular rele- vance: bureaucratic actors and interest groups.

The state apparatus is made up of a variety of different organizations collec- tively known as the bureaucracy. These organizations—which include the mili- tary, diplomatic corps, and intelligence agencies—may wield considerable influence because of their institutional resources and knowledge. The military in particular, by virtue of its coercive power, organizational discipline, and expertise in war fight- ing, can shape decisions about the use of force both through its role in implementa- tion and through its influence over political leaders.

Interest groups are groups of individuals with common interests that organize in order to push for policies that benefit their members. Of particular importance in the present context are economic interest groups, such as companies or groups of companies, and ethnic lobbies comprising people with similar policy interests owing to their common ethnic background. In later chapters, when we turn to issues like human rights (Chapter 12) and the environment (Chapter 13), interest groups that organize around other principles will come to the fore.

The final type of actor to consider is the most numerous but rarely the most powerful: the general public. As already suggested, the influence of ordinary citi- zens varies considerably with domestic institutions. In democratic countries, free and fair elections provide individuals with a low-cost way to participate in deciding who governs. In other kinds of countries, it is harder for individual citizens to have much influence, since political leaders do not depend on their support. As long as the regime can count on the repressive power of the police and military, general- public interests can be ignored. Given this situation, the question of how the general public matters is largely a question of how democracy matters.

As we proceed through this chapter, we will walk down the pyramid in Figure 4.2 and consider arguments and evidence about the behavior of actors at each level.

Do Politicians Spark Wars Abroad in Order to Hold On to Power at Home? As noted earlier in this chapter, Argentina sparked a war with Great Britain in 1982 when it invaded a set of nearby islands that had been in dispute for a century and a half: the “Falkland Islands” to the British, the “Malvinas” to Argentines. This war was surprising in a number of respects. First, the islands were not particularly valuable pieces of territory. At the time of the war, the islands had a population of less than 2,000, and their primary source of income was sheep farming. Indeed,

bureaucracy The collection of organizations—including the military, diplomatic corps, and intelligence agencies— that carry out most tasks of governance within the state.

interest groups Groups of individuals with common interests that organize to influence public policy in a manner that benefits their members.

147Do Politicians Spark Wars Abroad in Order to Hold On to Power at Home?

just prior to the war, Britain had taken steps to weaken its hold over the islands. In 1981, Britain readied plans to withdraw the last of its naval vessels in the region and passed an act that stripped the islanders of full British citizenship.

Second, the war was surprising because of the imbalance in military power between the two states. Though separated from the islands by a larger distance, Britain had a far superior naval force. After Argentina invaded and occupied the Falklands on April 2, 1982, it took only 74 days for British forces to retake the islands. There were 255 dead on the British side, 635 on the Argentine side. So why did Argentina pick a fight with such a formidable foe, and why did Britain react so strongly to defend its right to islands that seemed to be of diminishing importance?

A large part of the answer to this puzzle lies not in international considerations, but in the domestic political interests of the countries’ governments. At the time, leaders in both countries had pressing domestic problems to which military conflict may have seemed the perfect solution. The Argentine government—a group of mili- tary officers known as a junta—had seized power in 1976, and its rule had become increasingly repressive and unpopular over time. In the early 1980s, Argentina suffered a severe economic downturn, which led to civil unrest and splits within the ruling group. Facing a dire threat to its rule, the junta leader, General Leopoldo Galtieri, decided that an attack on the Malvinas might help solve its problem.

Knowing that most Argentines resented British control of the islands, Galtieri hoped that a bold move to seize the islands would stir up nationalist sentiment, distract people from their economic hardships, and give the military government a popular achievement that would bolster its prestige and legitimacy. Indeed, the invasion of the Malvinas had precisely this effect. Hence, Galtieri was seeking more than just territory when he seized the islands; he was also looking to solidify his hold on power.4

On the British side, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher also had to worry about her political survival. Like Argentina, Britain in 1982 was in the midst of a severe recession. With unemployment soaring, Thatcher’s popularity dropped precipi- tously. In February 1982, the month before the invasion, only 29 percent of Britons said that they approved of the job she was doing. Thatcher’s firm response to the Falkland Islands crisis caused her poll numbers to soar. By May, with British operations to retake the Falklands under way, Thatcher’s approval rating jumped to 44 percent. By the end of the war, her approval stood at 51 percent. The Brit- ish prime minister rode this wave of popularity to electoral victory a year later. Hence, Thatcher’s unexpectedly strong response to the Argentine invasion not only restored British control over the Falklands, but also revived her political fortunes.5

4. Jack Levy and Lily Vakily, “External Scapegoating in Authoritarian Regimes: Argentina in the Falklands/Malvinas Case,” in The Internationalization of Communal Strife, ed. Manus Midlarski, 118–46 (London: Routledge, 1992).

5. Approval figures are from David Butler and Gareth Butler, eds., British Political Fact 1900–1994, 7th ed. (London: Macmillan, 1994), 256. There is some controversy over how much the Falklands War contributed to the Conservative victory in 1983. See Harold D. Clarke, William Mishler, and Paul Whiteley, “Recapturing the Falklands: Models of Conservative Popularity, 1979–83,” British Journal of Political Science 20, no 1. (January 1990): 63–81.

148 Chapter 4 Domestic Politics and War

What Do Leaders Want? The leaders of states are not solely, if at all, statesmen or stateswomen looking out for the best interests of the nation; they are also individuals with many var- ied interests of their own. Some may have very strong ideological beliefs that increase their willingness to pay costs or run risks in foreign policy. It is hard to understand World War II, for example, without ref- erence to German leader Adolf Hitler’s extreme ide- ology, which motivated him to seek out Lebensraum (“living space”) for the German people by attack- ing Poland and then the Soviet Union.6 Even in the absence of such extreme motivations, different lead- ers may come into office with different ideas or prior life experiences that shape how they think about foreign policy, including the desirability of using mil- itary force (see “How Do We Know?” on p. 149).7

State leaders may also have more prosaic per- sonal motivations. As the story of the Falklands War reminds us, leaders are also politicians, people who

benefit from holding political office. Being in office confers all manner of benefits: the ego boost of having power, opportunities to enrich oneself and one’s friends, the ability to shape policy in desired ways. As a result, politicians think a lot about how to obtain office and, once in power, how to secure their hold on it. This means that political leaders make choices with an eye toward how those choices will influence their chances of staying in power.

How could these motivations affect leaders’ decisions about war and peace? At the most general level, the desire to stay in power means that leaders have to be responsive to the interests of those who control their political fate, whether voters, organized interest groups, the military, or other groups. As a result, the assumption that political leaders want to remain in office plays a key role in almost every aspect of this chapter, since it helps account for the influence of special interest groups that can provide resources useful for maintaining power; it contributes to an under- standing of the role of the military, whose support is often necessary for a govern- ment to stay in power; and it is a necessary element in arguments about the effects of accountability in democratic political systems. In short, leaders’ desire to hold office explains how the interests of actors within the country can matter at the level of policy making.

6. There is a debate among historians about how much of Hitler’s foreign policy is explained by his personal ideology. For a balanced view, which ultimately concludes that ideology played an important role, see Allan Bullock, “Hitler and the Origins of the Second World War,” in The Origins of the Second World War: A. J. P. Taylor and His Critics, ed. William Roger Louis, 117–45 (New York: Wiley, 1972).

7. See, for example, Elizabeth N. Saunders, Leaders at War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011); and Michael C. Horowitz, Allan C. Stam, and Cali M. Ellis, Why Leaders Fight (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015).

British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, here visiting troops in the Falkland Islands, benefited politically from the Falklands War. Before the war, poor economic conditions in Britain had helped bring Thatcher’s public approval rating down to just 29 percent. Once the war began, the British public rallied behind their leader, sending her approval rating up to 51 percent.

HOW DO W E K NOW ?

A remarkable global trend in recent decades has been the increasing number of countries led by women. While his- tory provides examples of queens and empresses, female heads of state have been rare in the modern era, with the numbers taking off only since the 1980s (see Figure A). The figures are still low in absolute terms—in 2018, only 13 of the 193 countries in the world had a woman chief executive—but the recent growth is part of a broader trend that has also seen increased representation of women in legislatures and militaries. What impact does the gender of the leader have on a state’s foreign policy?

A wealth of research on the general population shows that, on average, women are less aggressive than men and more likely to seek compromise solutions to disputes. Sur- vey data show that women are less likely than men, partic- ularly in Western countries, to support the use of military force. Evidence also suggests that states with more gen- der equality domestically, including more women in the legislature, use less violence in international crises and spend less on their militaries.a

So, does having a female leader make a state less likely to wage war? To answer this question, Michael Horowitz, Allan Stam, and Cali Ellis collected informa- tion on all heads of state from 1875 to 2004. They then examined whether leaders’ propensity to threaten or use military force against other states depends on a variety of personal characteristics. The authors found that, on average, gender has little effect on dispute behavior, and if anything, women are more conflict-prone than men. While 30 percent of male leaders initiated at least one mil- itarized conflict during their tenure, 36 percent of female leaders did.b This finding replicates earlier work, focused on democratic countries, indicating that female presidents and prime ministers engage in more conflictual behavior internationally than men do.c

What might explain this result? One explanation is that, even if there are differences across men and women in the general population, those differences do not hold among the subset of individuals who become heads of state. The process of leader selection may penalize women who are seen as insufficiently “tough.” Particularly when voters are concerned about foreign threats, women candidates face a disadvantage, forcing them to compensate by acting in a manner that runs counter to the gender stereotype.d

A second explanation hinges on the beliefs and behav- ior of other states when confronting a female leader. Military conflict is the outcome of a strategic interaction between at least two states, not the choice of a single individual. If adversaries expect female leaders to be more dovish, then they will make greater demands on them, thus increasing the risk of conflict. Women may also need to use greater levels of force to persuade opponents of their resolve.e

Overall, then, while the literature suggests that increasing gender equality has a number of beneficial effects, the rising prevalence of female heads of state does not necessarily portend a more peaceful world.

Are Women Leaders More Peaceful than Men? HOW DO W E K NOW ?

FIGURE A Number of States with Female Leaders, 1900–2018

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Source: Archigos: A Database of Political Leaders, version 4.1; Henk E. Goemans, Kristian Skrede Gleditsch, and Giacomo Chiozza, “Introducing Archigos: A Data Set of Political Leaders,” Journal of Peace Research 49 (2009): 269–83. Updated to 2018 by Curtis Bell, The Rulers, Elections, and Irregular Governance Dataset (REIGN) (Broomfield, CO: OEF Research, 2018). Available at oefresearch.org.

a. For a review of findings on gender effects on international relations, see Dan Reiter, “The Positivist Study of Gender and International Relations,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 59 (2015): 1301–26.

b. Michael C. Horowitz, Allan C. Stam, and Cali M. Ellis, Why Leaders Fight (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 158–77.

c. Michael T. Koch and Sarah A. Fulton, “In the Defense of Women: Gender, Office Holding, and National Security Policy in Established Democracies,” Journal of Politics 73 (2001): 1–16; see also Mary Caprioli and Mark A. Boyer, “Gender, Violence, and International Crisis,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 45 (2001): 503–18.

d. See, for example, Jennifer L. Lawless, “Women, War, and Winning Elections: Gender Stereotyping in the Post-September 11th Era,” Political Research Quarterly 57 (2004): 479–90.

e. Caprioli and Boyer, “Gender, Violence, and International Crisis,” 508.

