Civilians, Soldiers, and Strife: Domestic Sources of International Aggression

Civilians, Soldiers, andStrife 1 Kurt Dassel Domestic Sources of International Aggression D o militaries provoke crises and wars to protect their organizational interests, or are their ends better served by avoiding such confrontations? Does internal strife encourage a country’s leaders to pursue aggression beyond its borders, or to behave more cautiously on the international stage?Despitemuch research,scholarscontinue to reach different answers to these questions. Proponents of militarist theories of war contend that the military’s organizational interests are generally served by actual, or threatened, use of their forces; hence these organizations tend to support belligerent foreign policies. Critics counter this assertion, noting that war can be very damaging to military organization,and that officers frequently counsel against international adventurism. Advocates of diversionary theories of war argue that when political elites are confronted with internal strife, they are tempted to provoke external conflicts in order to unite the country behind their leadership. Skeptics charge that when a country is divided internally, its leaders will try to avoid creating additional problems abroad. These two theories are among the most common domestic-level explanations of the causes of war. They are also policy relevant, given the prominent political role of the military and the potential for upheaval in countries such as Russia, China, and North Korea. Nevertheless, despite the theoretical and practical importance of these theories, we still do not know when soldiers and domestic strife will provoke war and when they will promote peace. Militarist and diversionary theories of war are usually treated separately; however, in this article I show that they are useful complements. A diversionary approach shows that a particular type of domestic strife, what I call The author is a graduate of Columbia University and was recently a john M . O h postdoctoral fellow in International Security. He is currently a lecturer at Harvard University. I am grateful for helpful comments from David Baldwin, Richard Betts, Rachel Bronson, Michael Desch, Daniel Drezner, Timothy Frye, JeffreyLegro, John Matthews, Helen Milner, Eric Reinhards, Dani Reiter, Steve Rosen, Jack Snyder, the participants of the 1996-97 Olin Institute Seminar on International Security,and an anonymous reviewer. I am also thankful for financialassistance from the Jennings Randolph Fellowship Program at the United States Institute of Peace, and from the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at the Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. fnternntionnl Security, Vol. 23, No. 1 (Summer 1998),pp. 107-140 0 1998by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 107 International Security 23:l 1 108 "contested institutions"-a situation in which powerful groups disagree about the rules of the political gamemakes the military willing and able to use force either at home or abroad to protect its interests. My analysis of military organizations suggests that the military prefers to maintain its interests by using force internally. If, however, the domestic use of force will divide the military against itself, then the military will protect its interests by pursuing diversionary aggression abroad. My argument makes several contributions. First, it advances the debate over whether military parochialism and domestic strife encourage war or peace by identifying hypotheses that can predict when one or the other of these outcomes will obtain. Second, it is applicable to any country with contested political institutions, be it a great power or a third world country. Third, it helps reconcile the comparative politics view of the military with the international relations view. When the military's organizational interests are threatened , comparativists tend to expect it to respond by launching a coup (or similar behavior), whereas international relations scholars usually expect it to respond with external aggression. The argument here draws on both the comparativist and international relations literatures to explain when the military will protect its organizational interests by using force at home, and when it will do so by using force abroad. Finally, this work is policy relevant because it helps distinguish status quo powers from revisionist ones. Militariesbent on using force abroad to protect their parochial interests are not particularly concerned with obtaining limited foreign policy goals, such as acquiring territory . Rather, they are seeking to provoke a foreign threat for the sake...