30 Items

U.S. Army Soldiers share tactics and training with Nigerian Army Soldiers, Nigeria, February 8, 2018.

Capt. James Sheehan, U.S. Army

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

The Cult of the Persuasive: Why U.S. Security Assistance Fails

    Author:
  • Rachel Tecott Metz
| Winter 2022/23

Why does the U.S. Army rely on persuasion to influence military partners to improve their forces despite repeated failures that undermine U.S. foreign policy goals? The army prioritizes its role as a fighting force, not an advisory group. U.S. leaders have developed an ideology—the cult of the persuasive—to advance army bureaucratic interests.

Women parade in blankets to simulate the “on-the-blanket” prisoners held in H-Blocks at the Maze Prison in Belfast, Northern Ireland in April 1981.

AP Photo

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

Noncombat Participation in Rebellion: A Gendered Typology

    Author:
  • Meredith Loken
| Summer 2022

A new conceptual typology of participation in rebellion identifies four dimensions along which individuals are involved in noncombat labor: logistics, outreach, governance, and community management. These duties are gendered in ways that often make women’s experiences and opportunities uniquely advantageous for rebel organizations.

Zimbabwe Prime Minister Robert Mugabe attended an election rally near Harare, in July 1985.

AP Photo

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

Insurgent Armies: Military Obedience and State Formation after Rebel Victory

| Winter 2021/22

When winning rebels face intense security threats during civil wars, rebel field commanders are more likely to remain obedient during war-to-peace transitions because they have less incentive to challenge newly installed rulers and less capacity to mobilize supporters outside the postwar military hierarchy.

A leftist combatant of the FMLN stands guard as a U.N. helicopter lands carrying guerrilla commanders in San Jose Las Flores, Jan. 22, 1992.

AP Photo/Luis Romero

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

A Farewell to Arms? Election Results and Lasting Peace after Civil War

| Winter 2021/22

An analysis of new data on postwar election results and remilitarization finds that losing elections does not drive belligerents to remilitarize. Instead, remilitarization is often determined by citizens’ ability to accurately understand and vote according to the postwar military balance of power.

Ugandan police and other security forces chase people off the streets to avoid unrest after all public transport was banned for two weeks to halt the spread of the new coronavirus.

AP Photo/Ronald Kabuubi

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

Opportunistic Repression: Civilian Targeting by the State in Response to COVID-19

    Authors:
  • Donald Grasse
  • Melissa Pavlik
  • Hilary Matfess
  • Travis B. Curtice
| Fall 2021

Opportunistic repression arises when states use crises to suppress the political opposition. An examination of the relationship between COVID-19 shutdown policies and state violence against civilians in Africa, including and a subnational case study of Uganda, tests this theory.

Black Americans register to vote in the July 4 Georgia Democratic Primary in Atlanta, Ga., on May 3, 1944. Registrations are increasing in Atlanta as black schools are giving instructions to students in ballot casting procedure.

AP Photo

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

White Supremacy, Terrorism, and the Failure of Reconstruction in the United States

| Summer 2021

White Southerners opposed to Reconstruction used violence to undermine Black political power and force uncommitted white Southerners to their side. Although structural factors made it harder for the U.S. government to suppress this violence, a series of policy failures prompted Reconstruction’s failure and generations of injustice.

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a video call with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, June 30, 2020. Shoigu reported to Putin that the Defense Ministry plans to complete clinical tests of a coronavirus vaccine next month. (Alexei Druzhinin, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

AP Photo/Alexei Druzhinin

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

Putin, Putinism, and the Domestic Determinants of Russian Foreign Policy

    Author:
  • Michael McFaul
| Fall 2020

Why did Russia’s relations with the West shift from cooperation a few decades ago to a new era of confrontation today? Tracing the causal influence of domestic determinants—individuals (President Vladimir Putin), ideas (Putinism), and institutions (autocracy)—reveals Putin’s significant influence in the making of Russian foreign policy.

In this photo taken on Wednesday, March 28, 2018, members of the Kurdish internal security forces stand on their vehicle in front of a giant poster showing portraits of fighters killed fighting against the Islamic State group, in Manbij, north Syria. Manbij, a mixed Arab and Kurdish town of nearly 400,000, was liberated from Islamic State militants in 2016 by the YPG fighters with backing from U.S-led coalition airstrikes. With Turkey's threats, the town has become the axle for U.S. policy in Syria, threate

(AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

The Political Power of Proxies: Why Nonstate Actors Use Local Surrogates

| Spring 2020

Unlike state sponsors, which value proxies primarily for their military utility, nonstate sponsors use proxies mainly for their perceived political value. An analysis of three case studies—al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, the People’s Protection Units in Syria, and Hezbollah in Lebanon—illustrates this argument.