150 Chapter 4 Domestic Politics and War

But an interest in holding on to power does not turn political leaders into mere instruments of other actors. Strategic politicians can use their control of policy to shape their political environment, rather than just respond to it. In the case of war and peace, a common argument is that leaders sometimes use force abroad not to further any national interest, but rather to enhance their hold on power at home.

The Rally Effect and the Diversionary Incentive The idea that leaders can further their own political interests by fighting a war flows from the rally-’round-the-flag effect, or rally effect for short. The term rally effect refers to people’s tendency to become more supportive of their coun- try’s government when it experiences dramatic international events, such as wars. This effect is most apparent in countries in which public opinion polling regularly measures the level of support for a leader.

Often, approval ratings jump up at the onset of a war or some other inter- national crisis, as in the case of Thatcher’s approval ratings at the outset of the Falklands War. The most dramatic rally event ever recorded followed the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, which caused President George W. Bush’s approval rating to jump immediately from 51 to 86 percent, eventually reaching as high as 90 percent. Even in countries without opinion polls and approval ratings, we see cases in which the start of war caused an upsurge of national unity and support for the government. As we noted at the outset of this chapter, in 1982, Argentina’s mili- tary government reversed a tide of public discontent by invading the Falkland Islands.

Why do people rally around the flag at times of international crisis? There are a number of explanations. Social psychologists have shown that members of a group often feel greater attachment and loyalty to the group when they experience conflict with outsiders.8 Hence, international conflict can cause an upwelling of patriotism, and the leader derives increased support as the protector of the group’s interests. At the same time, political opponents may decide to dampen their criti- cism of the government at a time of national crisis, and the government may use the emergency to crack down on dissent. This means that the government dominates the political discourse and can frame the public’s evaluation of its policies without fear that opposing voices will split public opinion.9

International conflict can also create a diversion from problems that might otherwise drag down a leader’s popularity, such as economic troubles or scandals. Foreign policy crises tend to drive other issues out of the news headlines, redirect- ing people’s attention away from the domestic issues that divide and disappoint them and toward the more unifying challenge of meeting a foreign threat. Finally, international conflict may give embattled leaders an opportunity to blame foreign- ers for the country’s problems—a phenomenon known as scapegoating.

8. See, for example, Lewis A. Coser, The Functions of Social Conflict (New York: Free Press, 1956). The pioneering work of the rally effect in the United States is John E. Mueller, War, Presidents, and Public Opinion (New York: Wiley, 1973).

9. Richard A. Brody and Catherine R. Shapiro, “A Reconsideration of the Rally Phenomenon in Public Opinion,” in Political Behavior Annual, ed. S. Long, 77–102 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1989).

rally effect The tendency for people to become more supportive of their country’s government in response to dramatic international events, such as crises or wars.

151Do Politicians Spark Wars Abroad in Order to Hold On to Power at Home?

The existence of rally effects suggests that political leaders may at times face a diversionary incentive: a temptation to spark an international crisis in order to rally public support at home. This idea was popularized in the 1997 movie Wag the Dog, in which a scandal-plagued national leader hires a movie director to produce news footage of a fake war in order to boost his approval ratings. The logic, how- ever, long precedes Hollywood. In William Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part II, a dying King Henry advises his son, Prince Hal, that to prevent plots against him he needs to “busy giddy minds / With foreign quarrels.” This advice echoes in the words of a Russian minister who, during a 1904 dispute with Japan, reportedly told the tsar, “What this country needs is a short, victorious war to stem the tide of revolution.”10 Whether the tsar found this argument persuasive or not, Russia and Japan declared war on each other on February 10, 1904.

The danger posed by the rally effect should be clear from the discussion in Chapter 3. There, it was assumed that a state’s first-best outcome in a crisis is to get its way without having to fight. Fighting, after all, imposes costs that the state should prefer to avoid. A diversionary temptation could alter the balance of costs and benefits. If those who control the state’s foreign policy think that using force abroad would greatly improve their chances of staying in power, then they may prefer war over a negotiated settlement, even one that gives them most of what they want.

Just a few days before invading the Falkland Islands, the Argentine government faced massive protests and calls for the overthrow of the ruling junta. Rioters confronted police, and thousands were arrested. The war with Britain provided the Argentine junta a (temporary) reprieve from these problems by shifting the public’s attention away from domestic issues.

10. This quotation is attributed to Russian interior minister Vladimir Plehve. However, the authenticity of the quotation is unclear, and it has been suggested that it was attributed to Plehve only later by his political enemies.

diversionary incentive The incentive that state leaders have to start international crises in order to rally public support at home.

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These benefits may be particularly tempting to leaders who are insecure domestically because of discontent with their policies or hard economic times. Such a leader may decide that doing nothing would mean losing office, so waging war and invoking the rally effect may be an appealing gamble. This phenomenon has been called gambling for resurrection: taking a risky action, such as starting a war, when the alternative is certain to be very bad.

A sports analogy is useful here. Hockey teams trailing in the final minutes of a game sometimes pull their goalie in order to replace him with an additional attacker. Doing so increases the chances that they can even the score, but it also makes it easier for the other team to score against their undefended net. The gam- ble makes sense because a loss is a loss regardless of whether a team loses by one goal or by many. Consequently, the downside risk of pulling the goalie is small com- pared to the upside potential of tying the game. Political leaders who are certain they will lose office because of poor economic conditions, such as the Argentine junta in 1982, might similarly see a large upside to starting a war and gambling that the outcome will be positive.

Do Leaders “Wag the Dog”? Do leaders routinely gamble for resurrection by starting wars abroad at times of political need? Given the intuitive nature of this argument, it may come as a sur- prise to learn that scholars have found little consistent support for the hypothesis that leaders systematically resort to force when they are in trouble domestically. Numerous studies have sought to determine whether the likelihood that a state will get involved in military conflict increases when the leader is unpopular, the country is in a recession, or citizens face high unemployment or inflation, or, in the case of democratic countries, when a well-timed rally shortly before an election could be particularly useful. Although some studies have shown such effects, the results have been neither consistent nor particularly strong. Rather than a straightforward rela- tionship between, say, economic problems and international conflict, effects tend to depend on a number of factors; that is, some kinds of governments may be sensitive to certain kinds of economic conditions at some times.11

In addition, some research suggests that the relationship between international conflict and leaders’ political security is the opposite of what diversionary theory suggests: international conflict is more likely to be initiated by leaders whose hold on office is relatively strong.12 For example, in democratic systems, leaders are more likely to start wars right after elections, not right before them as diversionary theory would suggest. A democratic leader is most secure just after an election, since the next election is, at that point, several years away.13

11. See, for example, Philip Arena and Glenn Palmer, “Politics or the Economy? Domestic Correlates of Dispute Involvement in Developed Democracies,” International Studies Quarterly 53 (December 2009): 955–75; and Sara McLaughlin Mitchell and Brandon C. Prins, “Rivalry and Diversionary Uses of Force,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 48 (December 2004): 937–61.

12. See Giacomo Chiozza and H. E. Goemans, “Peace through Insecurity: Tenure and International Conflict,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 47 (August 2003): 443–67.

13. Kurt Taylor Gaubatz, “Election Cycles and War,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 35, no. 2 (June 1991): 212–44.

153Do Politicians Spark Wars Abroad in Order to Hold On to Power at Home?

This is not to say that diversionary incentives never play a role in particular cases; in fact, historians cite many examples in which such logic contributed to the onset of war. What these results do suggest, however, is that leaders do not system- atically use international conflict for diversionary purposes or to gamble for resur- rection. In other words, even if diversionary incentives have contributed to war in some cases, they account for only a portion of the conflict behavior we observe.

Why might this be the case? If sparking international conflict serves leaders’ political interests, why do we not see stronger evidence of this effect? One possible answer is that most political leaders are not as cynical as we assume and they would not actually start a war simply to maintain their hold on power. Although we can- not rule out this possibility, there are other conceivable explanations for why even cynical leaders might not start a war to further their own political interests.

The first explanation is that the domestic political benefits of war relative to peace have to be large—perhaps unrealistically large—in order to eliminate the pos- sibility of a peaceful bargain. Recall the simple bargaining framework we illustrated in the previous chapter, now depicted in Figure 4.3. As shown in the top panel, the size of the bargaining range is determined by the sum of the war costs to both sides. Now imagine that the leader of State A expects to reap political benefits from waging war. This benefit increases the value of war to the leader as indicated in the

WAR OUTCOME

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FIGURE 4.3 Rally Effects and the Bargaining Range The top panel shows the expected outcome of a war between State A and State B, as well as the resulting bargaining range. The lower panel shows how the bargaining range shrinks if the leader of State A expects political benefits, in the form of a rally, as a result of war. This benefit increases the value of war to A, offsetting some or all of its costs, but as long as the benefit does not exceed the costs of war to both states, a bargaining range still exists.

154 Chapter 4 Domestic Politics and War

lower panel. This added benefit shrinks the bargaining range, but even if this benefit is greater than the costs to State A—so that the leader sees a net benefit rather than a net cost to war—a bargaining range could still exist, as shown.

The size of this new bargaining range is given by the sum of the net costs (the total costs to both states minus the additional political benefit). Only if this benefit exceeds the sum of the war costs to both states does the bargaining range vanish, making war inevitable. Hence, even if the leader of one state expected large politi- cal benefits from waging war, these benefits would be sufficient to cause war only if they outweighed the war costs to both sides. This condition becomes more likely if the leaders of both states expect political benefits from war, as was the case in the Falklands War. Notice also that the political benefits from war mean that State A can demand a better deal from State B than it otherwise could. Knowing this, poten- tial targets might avoid picking fights with politically vulnerable leaders, thereby depriving them of the opportunity to use force opportunistically.14 These observa- tions remind us that war is the product of an interaction between at least two actors and not the choice of a single actor.

The Political Costs of War A second reason why diversionary effects might be weak is that war can impose domestic political costs in addition to promising benefits. This is evident from the Falklands case as well. While Thatcher rode her postwar wave of support to a resounding electoral victory in Britain, the Argentine junta that lost the war met a very different fate. Following Argentina’s defeat, angry protesters once again filled the streets. Galtieri and other members of the junta resigned or were stripped of their posts, and several went to prison.

The story of the Russo-Japanese War has a similar ending. Far from the short, victorious war the Russians hoped for, the war actually lasted almost two years, and the Russians suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Japanese. Rather than stemming the tide of revolution, as the Russian minister reportedly predicted, successive defeats on the battlefield increased unhappiness with the tsar’s regime and helped usher in the revolution of 1905, when the tsar was forced to make polit- ical concessions to his opponents. Full-scale revolution would hit Russia in 1917, in the midst of yet more battlefield defeats in World War I. Indeed, the initial surge of patriotism that generally accompanies the onset of war can quickly give way to discontent and rebellion if the war goes badly.

One way to see the relationship between the costs of war and its domestic political repercussions is to consider how public support for war changes as the costs mount. Figure 4.4 shows the relationship between public support and battle deaths for major U.S. military operations since and including World War II. As the graph shows, most operations started with very high levels of public support, but

14. See, for example, Benjamin O. Fordham, “Strategic Conflict Avoidance and the Diversionary Use of Force,” Journal of Politics 67 (February 2005): 132–53; and Brett Ashley Leeds and David R. Davis, “Domestic Political Vulnerability and International Disputes,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 41 (December 1997): 814–34.

