Caitlin Talmadge

Closing Time: Assessing the Iranian Threat to the Strait of Hormuz

How might Iran retaliate in the aftermath of a limited Israeli or U.S. strike? The most economically devastating of Irans potential responses would be closure of the Strait of Hormuz. According to open-source order of battle data, as well as relevant analogies from military history and GIS maps, Iran does possess significant littoral warfare capabilities, including mines, antiship cruise missiles, and land-based air defense. If Iran were able to properly link these capabilities, it could halt or impede traffic in the Strait of Hormuz for a month or more. U.S. attempts to reopen the waterway likely would escalate rapidly into sustained, large-scale air and naval operations during which Iran could impose significant economic and military costs on the United Stateseven if Iranian operations were not successful in truly closing the strait. The aftermath of limited strikes on Iran would be complicated and costly, suggesting needed changes in U.S. force posture and energy policy.

When War Helps Civil–military Relations Prolonged Interstate Conflict and the Reduced Risk of Coups

Coups remain a widespread and consequential political phenomenon, but it remains unclear whether interstate conflict protects leaders from the risk of coups or increases this risk. We theorize that interstate conflict—especially when it is prolonged—should protect domestic regimes from military overthrow by foreclosing many of the key pathways by which elites plot and execute coups. We test this argument using event history modeling. The evidence provides support for our claim that coup risk declines in the presence of enduring interstate conflict. Just as important, we detect no evidence that war increases coup risk.

The Puzzle of Personalist Performance: Iraqi Battlefield Effectiveness in the Iran-Iraq War

Saddams Iraq has become a cliché in the study of military effectiveness—the quintessentially coup-proofed, personalist dictatorship, unable to generate fighting power commensurate with its resources. But evidence from the later years of the Iran-Iraq War actually suggests that the Iraqi military could be quite effective on the battlefield. What explains this puzzling instance of effectiveness, which existing theories predict should not have occurred? Recently declassified documents and new histories of the war show that the Iraqi improvements stemmed from changes in Saddams perceptions of the threat environment, which resulted in significant shifts in his policies with respect to promotions, training, command arrangements, and information management in the military. Threat perceptions and related changes in these practices also help explain Iraqs return to ineffectiveness after the war, as evident in 1991 and 2003. These findings, conceived as a theory development exercise, suggest that arguments linking regime type and coup-ridden civil-military relations to military performance need to take into account the threat perceptions that drive autocratic leaders’ policies toward their militaries. After discussing how to define and measure battlefield effectiveness, the article reviews Saddams changes and their effects; addresses alternative explanations for the improvement in Iraqi effectiveness; and explains how further research based on this initial exercise could generate a better understanding of the observed variation in states’ battlefield effectiveness, including variation within and across autocratic regimes.

Hegemony, Force Posture, and the Provision of Public Goods: The Once and Future Role of Outside Powers in Securing Persian Gulf Oil

International relations theories emphasize the stabilizing role hegemons play in world politics. But little scholarship has examined the link connecting hegemony to its potentially positive returns in the security realm: force posture. We correct this deficit by developing and testing an argument about the consequences of different hegemonic force postures under varying threat conditions. We present a typology of force posture options and probe their effects through over-time analysis of how major powers have worked to provide one particularly important public good since 1945: access to Persian Gulf oil. Drawing on field work, we also explore the implications of our framework for current and future US force posture in the region. We conclude that hegemonic stability is a very real phenomenon in the Gulf, but it does not require the massive forward deployment of US forces that has characterized the past twenty years of US presence there.

Would China Go Nuclear? Assessing the Risk of Chinese Nuclear Escalation in a Conventional War with the United States

Could a conventional war with the United States inadvertently prompt Chinese nuclear escalation? The military-technical threat that such a war would pose to Chinas retaliatory capability—combined with wartime perceptual dynamics that might cause China to view this threat in an especially pessimistic light—could lead to reasonable Chinese fears that the United States might be attempting conventional counterforce, or considering or preparing for nuclear counterforce. China might see several forms of limited nuclear escalation as its least-bad response to this sort of threat to its nuclear deterrent, notwithstanding the countrys no-first-use policy. This finding, derived from a more general framework about the military-technical and perceptual drivers of potential nuclear escalation in response to conventional counterforce, has broader ramifications for U.S. policy and military strategy, and it illustrates recurring dilemmas that the United States may face in conventional wars with other nuclear-armed adversaries.

