Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: From the late 1970s, nuclear war no longer seemed to be an option for either Washington or Moscow, and the arms race was transformed into a competition of conventional force multipliers and innovative military concepts. Western doctrines, based upon scientific-technological developments, capitalized on precision guided munitions for destroying Soviet echelons deep in the rear. The search by Soviet military theoreticians for new methods of warfare to counteract the West, stimulated the debate over the Military-Technical Revolution (MTR) ? a conceptualization of the changing nature of warfare under the impact of the emerging technologies. Unlike the West, which focused on the narrow implications of the weapons in question, the Soviet conceptualizations regarding the MTR claimed that the new range of innovations constituted a fundamental discontinuity, which would substantially change the operational vision of the nature of war. Following almost a decade of Western conceptual myopia, the Soviet MTR vision was adopted and adapted by the US, designated as the Revolution in Military Affairs and disseminated to modern armies all over the world.Although, this conceptual confrontation produced breakthroughs in military thought, provided a striking example of rivals' adaptive learning and illustrated the diffusion of military ideas from West to East and back again, little attention has been devoted to it in the professional literature. The research in this field has failed to address crucial questions such as: How can one explain the different ways in which military innovations, based on similar technologies, developed in different countries? How does conceptual military knowledge diffuse through the international system? Why did the Soviets prevail qualitatively over the West in conceptualizing military-technological realities? Why did it take the US defense community close to a decade to realize the correctness of Soviet assumptions?Utilizing declassified Soviet sources in tandem with American archival materials, this paper seeks to bridge the gap between the significance of this conceptual military interaction, on the one hand, and the inadequacy of the academic debate about how it actually took place on the other. The paper argues that although the Americans were the first to incorporate state of the art technologies into the new concept of operations, the Soviets eclipsed them in realizing the revolutionary essence embodied in the military-technological shifts. Only in the early 1990s, by analyzing how American military power was reflected in Soviet eyes during the previous decade, were US strategists fully able to comprehend the significance of what they had produced. The paper elaborates on theories of 'strategic culture' in order to suggest a plausible explanation for the vastly different intellectual approaches of the West and East.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Much of the literature on military effectiveness assumes that there is a single trajectory of improvement in the quality of military forces. However, there is actually substantial variation in the way that militaries are organized, equipped, and trained. Different military formats (a term introduced by Samuel Finer) are probably more or less suited for different missions, and their effectiveness also probably depends on the military format chosen by the adversary. Consequently, the definition of military effectiveness should be applied in a more nuanced fashion than it has been. Moreover, endowments of labor, capital, and technology should affect the ease with which a country can mobilize to fight in different military formats – for example, labor-abundant countries should find it easier to adopt mass-mobilization military formats. The domestic institutional environment should likewise influence the choice of military format – for example, some institutions are better suited to the mass production of particular military equipment (suggesting capital-intensive military formats), while others are better suited to the development of limited numbers of innovative, high-quality forces (suggesting a technology-intensive military format). Ultimately, countries’ choices of military format should be constrained by the strategic environment (the need for political-military integration) and by the cost of each format.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Scholars interested in the link between economic interests
and national security have asked whether trade follows the flag.
Studies in this vein tend to examine the causal relationship between
trade flows and alliances or conflictual events. While informative,
this formulation of economic interests neglects a vital--and extremely
significant--aspect of US economic power: financial capital. In this
paper we use a gravity model of US financial flows--flows of portfolio
investment, foreign direct investment and bank lending--and augment it
with measures of US overseas military commitments. This allows us to
examine whether countries that open their doors to US troops also
become more attractive to US overseas investment. We are also able to
investigate the converse: whether overseas investment plays a role in
attracting US troops. Using panel data from 1950 to the present we
determine whether the military follows the money or vice
versa.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Why do certain militaries comply with government orders to use force on demonstrators during political crises while others do not? This is the central question of this paper which seeks to explain the conditions under which armed forces are likely to be subordinate or insubordinate to orders to shoot protestors.
I test three propositions in this study. The first applies principal-agent models and suggests that militaries are likely to be subordinate to orders to use force on domestic opposition if governments possess the institutional capacity to monitor and deter errant behavior within the armed forces. The second contends that the degree of military subordination is contingent on the existence of an organizational culture that prescribes such actions. The third proposition suggests that inter-factional conflict within a military organization leads to the insubordination of government orders to use force against demonstrators. I test these propositions by examining military actions in Thailand 1973 and Indonesia 1998.
I argue, that of the three propositions, the inter-factional competition hypothesis best explains the extent of military compliance with orders to shoot on domestic political opposition. The inter-factional conflict hypothesis consistently explains the variance on the dependent variable (the level of military subordination) in the cases while the other two models fared less well.