155Do Politicians Spark Wars Abroad in Order to Hold On to Power at Home?

this support generally fell off as the number of U.S. battle deaths mounted. The only wars that remained popular throughout were World War II—a war of national sur- vival that followed the Japanese attack on the U.S. homeland—and the Persian Gulf War, which caused relatively few deaths on the American side.

Moreover, in cases in which support for the war collapsed, the presidents’ approval ratings also suffered. During the Korean War, President Truman saw his approval rating fall to as low as 22 percent, and he declined to run for reelection in 1952. The unpopularity of the Vietnam War similarly doomed the presidency of Lyndon Johnson, who dropped his bid for reelection in March 1968. The Iraq War dragged down President Bush’s approval ratings, causing his Republican Party to lose control of Congress in 2006 and contributing to the election of Democrat Barack Obama in 2008. More generally, research has shown that leaders who fight losing or costly wars are more likely to be removed from office than those who win wars.15

The evidence suggests that in terms of their political interests, leaders should see war not as a pure opportunity, but as a gamble—and one that has a downside risk. Hence, in thinking about how reelection incentives influence the way leaders think about war and peace, we need to set the costs of losing a war against the potential benefits of the rally effect. These costs may explain why we do not see strong or sys- tematic evidence that politically insecure politicians engage in diversionary conflict.

In light of this observation, it is worth recalling that the scandal-plagued leader in the movie Wag the Dog does not start an actual war; instead, he hires a movie producer to stage a fake war for public consumption. The attraction of doing this is clear: when you script the war yourself, you can make sure the right side wins. In the real world, war is a risky gamble—not just for the state, but also for the political interests of its leaders.

Persian Gulf War (1991)

Intervention in Somalia (1993)

War in Afghanistan (2001-14) World War II (1941–45)

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(1965–73)

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FIGURE 4.4 U.S. Battle Deaths and Public Support for War

Figure sources: Numbers for World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, and Somalia come from Eric V. Larson, Casualties and Consensus (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1996). Other poll numbers come from Gallup, http://www.gallup.com/file/ poll/183590/Mistake_Going_ into_Iraq_and_Afghanistan_ 150612.pdf (accessed 11/22/17). Casualty figures for Iraq and Afghanistan are from www .icasualties.org (accessed 01/20/15).

15. See, for example, Hein Goemans, War and Punishment (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001).

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Do Countries Fight Wars to Satisfy the Military or Special Interest Groups? From 1898 to 1902, Great Britain engaged in a costly and divisive war with the Boer states in South Africa. The Boer War, which lasted three years and claimed about 50,000 lives, was a climactic episode of a larger process in which the European states carved up and colonized the continent of Africa, as described in Chapter 1. To the British economist J. A. Hobson, this scramble for colonies and the bloody wars that it gave rise to presented a puzzle. Why had Britain expended so many young lives and so much money to acquire and defend an empire in Africa, as well as in Asia and the Americas?

The answer that Hobson arrived at was unsettling. He calculated that although imperialism did not benefit the British nation as a whole, it was extremely profi- table for a few small groups within the country. The primary beneficiaries, he argued, were rich people with the ability to invest overseas. With colonial posses- sions came many opportunities for profitable investments. Wealthy people could invest in railroads, mines, and other properties and receive very high rates of return. They could lend money to colonial governments at favorable interest rates. In pushing for colonial possessions, Hobson argued, financial interests found allies in powerful places: military leaders seeking glory and larger budgets, and arms man- ufacturers seeking profits. In his view, these groups used their power and influence to force British governments to pursue a policy that benefited them at the expense of the greater good.16

Hobson’s theory of imperialism is not without critics, but the general thesis— that wars are fought to benefit military and business interests—is a familiar one. It echoes famously in the words of U.S. president Dwight Eisenhower, who warned of the influence of a military-industrial complex, an alliance of military leaders and arms manufacturers that presumably have an interest in an aggressive foreign policy.

In this section we consider the influence of the military and interest groups with respect to questions of war and peace. As we will see, there are times when these actors might be expected to have hawkish interests, because they antici- pate benefits from war and/or pay few of the costs. These two sets of actors also have strategic advantages that they can exploit in their interaction with politi- cal leaders and others within the country. That said, we will see that the primary effect of hawkish actors is not to cause wars per se—by eliminating the bargaining range—but rather to expand the scope of the state’s ambitions and to increase the conditions under which the state would consider fighting a war. Hence, hawkish domestic interests do not lead directly to the breakdown of bargaining, but they do create more opportunities for such failures to occur.

16. J. A. Hobson, Imperialism: A Study (London: James Nisbet, 1902).

military-industrial complex An alliance between military leaders and the industries that benefit from international conflict, such as arms manufacturers.

157Do Countries Fight Wars to Satisf y the Militar y or Special Interest Groups?

Bureaucratic Politics and the Military Although the ultimate decision to wage war may lie in the hands of a few individ- uals, the actual machinery of government that deals with matters of war and peace is much larger and more complex. The leader of a modern state sits atop a large bureaucratic apparatus: a collection of organizations that manage many of the details of governance. Wars are planned and implemented by the state’s military— usually a massive organization with thousands and, in some cases, millions of indi- viduals. Negotiations with other countries are conducted by a host of diplomats around the world, typically overseen by a ministry of foreign affairs (known in the United States as the State Department). Information about other countries’ military capabilities and intentions are collected and analyzed by intelligence organizations, like the United States’ CIA, Britain’s MI6 (Military Intelligence, Section 6), or Russia’s SVR (Foreign Intelligence Service). Given all the tasks that governments have to perform and all the individuals that are needed to carry out those tasks, such organizations are a necessary part of any modern state.

This observation opens up the possibility that decisions about war and peace are shaped not only by state leaders, but also by the interests of the bureaucratic organizations involved in the decision-making process.17 While such organizations care about what is best for the country, they may also care about the resources that they control and the influence that they themselves wield. They generally seek bigger budgets, more input on policy making, and opportunities for personal promotion. As a result, they may press for policies that boost their own status or fit their own worldview.

For example, prior to the 2003 Iraq War there were serious disagreements within the U.S. government between the Defense Department and the State Depart- ment. Civilian leaders at the Pentagon generally expected war to be easy, while those at the State Department were more cautious and emphasized the need for international diplomacy. There were also disagreements over which agency should take the lead role in rebuilding Iraq politically and economically in the aftermath of the conflict. These debates reflect a common aphorism about bureaucratic politics that “where you stand depends on where you sit”—that is, the leaders of bureau- cratic agencies often take policy stands that reflect their own organizations’ needs. In the end, the Defense Department won these scuffles.18

As this example suggests, the military is usually the most influential bureau- cratic actor in matters of war and peace. Up to now, our discussion has treated the military as an instrument of the state—a tool that states use to increase their lever- age in international bargaining. What happens when we think about the military as an actor in its own right?

There is a compelling—although, as we will see, incomplete—argument to be made that the more influence the military has over foreign policy decision making,

17. The classic investigation of bureaucratic politics is Graham Allison and Philip Zelikow, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis, 2nd ed. (New York: Longman, 1999).

18. See, for example, Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004).

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the more aggressive the state will be. This argument rests on the assumption that members of the military have ideological, organizational, and professional inter- ests in policies that make war more likely. Ideologically, leaders in the armed forces may be predisposed to seeing military solutions to foreign policy problems, overes- timating the effectiveness of force relative to other alternatives. As an organization, the military can demand larger budgets and more personnel when the state is fre- quently engaged in international conflict than when it is at peace. And profession- ally, military officers find that combat experience is crucial to being promoted to the highest ranks. All these considerations suggest that the military sees benefits to war that other actors may not.

Perhaps the most dramatic example of how military influence can lead to aggressive foreign policy is the case of Japan in the 1930s. During this period, Japan pursued a relentless campaign of expansion against its neighbors, ultimately bringing the country into war with China, France, Britain, the Netherlands, and the United States. This aggressive turn in foreign policy coincided with a creeping takeover by the military, which undermined the democratic system that had been developing in the country.

In 1931, elements of the Japanese military provoked a war with China and seized a region known as Manchuria, which military leaders prized for its coal and iron. A year later, the prime minister of Japan was assassinated by a group of naval officers—an event that ushered in the end of civilian control of Japanese politics. The Japanese military became the main instigator of that country’s expansionist policies. This case is an extreme example, but there is broader evidence to sug- gest that countries in which civilian leadership has weak control of the military are more likely to initiate militarized conflicts.19 (See “What Shaped Our World?” on p. 159 for another example.)

Nevertheless, it is important not to automatically equate the military with militarism. One study examined the advice that military leaders gave U.S. decision makers in about 20 key crises during the Cold War, comparing how aggressive the officers were relative to the president’s civilian advisers. The study found that mili- tary advisers were no more likely than civilians to advocate the use of force in a cri- sis; rather, the main difference between the two groups was over the level of force that should be used in the event of an operation, with military advisers consistently preferring larger deployments. The author concluded that the “stereotype of a bel- ligerent chorus of generals and admirals intimidating a pacific civilian establish- ment is not supported by the evidence.”20

Similarly, a study of elite opinion in the United States shows that military leaders are inclined to advocate the use of force in a narrower set of cases than

19. Todd S. Sechser, “Are Soldiers Less War-Prone than Statesmen?” Journal of Conflict Resolution 48, no. 5 (2004): 746–74. The idea that civilians can lose control of the military also plays a large role in explanations of World War I. See Stephen Van Evera, “The Cult of the Offensive and the Origins of the First World War,” International Security 9, no. 1 (Summer 1984): 58–107; and Samuel R. Williamson Jr. and Russel Van Wyk, July 1914: Soldiers, Statesmen, and the Coming of the Great War (Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2003).

20. Richard K. Betts, Soldiers, Statesmen, and Cold War Crises (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 4.

159

One of the more dangerous episodes in modern history started rather quietly in April 1999, when Pakistani military forces secretly infiltrated across the Line of Control (LoC) that separates the Pakistani- and Indian-controlled areas of the disputed Kashmir region. When the incursion was dis- covered, India mobilized to repel the attack. Over the next several weeks, the two countries fought a war in the high mountains near the town of Kargil. This was neither the first nor the bloodiest war between the two countries, but it was the first that took place under the specter of nuclear war. Only a year earlier, the two countries had openly tested nuclear devices. It was also a rare example of war between two democratic countries. How can we explain this episode?

Interests At the root of the conflict is a long-standing territorial dispute over the region of Kashmir, which both India and Pakistan claim on historical and religious grounds (see Map 3.1 on p. 94). But even while both states want to possess the entire region, actors within each country place different values on it and are willing to pay different costs to obtain it. In particular, the military in Pakistan has gen- erally been more willing than the country’s civilian leaders to run a risk of war with India.

Interactions The conflict over Kashmir has led to repeated episodes of bargaining in which force has been threatened and used, including full-scale wars in 1947, 1965, and 1971. Even so, only weeks before the Kargil War broke out, the countries’ leaders had met to affirm their desire for a peaceful resolution. The infiltration of Pakistani forces across the LoC thus represented an unexpected escala- tion, designed to bolster Pakistan’s bargaining power. Once India responded, the subsequent fighting took place in the shadow of deterrent threats. Pakistan put its nuclear forces on alert and threatened to use every weapon in its arsenal if India invaded; India responded by putting its own missiles on alert. With the risks so high and foreign pres- sure mounting, Pakistan had little choice but to pull its forces back behind the LoC. So why did Pakistan initiate such a dangerous gamble?