Costs and Difficulties of Blocking the Strait of Hormuz

costs of closure To begin, Talmadge should have put greater emphasis on the costs that Iran would almost surely bear in the wake of any closure attempt. Unless the Iranians were able to convince the world that it was an act essential for self-defense, closure would inoame opinion widely against them. Closing the strait would be seen not only as a serious violation of international norms but, worse yet, one that directly and signiacantly touched the interests of most states, virtually making it a campaign of piracy. Even states ready to accept Iran’s right to retaliate against some offense would and it hard to forgive a response so indiscriminately damaging. Under these circumstances, the United States could have wide latitude for action. U.S. leaders might well take the opportunity to leave Iran not only greatly impoverished through a loss of oil revenues and massive destruction of critical infrastructure but stripped of its naval and air defenses. U.S. forces would probably need to seize the Iranian-held islands lying near the shipping lanes east of the strait, and they would not likely be returned. Given the geographic isolation of the region near the strait from the rest of Iran, it is even conceivable that this area might be held under occupation. And the residue of suspicion and resentment against Iran would surely linger among those who suffered losses from the closure, prompting support for a tight sanctions regime. In short, Iran would and itself essentially in the same position as Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War, if not worse. Such a prospect might sober even the most adventurous or desperate of Iranian leaders. Correspondence: Blocking the Strait of Hormuz

Civil-military Pathologies and Defeat in War

This article uses an original data set, the Wartime Civil-military Relations Data Set, to test arguments about the causes of victory and defeat in war. Our analysis provides strong initial support for the notion that civil-military relations powerfully shape state prospects for victory and defeat. Specifically, states whose militaries have a significant internal role or whose regimes engage in coup-proofing appear to have a substantially lower probability of winning interstate wars, even when we account for the role of other important variables, including regime type and material capabilities. Crucially, our measures of civil-military relations include coup incidence but also move beyond it to detect more subtle indicators of civil-military relations. The resulting analysis should give us confidence in acknowledging the importance of nonmaterial variables in explaining war outcomes, while also paving the way for further research that can utilize and extend the data set.

Different Threats, Different Militaries:Explaining Organizational Practices in Authoritarian Armies

Why do some states generate competent, professional military organizations, while others fail to do so even when they have the required economic, demographic, and technological endowments? Variation in states’ military organizational practices—their core policies related to promotion patterns, training regimens, command arrangements, and information management—holds the key. This article develops a typology of such practices and explains why and how they vary in response to the internal and external threats facing particular regimes. The article then subjects this argument to a carefully designed plausibility probe comparing the threat environments and military organizational practices of two states whose differences are both intuitively and theoretically puzzling: North and South Vietnam during the period 1954–1975. The initial evidence provides support for the theory and casts doubt on existing explanations of military organizational behavior focused on external threats, democracy, or the degree of political intervention in the military. The findings have important implications for foreign policy, as well as for future research on authoritarianism, civil-military relations, and military effectiveness.

Less is More: The Future of the U.S. Military in the Persian Gulf

Five years ago, the total number of U.S. military personnel in the Persian Gulf was over 230,000. Today, that number is well under 50,000. The rapid exit of so many U.S. fighting men and women has caused many observers to fear for the future of the Gulf. As one analyst put it, the regional forecast is bleak with “violence, followed by intermittent violence, and renewed violence.” Beyond the short-term problem of insecurity lies a raft of long-term nightmares, including political instability, oil shocks, and nuclear proliferation. Policymakers and military officials in Washington and the Persian Gulf share these concerns. The belief that a precipitous U.S. drawdown is creating a security vacuum and political breakdown is close to the conventional wisdom. Officials routinely cite the British withdrawal from the Gulf as a dangerous precedent. The British East India Company established a residency in Persia in 1763, and the government spent the next century building its influence in the region. British hegemony continued even after World War II while much of the rest of the empire was collapsing. In 1968, however, Prime Minister Harold Wilson announced that the United Kingdom would end its military commitments “east of Suez,” and in 1971 the Royal Navy officially left the