Institutions The answer lies in the country’s domestic polit- ical institutions. Even though Pakistan has a democratically

elected government, its military is very powerful and has on several occasions ousted civilian leaders that it did not like. Indeed, shortly after the Kargil War, the prime minis- ter, Nawaz Sharif, was deposed and replaced by the army’s chief of staff, General Pervez Musharraf. The danger of removal by the military has led to weak civilian control and oversight of that organization.

Although there are many unknowns about Pakistan’s decision making in the lead-up to the war, there is good reason to believe that the military command manipulated Sharif into starting a conflict he did not fully understand.a When India accused Pakistan of crossing the LoC in May 1999, Sharif claimed that the invaders were local Kashmiri insurgents operating on their own initiative. Sharif and others claim that when he was briefed on the plan to sup- port the insurgency, he was not told that Pakistani military forces would cross the LoC in large numbers. In addition, U.S. officials reportedly believed that the move to put Paki- stani nuclear forces on alert during the war was done without Sharif’s knowledge.

As this episode suggests, military organizations may sometimes be willing to run greater risks than are the civilian authorities whom they are supposed to serve. When the military wields enormous influence and civilian control is weak, this behavior can have dangerous conse- quences for the country, its neighbors, and the world.

W H AT SH A PE D OUR WOR L D ?

The Kargil War and Military Influence in War

a. This discussion is based on Owen Bennett Jones, Pakistan: Eye of the Storm (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 87–109.

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are civilian leaders without any military experience.21 Indeed, by all accounts, U.S. military officers were much more reluctant to go to war against Iraq in 2003 than was the civilian leadership at the Pentagon and White House. Many top command- ers thought that war with Iraq would be costly and that conducting it successfully would require larger commitments of manpower and money than the civilian lead- ership was willing to make.22 Such observations suggest that, in some contexts at least, the military’s interests push in a conservative direction—more appreciative of the limits of what can be achieved through force and more sensitive to the human costs of war, which are, after all, borne by its personnel.

Interest Groups: Economic and Ethnic Lobbies The possibility that special interest groups can influence foreign policy in a man- ner that furthers their particular interests is familiar to most people. In the wake of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, Vice President Richard Cheney’s former com- pany, Halliburton, was awarded contracts worth billions of dollars to rebuild Iraq’s infrastructure and supply American troops. By the end of 2006, the company’s stock was worth four times its value when the war started. Consid- ering also that President Bush himself had once been an oil industry executive, some observers speculated that the Iraq War was fought at the behest of oil companies interested in Iraq’s oil and of military contractors interested in taxpayer dollars.

Such charges are not new. U.S. interventions in Latin American countries have often been ascribed to the influence of American businesses whose properties in those countries were at risk. The previously mentioned case of Guatemala, where United Fruit feared a major loss at the hands of an unfriendly government, was by no means unique. The United States also intervened in Cuba (1961), the Domin- ican Republic (1965), and Chile (1973)—all places where American investors had substantial assets.

Although economic actors such as companies and industries figure most prom- inently in such stories, not all interest groups organize around economic motives. Interest groups that organize around ethnic ties are another influence on foreign policy. For example, governments may respond to pressure from politically power- ful ethnic groups to intervene in neighbors’ civil wars on behalf of ethnic kin who live across the border.23

In the United States, two particularly influential groups stand out. One is the pro-Israel lobby: a collection of individuals and groups who want the U.S. govern- ment to support and defend the state of Israel—a stance that often brings the United States into conflict with Israel’s adversaries in the region. The main lobbying arm of

21. See Peter D. Feaver and Christopher Gelpi, Choosing Your Battles: American Civil-Military Relations and the Use of Force (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004).

22. See, for example, Michael R. Gordon and Bernard E. Trainor, Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq (New York: Pantheon, 2006).

23. Stephen M. Saideman, The Ties that Divide: Ethnic Politics, Foreign Policy, and International Conflict (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001).

161Do Countries Fight Wars to Satisf y the Militar y or Special Interest Groups?

this group is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which is con- sidered one of the most effective lobbying groups in Washington.24

The second standout is the anti-Castro lobby—groups that represent Cuban Americans opposed to the communist regime in Cuba. A large number of Cubans fled after Fidel Castro took over in 1959 and seized their property. Cuban American groups have lobbied the U.S. government to take strong actions to contain and undermine the Castro regime, including supporting a failed invasion by exiles in 1961 and imposing a strict economic embargo on the country. In 2014, President Barack Obama announced that he would restore some diplomatic and economic ties with Cuba, arguing that more than five decades of isolation had failed to change the regime. Nonetheless, the effort to lift the embargo faced resistance from the Cuban American lobby and its supporters in the U.S. Congress, and President Donald Trump took steps to reverse the opening after he came into office in 2017.

Why do interest groups care about the state’s foreign policy? In cases like the pro-Israel and anti-Castro lobbies, group members are motivated by ethnic attach- ment or ideological interests to support or oppose a particular country or regime. In the case of economic actors, preferences over foreign policy arise whenever an actor’s income depends on events in other countries or on the relationship between countries. A multinational company like United Fruit may have production facili- ties in numerous countries. If those countries experience political instability that threatens to disrupt the company’s business, or if they have unfriendly regimes that might confiscate the company’s property, then the company might lobby for some form of intervention to protect its interests.

Similarly, an investor that owns stock in a foreign company or a bank that has lent money to a foreign government might lobby its own government to use mili- tary force to ensure the return on its investment or the repayment of its loan. Such lobbying could lead to intervention against unstable or unfriendly regimes. In the extreme case that Hobson considered, economic actors with international invest- ments might even lobby their governments to extend direct imperial control over other countries. Although establishing and maintaining such control was costly, imperialism made it safer to invest overseas, since there was less danger that invest- ments would be wiped out by instability or hostile governments. A smaller set of economic actors, primarily those that make and sell military armaments, also have a direct interest in their country’s foreign policy, since a belligerent foreign policy keeps them in business.

However, the interests of economic actors need not always lead to a preference for aggressive policies. Indeed, economic actors who depend on peaceful rela- tions with other countries in order to do business could press their governments to pursue friendly relations or even formal alliances with profitable partners. For

24. For a recent study arguing that the pro-Israel lobby wields a great deal of influence on U.S. foreign policy, see John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2007). This book generated a great deal of controversy not only because of the content of the claims, but also because of concerns about the quality of the evidence. For a sample of the dispute, see Robert C. Lieberman, “The ‘Israel Lobby’ and American Politics,” Perspectives on Politics 7 (2009): 235–57, as well as the response by Mearsheimer and Walt in the same issue.

162 Chapter 4 Domestic Politics and War

example, American banks and companies that had important trade, financial, and investment interests in Western Europe played a significant role in lobbying for a strong U.S. commitment to defend Western Europe at the outset of the Cold War. Similarly, banks that depended heavily on loans to Asia lobbied for strong alliance commitments to Japan and South Korea.25

More recently, U.S. corporations interested in selling goods to China have been a political force lobbying for more cooperative relations with that country. In fact, an extensive literature suggests that trade between countries decreases the likeli- hood of war between them, in part because businesses that profit from the trade lobby against policies that could lead to conflict.26 In sum, depending on where and how they do business, economic actors can have an interest in peaceful relations with some countries and/or hostile relations with others.

How Can Small Groups Have a Big Influence on Policy? We have seen that militaries seeking budgets and prestige, businesses seeking profits, and ethnic groups looking out for their kin may all, at times, see particular benefits to war. What is remarkable about each of these actors is how small they are relative to those who pay the costs of war. The generals and admirals who run military organizations are greatly outnumbered by the enlisted personnel who bear the brunt of the fighting, as well as by the rest of the population. Multinational com- panies and ethnic lobbies tend to make up a small fraction of society. Given how extensively they are outnumbered, when and how can these narrow interests pre- vail? The answer lies in the nature of the interactions between these different actors and the institutions that regulate their relations.

The military’s influence on foreign policy decision making derives from the fact that it controls a large number of guns and people trained to use them. While militaries are generally created in order to defend a state from foreign threats, their capabilities inevitably make them key players domestically as well. In many states, the military plays a direct role in ensuring the continuation of the government. This role can either be very explicit (as with military dictatorships, in which military officers take direct control of executive power) or more subtle but no less potent.

In many countries, the military is able and willing to intervene in politics to ensure that the government is to its liking; as a result, a civilian government may have to cater to the military’s interests in order to avoid being ousted in a coup d’état. A number of countries in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia have experienced frequent alternations between direct military rule and civilian governments that lived under the constant threat of a coup. Moreover, authoritar- ian regimes that actively suppress popular dissent may rely heavily on the military to put down challenges to their rule. In such systems, the regime’s dependence on

25. Benjamin O. Fordham, Building the Cold War Consensus (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998).

26. Stephen G. Brooks, “Economic Actors’ Lobbying Influence on the Prospects for War and Peace,” International Organization 67 (Fall 2013): 863–88.

163Do Countries Fight Wars to Satisf y the Militar y or Special Interest Groups?

the armed forces for its continued survival gives military leaders a prominent role in decision making.

Even when the government does not depend so heavily on the military to stay in power, the military can have strong influence over foreign policy decision making. All political leaders rely on the information and expertise of bureaucratic actors within the state. No political leader is an expert in every policy area; even if that were possible, there would not be enough time for the leader to focus on every task of government. Instead, the job of making policy proposals and analyzing the implications of different decisions rests with the specialists who staff the bureau- cratic agencies.

When making decisions about war, a leader has to rely on experts within the military and other agencies (such as those dealing with intelligence and diplomacy) to provide key pieces of information—what the country’s capabilities are, what the capabilities of potential adversaries are, what plans there are to wage war with a given country—and deal with any contingencies that might arise. The political leader’s dependence on the military for this kind of information gives military lead- ers the ability to shape decisions to their liking. A military bent on war could, for example, give the leader skewed advice about how easily the war could be won and how low the costs would be. Conversely, military officials opposed to war could give conservative estimates of the likelihood of success and magnify the potential costs. In this way, the military would shape the outcome by manipulating the information that the leader uses to calculate the expected value of war and its alternatives.

Organized interest groups also rely on their superior resources and access to information in order to exert influence over policy. Consider an intervention like the one in Guatemala mentioned at the outset of this chapter. In that case, inter- vention cost U.S. taxpayers about $3 million, and it protected property for which

In November 2017, the military in Zimbabwe unseated President Robert Mugabe in a coup d’état, prompting celebrations across Harare by Zimbabweans who welcomed the change in leadership. The ability to topple a government gives military organizations significant influence over foreign and domestic policies.

164 Chapter 4 Domestic Politics and War

United Fruit Company demanded $16 million. Given that the taxpayers who footed the bill vastly outnumbered the stockholders of the company that benefited, it is useful to think about why the latter would get their way at the expense of the for- mer. How could economic interest groups “hijack” a state’s foreign policy for their own narrow interests?

As suggested earlier, much of the answer lies in how the costs and benefits of international conflict are distributed in such situations. Precisely because taxpay- ers are more numerous, the costs of intervention to any individual are quite low. As a result, no individual citizen has much incentive to become informed about the situation, to call a member of Congress to weigh in on the policy, to go to Washington to bang on the doors of the State Department, and so on. Indeed, in the case of Guatemala and United Fruit Company, most U.S. citizens were likely unaware of what the CIA was up to (in arming and training Guatemalan rebels) and how much taxpayer money was being spent. By contrast, the company that stands to benefit from intervention has a very large stake in the outcome. Company representatives have every incentive to become informed, to lobby representatives, and to exploit contacts within the government. Hence, in the interaction between the many who pay the costs and the few who stand to benefit, the latter have a significant advantage.

Organized interest groups can prevail because they can provide political lead- ers with things they need and want in exchange for favored policies. Sometimes what interest groups provide is money, which leaders can use to line their pockets or, if that is prohibited, to finance political campaigns. Concerns about the military- industrial complex center around the flow of money: industries give money to elected officials, who then allocate taxpayer money to the military, which then spends the money in ways that benefit the industries, such as by purchasing their arms or intervening to protect their foreign assets.27

In democracies, interest groups also gain influence by promising the sup- port of motivated voters. For example, the Cuban American lobby does not give large sums of money relative to big economic interest groups like companies, labor unions, and professional organizations. When representatives of this lobby go to Washington, they primarily remind politicians that 1 million Cuban Americans care enough about U.S. policy toward Cuba that they vote on the basis of that issue. Moreover, these voters are concentrated in Florida, a crucial state in U.S. presi- dential elections, where a margin of only 500 votes swung the 2000 election to George W. Bush. By contrast, most other voters pay little attention to this issue and do not base their votes on it. Hence, when representatives of the Cuban American or pro-Israel lobby say, “This is an issue our voters care about,” politicians tend to listen.

In principle, then, interest groups can wield considerable influence over gov- ernment policies, even if those policies come at the expense of broader national

27. This is an example of a larger phenomenon known in the American politics literature as an “iron triangle”: the mutual dependence that arises among members of Congress, interest groups, and government agencies.

165Do Countries Fight Wars to Satisf y the Militar y or Special Interest Groups?

interests. So, to what extent does this mechanism explain foreign policy choices? Can the puzzle of war be resolved by finding some group within the state that actually benefits from the conflict? Though it can be tempting to see causal connec- tions between policies and the groups those policies benefit, there are at least three reasons why we need to be cautious in jumping too hastily to interest-group explanations for wars.

The first reason has to do with evidence: How can we know that a particular policy was caused by interest-group lobbying? To put it another way, how can we be sure that government would have behaved differently if the interest group did not exist? The challenge here is significant. Just because Halliburton benefited from the invasion of Iraq, we cannot automatically infer that the company actively lobbied for the invasion or that President Bush chose to invade in order to benefit the company.

For most foreign policy decisions that bestow benefits on narrow groups, there are alternative justifications based on national interests. Hobson’s theory of nineteenth- century imperialism has been disputed by scholars who argue that imperialism was a product of military-strategic competition among the principal powers.28 U.S. interven- tions in Latin America during the Cold War were part of a larger pattern in which the United States sought to prevent the spread of communism, sometimes in countries in which U.S. investors had no significant assets. Thus, even though United Fruit bene- fited from the ouster of Arbenz, fears about his association with communism might have provoked U.S. intervention even without that company’s lobbying efforts.29 And even if oil helps explain the United States’ intense interest in removing Iraq’s regime in 2003, we have seen that exerting influence over oil-producing regions serves a variety of interests, not all of them unique to oil companies.

A second consideration to keep in mind is that in many issue areas there are multiple groups pushing in different directions. We already saw that economic considerations can just as readily create groups with an interest in peace as those with an interest in war or intervention. Arms manufacturers spend a great deal of political effort competing with each other for government contracts rather than banding together to promote general foreign policy objectives. In the case of U.S. policy toward the Middle East, pro-Israel sentiments sometimes compete with oil interests that favor closer relations with oil-rich Arab states. The United States has regularly sold advanced military technology to Saudi Arabia, even over the objections of the pro-Israel lobby. The existence of opposing groups and demands can make it much harder for any one group to “capture” the state’s foreign policy.

The final important consideration is to recall, as before, that war is the prod- uct of a bargaining interaction between or among multiple states, not a choice made by a single leader or group. Thus, to evaluate the potential influence of groups that have hawkish interests, we need to revisit the bargaining model.

28. See, for example, Benjamin J. Cohen, The Question of Imperialism (London: Macmillan, 1974).

29. For an argument against the interest-group interpretation of these cases, see Stephen D. Krasner, Defending the National Interest (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978), esp. chap. 8.

166 Chapter 4 Domestic Politics and War

How Do Domestic Interests Affect International Bargaining? How could hawkish actors within a state affect the likelihood of war? The general answer is that domestic interests affect the likelihood of international conflict pri- marily by determining the extent of the state’s ambitions. By influencing the costs and benefits of conflict, such interests can widen or narrow the scope of goods over which the state’s leaders might be willing to wage war; they affect when and how often the state’s foreign policy interests will come into conflict with those of other states; they determine the size of the demands that the state will make and the risks that it is willing to run.

In short, variation in the nature of domestic interests that influence policy mak- ing will increase or decrease the opportunities for conflict. Except in rare circum- stances, however, these interests will not be sufficient to cause war in any given interaction. Thus, the influence of hawkish interests gives states more things they might consider worth fighting over, but these interests are generally not sufficient to explain why bargaining over those goods fails in some cases but not in others.

To illustrate this point, we return in Figure 4.5 to the bargaining model and ask what would happen if the interests of State A changed in response to the influence of hawkish actors. For example, imagine that the object in dispute is a piece of territory with oil in it. In the interaction depicted in the top panel, the government in State A is led by a party whose core supporters are pacifists. As a result, the government con- siders the costs of war over this territory to be rather high, as shown by the fact that State A’s value for war (the portion of the bar to the left of the red dotted line) is far smaller than the share of territory it expects from the outcome of the war.

Recall that the costs of war are measured relative to the value of the good in dispute, so they are large when the human and economic costs of war loom large and/or when the benefit associated with possessing the territory is low. Because the dovish interests that control the state see war as very unattractive, they are highly unlikely to start a crisis over this territory. Only if the status quo distribution of the territory was located at the far left of the line—very far from State A’s ideal point— would the government in State A see any potential benefit from sparking a crisis.

What happens to the international interaction if the dovish leader in State A is replaced by a leader of a party that draws support from oil companies that would profit from State A’s control of the territory? Because of the influence of these actors, the new leader places more weight on the value of the land and less on the costs of war. In terms of our model, the costs of war relative to the value of the good are smaller. The lower panel shows how the value of war changes in the eyes of this hawkish govern- ment. Since the costs of war have gone down, State A’s value for war shifts to the right.

Notice two things about the lower panel in Figure 4.5. First, status quo distri- butions that would have been tolerated by the dovish leader are unacceptable to the hawk. As a result, State A becomes more likely to initiate a crisis, and it will make larger demands on its adversary. Second, even after this shift, a bargaining range, shown in light green, still exists. As before, the costs of war ensure the existence of a set of mutually acceptable bargains.

167Do Countries Fight Wars to Satisf y the Militar y or Special Interest Groups?

This means that absent the information, commitment, or divisibility problems discussed in Chapter 3, there is no reason why the shift from a dovish to a hawkish government should, on its own, lead to a war. However, the shift does create a dan- ger of war that did not exist before. The new government in State A is more will- ing to threaten force to change the status quo. The change in governance increases the state’s demands and creates a risk of conflict where none previously existed. Whether or not this potential conflict will lead to an actual war depends on features of the bargaining interaction, such as how information is distributed and whether the states can credibly commit to live by any deal they reach.

The one exception to this claim arises if there are actors who derive benefits from war that cannot be part of a negotiated settlement, as in the case of diversion- ary conflict. For example, assume that the leader of State A represents arms manu- facturers. If there is a war, they get paid to build weapons and to replace those that are destroyed. Since they get these profits only if there is a war, then it is peace rather than war that these actors find costly. Would the influence of such interests

STATUS QUOS THAT B WILL CHALLENGE

STATUS QUOS THAT B WILL CHALLENGE

COSTS TO B

WAR OUTCOME

B

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A

COSTS TO A AS SEEN BY HAWKISH

GOVERNMENT

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B

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A

COSTS TO A AS SEEN BY DOVISH GOVERNMENT

STATUS QUOS THAT NEITHER WILL CHALLENGE

FIGURE 4.5 Domestic Interests and International Bargaining In the top panel, State A is led by a dovish government and considers the costs of war to be high relative to the value of the good in dispute. In the lower panel, State A is led by a hawkish government and sees the costs of war as less significant, placing more value on the good in dispute. Under hawkish leaders, State A is more likely to challenge the status quo, but a bargaining range still exists.

168 Chapter 4 Domestic Politics and War

change the logic we just outlined? As we saw when considering the diversionary incentive, the answer is yes—but only if the net benefits from war are high enough to offset both states’ costs of war.

Hence, except in rare circumstances, the influence of groups within the state that place high value on the goods that can be acquired through force and/or see little cost to war does not itself ensure that war will happen. When such interests hold sway, they will make the state’s foreign policy more belligerent, in the sense that the state will make larger demands and come into conflict with more states, but such inter- ests alone are not sufficient to cause war in the absence of the strategic dilemmas discussed in Chapter 3. Thus, when we think about how oil interests influence U.S. policy in the Middle East, it is reasonable to say that they explain why there are issues in the region that American leaders are willing to fight over. It is harder to argue that these interests alone explain why crises over them sometimes become wars.

Why Don’t Democracies Fight One Another? For much of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, France and Germany were bitter rivals. France resisted the creation of a unified German state in 1870, and the two countries fought three major wars over the next century: the Franco- Prussian War (1870–71), World War I (1914–18), and World War II (1939–45). Millions died in these wars, and cemeteries in both countries are filled with those who fell in this rivalry. Today, however, France and Germany are close allies, and while they have differences of interest and opinion on important issues, it is almost inconceivable that there could be another war between them.

The turnaround in this relationship coincided with changes in the countries’ political systems, which made them more democratic. France went into the Franco- Prussian War a monarchy, but it emerged with a more democratic system, which has become stronger over time. The change in Germany was even more dramatic. Ruled by a hereditary emperor in the nineteenth century, Germany devolved into a murderous dictatorship under Adolf Hitler in the 1930s. After World War II, however, Germany was divided and occupied by the victorious Allies, and what became West Germany was remade into a democratic country. When East and West Germany were reunified in the 1990s, the reborn German state inherited this democratic constitution.

There were, of course, a number of factors that helped solidify the relationship between these former adversaries after 1945, including the existence of a shared enemy in the Soviet Union; the reassuring presence of a common ally, the United States; and growing economic and financial ties that would make these two states central partners in a European Union. Nevertheless, the emergence of shared democracy helped pave the way for a dramatic shift in how these countries dealt with each other, to the point that war between the two is now unthinkable.

169Why Don’t Democracies Fight One A nother?

Far from being an isolated example, this case is part of a larger phenomenon that scholars and policy makers call the democratic peace. The term refers to a well-established observation that there are few, if any, clear cases of war between mature democratic states. Our choice of words reflects some caveats about this observation. We say “few, if any, clear cases of war” because the strength of the claim depends in part on how one defines democracy and what events one consid- ers to be wars. Since there are some ambiguous cases, there is not a universal con- sensus on whether wars between democratic states are nonexistent or simply rare.30 We say “mature democratic states” because some studies have suggested that coun- tries in the process of becoming democracies do not fit this overall pattern.31 Even taking these qualifications into account, this is still a remarkable observation: over the 200 or so years in which democracies have existed in their modern form, they seem not to have engaged in war with one another—or, at least, they have done so less frequently than we might expect, given the overall frequency of war.

Another noteworthy aspect of this observation is that democracies are not, overall, less war prone than other kinds of states. That is, while they rarely, if ever, fight wars against other democratic states, their overall rate of war participation is roughly the same as that of nondemocratic states.32 This means that although democracies seldom find themselves at war with one another, they are more fre- quently at war with nondemocratic states. Hence, there is something special about the relationship among democracies that does not carry over to their relationships with other kinds of states.

This observation is so striking and important that it has entered into policy dis- cussions in the United States and elsewhere. President George W. Bush argued that democracy promotion should be a central aspect of American policy in the Middle East because “democracies don’t go to war with each other.”33 And during his 2009 speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, President Barack Obama emphasized the connection between peace and democracy in Europe and pointed out that “America has never fought a war against a democracy.”34 This interest in democratic peace has been particularly salient in recent decades, which have seen a remarkable growth in the number of democracies worldwide, as Figure 4.6 shows.

Is this absence of wars among democracies a coincidence, or is there something about democratic institutions that facilitates peaceful relations among states that have them? In what ways might shared democracy influence interstate bargaining?

30. For a discussion of the democratic peace finding, definitional issues, and some cases that raise questions, see Bruce Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), chap. 1.

31. Edward D. Mansfield and Jack Snyder, Electing to Fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go to War (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005).

32. Although there has been some controversy over the issue, this statement reflects the general consensus in the literature. See, for example, Nils Petter Gleditsch and Havard Hegre, “Peace and Democracy: Three Levels of Analysis,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 41 (1997): 283–310.

33. White House, Office of the Press Secretary, “President and Prime Minister Blair Discussed Iraq, Middle East,” White House Press Conference, November 12, 2004, www.whitehouse.gov/news/ releases/2004/11/20041112-5.html.

34. Barack H. Obama, “A Just and Lasting Peace” (Nobel lecture, December 10, 2009), www.nobelprize.org/ nobel_prizes/peace/ laureates/2009/obama-lecture_en.html.

democratic peace The observation that there are few, if any, clear cases of war between mature democratic states.

170 Chapter 4 Domestic Politics and War

What Is Democracy? To answer these questions, we turn to the third leg of our framework: institutions. Domestic institutions determine the rules of political decision making within the state. They govern the relationship between the leadership and the people, and they help determine the extent to which citizens’ interests matter when it comes to war and peace. Although there are many different kinds of political systems, the distinction that has attracted the most attention is that between democratic and nondemocratic systems.

A democracy is a political system in which candidates compete for political office through frequent, fair elections in which a sizable portion of the adult popula- tion can vote. This definition encompasses two major aspects of democracy: the abil- ity of different individuals and groups to compete for political office and the ability of a large portion of the people to participate in the selection process through voting.

Nondemocratic countries, also known as autocracies, fall short of this defini- tion in a variety of ways.35 In some, leaders obtained office through hereditary suc- cession, as in Saudi Arabia, or on the back of a military coup, as happened in Egypt in 2012. In others, such as China, only one political party is permitted to hold power, and competition from other parties is outlawed. Still others might hold elections among multiple parties but restrict competition so that the ruling party is all but certain to win. Such multiparty or electoral authoritarianism is the most common form of nondemocratic system in the world today; examples include Venezuela, Russia, Ethiopia, and Myanmar.36 Map 4.1 on page 172 shows the type of regime in each country at the beginning of 2017.

18201800 1840 1860 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2016 0

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FIGURE 4.6 The Spread of Democracy, 1800–2016

35. Indeed, recent research in international relations has explored the effects of different kinds of nondemocratic governments; see, for example, Jessica L. P. Weeks, Dictators at War and Peace (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014).

36. There is an extensive literature on the nature and role of elections in authoritarian countries; see, for example, Jennifer Gandhi and Ellen Lust- Okar, “Elections under Authoritarianism,” Annual Review of Political Science 12 (June 2009): 403–22.

democracy A political system in which candidates compete for political office through frequent, fair elections in which a sizable portion of the adult population can vote.

autocracy A political system in which an individual or small group exercises power with few constraints and no meaningful competition or participation by the general public.

Figure source: Monty G. Marshall, Ted Robert Gurr, and Keith Jaggers, “Polity IV Project: Political Regime Characteristics and Transitions, 1800-2016,” Center for Systemic Peace, http://www.systemicpeace .org/inscrdata.html (accessed 11/21/17).

171Why Don’t Democracies Fight One A nother?

Another term that often accompanies democracy is liberal, which we use here in its classic sense to refer to a philosophy that emphasizes the value of individual liberty. Most modern democracies are also liberal democracies, because in addi- tion to allowing competition and voting, they have numerous protections for indi- viduals’ civil liberties and political rights, such as rights to free speech, religion, political association, and a free press. Hence, liberal democracies not only choose their leaders by democratic means, but they also impose restrictions on what those elected governments can do by giving citizens rights that cannot be transgressed. We should note that not all democratic countries are liberal, as some have restric- tions on religious or press freedoms, or they give rights to ethnic or religious groups at the expense of individual rights. Indonesia, for example, has competitive and free elections, but it also has laws restricting the activities of civic and religious organi- zations, including a ban on the advocacy of certain ideas.37

With these definitions in place, we turn to the central question: How could democracies—especially mature, liberal democracies—be different when it comes to war and peace? Not surprisingly, the democratic peace observation has gener- ated a great deal of scholarly interest in this question, and there is no single, settled answer. But the framework of this book suggests two broad ways in which domes- tic institutions can affect the likelihood of war: either by influencing the interests of states and their leaders or by influencing the bargaining interaction between and among countries.

Representation, Accountability, and Interests in War and Peace A common argument for the distinctiveness of democracy is rooted in the idea that domestic institutions shape leaders’ interests in war and peace. This argument starts with the observation that the costs of war are paid by society at large but generally not by the leader who makes the decision to wage war. It is the people who lose lives or loved ones on the battlefield, who suffer the economic hardship of wars, and who may have to pay higher taxes to support a war effort. The leader, by contrast, rarely has such direct exposure to the costs of war. This disjunction between the ruler and the ruled is humorously illustrated in the 2001 movie Shrek, when evil Lord Farquaad tells his knights that he is going to send them on a mission to rescue from a fire-breathing dragon a princess whom he wants to marry. Exhorting his men to combat, the prince declares, “Some of you may die, but it’s a sacrifice I am willing to make.”

Over 200 years before this scene was digitally animated, the German philoso- pher Immanuel Kant noted a similar dilemma. Kant wrote in the late eighteenth century, when most countries were ruled by monarchs. For such rulers, he noted, “The easiest thing in the world to do is to declare war.” Kant reasoned:

War does not affect [the ruler’s] table, his hunt, his places of pleasure, his court festivals,

and so on. Thus, he can decide to go to war for the most meaningless of reasons, as if it

37. For an assessment of political and civil rights in Indonesia, see Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2014, http://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2014/indonesia-0#.VCHKsRbTXpA (accessed 09/23/14).

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MAP 4.1 Regime Types This map shows the type of government in each country at the start of 2017. While democracy can be found on every continent, it is widespread in the Americas and Europe, present in parts of Asia, and scarce in Africa and the Middle East. Monarchies and military regimes are quite rare, while most autocratic regimes have limited multiparty competition.

Map source: Regime types in 2012 were sourced from Beatriz Magaloni, Jonathan Chu, and Eric Min. Autocracies of the World, 1950–2012, Version 1.0, Dataset, Stanford University, 2013. For more information on this dataset, see http://cddrl.fsi .stanford.edu/povgov/research/autocracies_of_the_ world_dataset (accessed 01/20/15). Magaloni, Chu, and Min’s coding rules were used to identify countries that had changed types by 2017.

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174 Chapter 4 Domestic Politics and War

were a kind of pleasure party, and he can blithely leave its justification (which decency

requires) to his diplomatic corps, who are always prepared for such exercises.38

In other words, a basic problem in such political systems was that the inter- ests of the ruler and the ruled were not aligned: the ruler enjoyed the benefit of war, while the people paid its costs. In Kant’s view, the solution to this problem was to establish a representative government, one in which the ruler would be account- able to the people: if “the consent of the citizenry is required in order to determine whether or not there will be war, it is natural that they consider all its calamities before committing themselves to so risky a game.”39 In this view, political institu- tions that foster broad representation would serve to align the interests of the ruler and the ruled, making those with the power to decide on war sensitive to the costs that their decisions impose on others.

The primary mechanism through which political institutions influence deci- sions about war and peace is accountability, the ability to punish or reward leaders for their decisions. Even if political leaders do not directly bear the costs of war, they can be punished politically if they make decisions that harm the people or groups on whom they rely to stay in power. In a democratic system, elections and other practices provide a way for citizens to punish leaders for unpopular poli- cies. Democratic leaders thus have to take into account the possibility that failed or costly wars can undermine their political support, jeopardizing their hold on office, as we saw in Figure 4.4. At the same time, by making it easier for voters to make their collective voice heard, electoral institutions weaken the potential influence of small groups that may see concentrated benefits but few costs from waging war. Thus, accountability to voters can raise the political risks of war to an elected leader and ensure representation of broader rather than particularistic interests.

Autocratic leaders may also be held accountable for their actions, but the key actors are different, so the interests that are represented in decision making are dif- ferent. Though they do not face an electorate with real power to replace them, they may still be subject to removal by a “selectorate,” the set of individuals and groups whose support is necessary for a leader to retain office. In nondemocratic systems, this selectorate can be quite small, often involving military, economic, or ethnic elites. Staying in power requires autocrats to prioritize policies that keep these actors satisfied, privileging particularistic interests over the public good. Autocrats are also protected by the fact that the actions needed to remove them, such as a revolution or coup, are risky to undertake. Thus, as long as members of the selectorate are suffi- ciently protected, paid off, or afraid, the leader can be politically insulated from the costs of war.40 For example, after losing the first Persian Gulf War in 1991, Saddam Hussein was able to hold on to power, even in the face of popular revolts, because he was able to retain the loyalty of his elite military units and core supporters.

38. Immanuel Kant, “To Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch,” in Perpetual Peace and Other Essays on Politics, History, and Morals, trans. Ted Humphrey (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1983), 113.

39. Kant, “To Perpetual Peace,” 113.

40. See Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Alastair Smith, Randolph M. Siverson, and James D. Morrow, The Logic of Political Survival (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003).

accountability The ability to punish or reward leaders for the decisions they make, as when frequent, fair elections enable voters to hold elected officials responsible for their actions by granting or withholding access to political office.

175Why Don’t Democracies Fight One A nother?

In this view, then, democracies are different because their leaders face system- atically higher costs from war than do nondemocratic leaders. Given an equal prob- ability of victory in war, a democratic leader values war less than the nondemocratic leader because the political implications of losing are worse. Given equal human and material costs of war, a democratic leader values war less, because that leader is more likely to be held accountable for those costs.

Although this logic is compelling, we must point out that losing office is not the worst or only consequence of losing a war. When democratic leaders lose an election, they can generally retire in good comfort, collect their pension, perhaps go on the lecture circuit, and even continue to participate in politics if they want. Nondemocratic leaders, by contrast, often find that life after losing office is not so pleasant. Because their removal often occurs through violent means, such as a coup or revolution, nondemocratic leaders often suffer additional punishment above and beyond simply losing office.

For the Russian tsar in 1917, the disastrous showing in World War I not only contributed to his removal from office, but he and his family were executed at the hands of the revolutionaries. The German emperor similarly faced popular upris- ings in the wake of his country’s defeat in that war, prompting him to abdicate his throne and flee into exile. And the leader of the military junta that led Argentina into the Falklands War was later tried for mishandling the war and spent five years in prison. Indeed, death, exile, and imprisonment are common punishments meted out to autocratic leaders who run afoul of their people. This suggests that the rela- tionship between the political institutions and the costs of losing a war may not be as straightforward as the Kantian logic suggests.41

How would this argument about accountability explain the democratic peace? If, in fact, war is costlier for democratic leaders, the likelihood of war could be influenced in several ways. As we have seen, an increase in the costs of war dimin- ishes a state’s willingness to contest the status quo, reducing the opportunities for conflict. If there are fewer things that a state is willing to fight for, the scope for it to come into violent conflict with other states decreases. Moreover, the logic of political accountability suggests that democratic leaders should be more selective about starting wars; that is, they should be willing to wage war when their chances of victory are sufficiently high. Leaders in nondemocratic political systems may be more willing to gamble on wars in which they have a low chance of winning. This logic would lower the probability of war between two democratic states because in such interactions it is unlikely that both leaders would simultaneously judge their chances in war to be high enough.42

But how could this argument explain the fact that, overall, democratic states are just as war prone as other states, meaning that they are particu- larly likely to fight wars against nondemocracies? A possible answer lies in the

41. Goemans, War and Punishment.

42. See Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, James D. Morrow, Randolph M. Siverson, and Alastair Smith, “An Institutional Explanation for the Democratic Peace,” American Political Science Review 93 (December 1999): 791–807.

176 Chapter 4 Domestic Politics and War

observation that constraints on the use of force can make democratic states appear to be tempting tar- gets to their nondemocratic foes. Recall how Saddam Hussein dismissed U.S. deterrent threats prior to the Persian Gulf War: “Yours is a society which cannot accept 10,000 dead in one battle.”43 Although he did not say so explicitly, this statement seems to reflect a sense that American leaders would find war polit- ically too costly to fight. This belief made Hussein more likely to resist U.S. efforts to coerce him out of Kuwait.

Similarly, Japanese leaders who decided to bomb Pearl Harbor in 1941 did so, in part, under the mistaken impression that the American public would respond by opposing a war and would there- fore constrain President Franklin Roosevelt’s ability to respond. In this view, the constraints that make democracies peaceful in their relations with one another can have the opposite effect when democ- racies square off against less constrained adversar- ies, who may seek to exploit democracies by making larger demands and discounting their threats, thereby increasing the risk of war.44

Democracy and the Bargaining Interaction Another explanation for democratic peace focuses on how democracy influences bargaining interactions between states, increasing the chances that a peaceful set- tlement will be found. One version of this argument focuses on the ability of dem- ocratic states to overcome information problems. Recall from Chapter 3 that states may fail to find mutually beneficial bargains if they have incomplete information about the military and political factors that determine their value for war. Resolving this informational problem is challenging because states have an incentive to conceal or misrepresent their information in the hopes of getting a better deal.

There are several reasons to think that democratic institutions and processes make it easier to overcome informational problems. First, democratic political systems are much more transparent than nondemocratic systems because demo- cratic processes are more open and observable. For example, major policy decisions are frequently subject to public and/or legislative debate. A relatively free press can disseminate information about what decision makers are thinking, the level of popular support for war, and even details about the state’s military capabilities.

43. See Chapter 3, footnote 18.

44. Indeed, evidence suggests that conflicts between democracies and dictators are usually initiated by the latter; see Dan Reiter and Allan C. Stam, “Identifying the Culprit: Democracy, Dictatorship, and Dispute Initiation,” American Political Science Review 97(May 2003): 333–37.

In nondemocratic states, like Venezuela, a small group of leaders, sometimes including military officials, typically makes foreign policy behind closed doors, often limiting what can be reported to the media and the public. This lack of transparency can make it harder for foreign states to gauge the state’s capabilities and resolve.

177Why Don’t Democracies Fight One A nother?

Opposition parties can freely voice approval of or dissent from the government’s actions, thereby revealing the strength (or weakness) of the govern- ment’s political support within the country. Such practices exist primarily to ensure that the public can scrutinize what its leaders are doing—an essential element of democratic accountability. A by-product of such openness is that foreign states can also glean relevant information about a democratic state’s capabilities and resolve.

This is not to suggest that democratic states hide nothing—either from their own people or from outside eyes. Rather, the point is that democratic states are rel- atively more transparent than most nondemocratic sys- tems, in which decision making occurs without broad participation, there are restrictions on what can be reported in the media, opposition groups are actively suppressed, and disagreements within the governing group are rarely aired in public. Thus, all other things being equal, there is less uncertainty about the capabil- ities and resolve of democratic states.45

In addition, democracies may be better able to send credible signals in crises. Recall from Chapter 3 that when states have private information, communi- cating their resolve in a credible manner often requires that they take costly actions— actions that a resolute state would be willing to take but an irresolute one would not. One way they can do so is by making statements or taking actions from which it would be difficult to back down. As we have seen, such threats are costly if leaders expect to lose domestic political support for failing to follow through on them.

A study of U.S. public opinion demonstrates this effect. One group of sur- vey respondents was presented with a hypothetical scenario in which a presi- dent threatened to defend another country from invasion and then failed to do so. Another group was presented with a similar scenario, in which the president failed to defend another country but had never threatened to do so. When asked to assess the president’s actions, respondents in the first group gave the president a lower approval rating than the rating given by those in the second group—a result that is consistent with the idea that it is politically costly to back down from a threat.46

If backing down creates public disapproval, then there is reason to think that democracy magnifies the political importance of this effect. Mechanisms of accountability mean that public disapproval is more likely to result in some kind of

45. Kenneth A. Schultz, Democracy and Coercive Diplomacy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). For a dissenting view on the effects of democratic transparency, see Bernard I. Finel and Kristin M. Lord, “The Surprising Logic of Transparency,” International Studies Quarterly 43 (1999): 315–39.

46. Michael Tomz, “Domestic Audience Costs in International Relations: An Experimental Approach,” International Organization 61, no. 4 (Fall 2007): 821–40.

Policy making in democratic states, like Canada, often involves public and legislative debate, resulting in a more open and observable process. Here, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau takes questions from legislators in the Canadian Parliament. This greater transparency makes it easier for other states to accurately assess the democratic state’s capabilities and resolve.

178 Chapter 4 Domestic Politics and War

punishment for the democratic leader, in the form of either diminished support for his agenda or a greater chance of losing office in the next election. Nondemocratic leaders, by contrast, are more politically insulated from whatever disapproval their actions might engender. If so, then public threats made by democratic leaders are more informative because they are costlier to make. This suggests that institutions of accountability make it easier for democratic leaders to credibly communicate their resolve with lower levels of escalation.47

While the previous argument suggests that democracies can make threats more effectively when they bargain, many scholars subscribe to a more ambitious argument that shared democracy changes the nature of the bargaining interaction altogether. In this view, democratic countries are unlikely to fight wars because they adhere to norms of mutual respect and nonviolence in their dealings with one another.48 Relations among democratic states are fundamentally different from those among other kinds of countries because they regard each other as part of a community of states that share liberal values. This identity leads to greater levels of trust and more emphasis on resolving disputes through peaceful concessions rather than through threats of violence. By contrast, this courtesy is not extended to autocracies, which are seen as threatening and untrustworthy.

Several observations are consistent with this view. First, this logic helps explain why democratic states are peaceful with each other but are not more peaceful in general. While fellow democracies enjoy a presumption of friendship, autocrats are treated with suspicion and mistrust. In the extreme, autocrats may be seen as legitimate targets for regime change, as the United States argued in the case of Iraq under Saddam Hussein. Second, there is evidence that when democratic states get into disputes with one another, they are more likely to find a compromise solution and to bring in third parties to help manage the conflict peacefully.49

Finally, there is evidence that the publics in at least some democracies are less likely to support war against fellow democratic states. A survey of people in the United States and the United Kingdom showed that support for a hypothetical military strike against a state pursuing nuclear weapons was significantly lower if

47. James D. Fearon, “Domestic Political Audiences and the Escalation of International Disputes,” American Political Science Review 88 (September 1994): 577–92. There is some controversy over whether democracies are really special in this respect or whether some kinds of autocrats may also be able to tie their hands by invoking audience costs. For example, Jessica Weiss argues that China manipulates nationalist protests as a way to signal its resolve in crises with Japan and the United States; see Jessica Weiss, Powerful Patriots: Nationalist Protest in China’s Foreign Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). There is also a robust debate on whether domestic audience costs play an important role in the outcomes of international crises. For a critical view, see Jack Snyder and Erica D. Borghard, “The Cost of Empty Threats: A Penny, Not a Pound,” American Political Science Review 105 (August 2011): 437–56. For evidence that democracies are not particularly effective at making credible threats, see Alexander B. Downes and Todd S. Sechser, “The Illusion of Democratic Credibility,” International Organization 66 (2012): 457–89.

48. This discussion synthesizes several subtly different articulations of this idea. Main ones include Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace, 30–38; Michael W. Doyle, “Liberalism and World Politics,” American Political Science Review 80, no. 4 (December 1986): 1151–69; and Thomas Risse-Kappen, “Democratic Peace—Warlike Democracies? A Social Constructivist Interpretation of the Liberal Argument,” European Journal of Political Science 1 (1995): 491–517.

49. See, for example, Michael Mousseau, “Democracy and Compromise in Militarized Interstate Disputes, 1816–1992,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 42 (1998): 210–30; and William J. Dixon, “Democracy and Management of International Conflict,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 37 (1993): 42–68.

179Why Don’t Democracies Fight One A nother?

respondents were told that the target was a democracy. People in these countries tended to view other democracies as less threatening and had greater moral reser- vations about attacking them.50

All of this evidence is consistent with the idea that bargaining among demo- cratic states is guided by norms that favor compromise over the use of force, which could explain the marked absence of war between such states.

Does Democracy Cause Peace? The preceding arguments all suggest that democratic institutions are the reason for the peace that has prevailed among states that possess them, either by altering leaders’ incentives to wage war or facilitating the bargaining interaction.. There is a well-known adage, however, that “correlation does not imply causation,” which in this context means that just because democracy and peace go together, we can- not automatically conclude that democracy causes peace. Why might that be? First, there could be some other factor that both causes states to become democratic and causes them not to fight. Second, it could be that the reverse is true—that is, that peace causes democracy. And third, there could be some other factor that causes peace among states that just so happened to be democracies. All three of these arguments have been made in the scholarly literature. We briefly introduce these arguments here both to show the richness of the debate and to stimulate thinking about what might actually be going on.

The relationship between democracy and peace could be a product of the fact that both democracy and peace share a common cause. What could this common cause be? One possibility is economic development. There is a strong tendency for democracy to emerge and survive in states that are relatively wealthy; in poorer countries, by contrast, democratic institutions are more likely to break down. While there is no general tendency for wealth alone to promote peace between coun- tries, there is evidence consistent with a “capitalist peace” among countries with free-market economies.51

Another possibility is that peace causes democracy—that democracy is more likely to emerge in regions where countries already have peaceful relations with one another.52 A menacing international environment and threats to the state’s territory tend to empower the central government and the military, making it hard for democracy to take root. Thus, democracy is more likely to emerge after states have settled outstanding rivalries and territorial disputes with their neighbors. If so, then it is peaceful borders that make democracies, not vice versa.53

50. Michael R. Tomz and Jessica L. P. Weeks, “Public Opinion and the Democratic Peace,” American Political Science Review 107 (November 2013): 849–65.

51. Erik Gartzke, “The Capitalist Peace,” American Journal of Political Science 51 (2007): 166–91; Michael Mousseau, “The Democratic Peace Unraveled: It’s the Economy,” International Studies Quarterly 57 (March 2013): 187–97.

52. William R. Thompson, “Democracy and Peace: Putting the Cart before the Horse?” International Organization 50 (Winter 1996): 141–74.

53. Douglas M. Gibler, The Territorial Peace: Borders, State Development, and International Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

180 Chapter 4 Domestic Politics and War

Finally, it has been argued that democratic peace is really a product of shared strategic interests among democratic states that have nothing to do with their domestic institutions.54 From the late nineteenth century on, the main democratic countries were united against common threats, first against Germany and then against the Soviet Union. During the Cold War, most democracies had similar stra- tegic interests because of a common perceived threat from the Soviet Union and the communist bloc (see Chapter 5).

Such common interests reduced the opportunities for conflict between dem- ocratic states and provided a strong incentive to resolve peacefully any conflicts that did arise. In addition to fighting with each other less often, democratic states in these periods also tended to form alliances with each other—an indication that they perceived common strategic interests. In this view, then, the bonds among democratic states arise not from their institutions or sense of shared identity, but from shared threats that produced common interests. Note that, to be compelling, this argument requires that the perception of threat is independent of the political institutions, rather than being shaped by them, as the survey evidence cited in the preceding discussion suggests.

In short, the democratic peace raises tantalizing questions for both scholars and policy makers, and we are likely to be debating this issue for some time. (See “Controversy” on p. 182.)

Conclusion: What if All the World Were Democratic? When diplomats and state leaders come to the bargaining table with one another, they inevitably bring a great deal of baggage from their home countries. The inter- ests that state representatives advance in international negotiations are themselves a function of interests, interactions, and institutions within the state. Political lead- ers may care about what is best for their country, but they also care about staying in office. As a result, they must think about how their foreign policy choices will impact the interests of important domestic constituents such as the military, orga- nized interest groups, and in some cases, the general public.

When these actors have a stake in the outcome of international bargaining, and when they have the strategic and/or institutional resources to punish or reward the leader, then their interests will be represented at the bargaining table. In particular, when groups with hawkish interests have superior organization and resources, they can push the state toward greater international ambition and thus a greater risk of war. As we have seen, there are times when military organizations and economic or ethnic interest groups have both the interests and the ability to push foreign policy in such a direction.

54. Joanne Gowa, Ballots and Bullets: The Elusive Democratic Peace (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999).

181Conclusion: What if All the World Were Democratic?

In contrast, when interactions and institutions empower those who bear the costs of war, they can exert a pacifying effect at the international level. Economic actors that benefit from international commerce and investment may lobby for peaceful relations with profitable partners. Representative institutions give voice to the people who bear the costs of war, thereby weakening the influence of concentrated interests that might promote conflict for their own reasons. Free, fair, and frequent elections provide a relatively low-cost mechanism for people to punish leaders who engage in failed or costly wars. The relative openness and transparency of democratic political processes can reduce informational and commitment problems that can cause bargaining to fail. Although these features may make democracies tempting targets for autocratic foes, they also help account for the relative rarity of war among democratic states.

Does this mean that a world full of democratic states would be a world without war? Certainly, the evidence to date is encouraging, although not definitive. There are at least two reasons to be cautious. First, although the number of democracies in the world has generally increased over time, the spread of democracy has experienced reversals. There have been several periods during which democracy has broken down, particularly the 1930s (leading to the low point in 1940) and the 1970s. During these periods, economic and international upheaval caused some democratic systems to fail.

It is worth remembering that Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany through relatively democratic institutions—which he then subverted before embarking on his campaign of foreign expansion. Hence, democratic systems have given birth to forces that undermined democracy and engaged in aggressive foreign policies. Even if there are no cases of war between two democratic states, there have been wars between democracies and states that were once democratic.

A second reason for caution centers on the interests that will come to be repre- sented by the spread of democracy. Recall that democratic institutions make leaders more sensitive to the interests of the citizenry. Kant, and those who follow in his tradition, assumed that citizens are generally cautious, since it is they who bear the costs of war. But what if the public is motivated by nationalist, ethnocentric, or even genocidal ideas? If fear and hatred of a rival are intense, accountability may induce belligerence rather than caution, and leaders may fear domestic political retribution for being overly “soft” toward the nation’s ethnic or religious enemies.55 The costs of war might, as a result, be offset by the political costs of compromise.

We already saw in the case of India and Pakistan that the fact that both were democracies in the spring of 1999 did not prevent a war from breaking out between them. (See “What Shaped Our World?” on p. 159.) A history of conflict and blood- shed, fueled by religious differences, has created a great deal of enmity between not just the governments but also the people in these states. Indeed, the Kargil War was popular on both sides; in Pakistan, people were disappointed only that their country did not prevail.

Hence, the international effects of democracy’s spread may very well depend not only on the institutions that take root, but also on the interests of those they empower.

55. For evidence that leaders may be punished for making concessions to a rival, see Michael Colaresi, “When Doves Cry: International Rivalry, Unreciprocated Cooperation, and Leadership Turnover,” American Journal of Political Science 48 (2004): 555–70.

182

On June 30, 2012, Mohamed Morsi (below right) was sworn in as the first democratically elected leader in Egypt’s 5,000-year history. The emergence of a democratic gov- ernment in Egypt followed a succession of demonstrations and protest movements throughout the Middle East start- ing in January 2011, which brought down or challenged long-serving authoritarian governments not only in Egypt, but also in Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, Syria, Jordan, and Bahrain. But hopes that this so-called Arab Spring would lead to more democratic and less repressive governments in the region were disappointed, as fundamental political reform in Egypt and other countries largely failed to mate- rialize. After a year in power, Morsi faced a renewed wave of popular protest, and the Egyptian military took over in a coup d’état in July 2013. A year later, General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who had led the coup, was elected president in an election lacking real competition, and his government has clamped down on dissent, jailing political opponents and journalists.

For the United States and other Western powers, the swing in Egypt from authori- tarianism to democracy and back to authoritarianism cre- ated a foreign policy dilemma. On the one hand, American and other Western policy mak- ers often stress the impor-

tance of promoting democratic institutions around the world because doing so leads to governments that are responsive to their citizens’ needs and respectful of their human rights. Moreover, the democratic peace observa- tion suggests that democratic states have more peaceful interactions. On the other hand, the majority of people in a country may have interests that are hostile to or incompatible with those of the United States and its allies. In such cases, it can be easier to deal with an autocratic leader who is free to ignore those views. In other words,

policy makers can be torn between liking democratic insti- tutions but not the interests of those empowered by such institutions.

In the case of Egypt, this tension arises from the fact that many Egyptians do not like the United States and are hostile to Israel, a key U.S. ally. Under President Hosni Mubarak, Morsi’s predecessor, Egypt had good relations with both countries on the basis of a 1979 peace treaty with Israel. In the ensuing years, Egypt became a strategic partner of the United States and a major recipient of U.S. aid. But the treaty was never popular among Egyptians, and American aid was seen as propping up a repressive government. Under the autocratic Mubarak, this popular opposition could be ignored or suppressed. The transition to democracy and the election of Morsi threatened this arrangement.

A poll taken in May 2013 showed that 63 percent of Egyptians wanted to annul the treaty with Israel and only 16 percent had a positive view of the United States.a Not only was there a danger that a more responsive govern- ment would be more hostile to Israel, but Morsi was also the leader of a party, the Muslim Brotherhood, that seeks

Should We Prefer a Friendly Dictator or a Hostile Democracy?

CON T ROV E R S Y

Applying the Concepts

Mohamed Morsi speaks at a rally in Cairo.

183

to eliminate Western influences from the Arab world. During the Muslim Brotherhood’s brief period of rule, Egyptian relations with Israel were strained. By contrast, the Sisi government has largely restored the strategic partnership.

How should countries that espouse democratic values manage this dilemma between institutions that are attrac- tive but interests that are hostile? Should the United States continue to send military and economic aid to Egypt’s military government, or should it push for the restoration of democracy?

One view is that a country’s security interests out- weigh any commitment to democracy. From the perspec- tive of U.S. policy makers, democratic institutions are desirable in parts of the world where people have similar interests to America’s, but they are dangerous where they empower people with very different interests and ideas. While this is not an ethically appealing argument, it is the position that has historically shaped U.S. policy. In the case of Egypt, the United States initially held back aid and mil- itary sales after the coup but later released them. Presi- dent Obama even refused to label Morsi’s ouster a coup, since doing so would have triggered a U.S. law barring aid to regimes that came to power that way.

The decision to prioritize security interests over democracy in this case was not new. During the Cold War, the United States feared that elections would empower communist parties that would then become allies of the Soviet Union; military dictatorships, though brutal to their own people, made more reliable partners. Thus, in several countries—Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Chile (1973)— the United States conspired in the overthrow of demo- cratic governments by military dictators. Supporters of this position also argue that the elected leaders who were overthrown were likely to become dictators themselves. Morsi’s opponents, for example, questioned whether the Muslim Brotherhood was committed to democracy or human rights. In fact, the military coup enjoyed a great deal of popular support because of dissatisfaction with the Morsi government and constitutional reforms that it had pushed.

The most common argument against placing security interests above democracy is based on moral consid- erations: people have a right to a government that is

responsive to their interests and respects their civil lib- erties. By installing or supporting dictators, the United States is complicit in the human rights abuses commit- ted by those regimes. In addition, one could argue that, in the long run, U.S. interests are best served by promoting democracy, even where it is inconvenient to do so in the short run.

By supporting authoritarian regimes like Egypt under Mubarak, the United States has stoked anti-American sentiment and contributed to the hostility of Egypt’s people. In some cases, this hostility has fed the ranks of terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda that have targeted the United States and its interests. In this view, the United States would be safer in the long run if it did not prop up autocratic regimes in the region and gave more support to the self-determination of people there.

a. Pew Research Center, “Egyptians Increasingly Glum,” May 16, 2013, www.pewglobal.org/2013/05/16/egyptians-increasingly-glum.

Thinking Analytically 1. Why might the United States care what kind of

government Egypt has? Do democratic states have an interest in promoting democracy abroad, or does the preference for democracy only reflect a certain kind of values?

2. What are the risks of pressuring an allied government to make democratic reforms?

A woman casts her ballot in the 2014 Egyptian presidential election that brought Abdel Fatah al-Sisi into office.