Jennifer Kavanagh

U.S. Presence and the Incidence of Conflict

• What is U.S. military presence, and how can it be measured? • How have U.S. forces been deployed around the globe since the end of Word War II? To what countries has the United States provided military assistance since the end of World War II? • How might U.S. military presence affect the conflict behavior of states and nonstate actors? • What does statistical analysis reveal about how U.S. military presence affects the likelihood of interstate or intrastate conflict in a region? • What are the implications for contemporary debates about U.S. forward presence?

The Past, Present, And Future Of U.S. Ground Interventions: Identifying Trends, Characteristics, and Signposts

This report uses an original data set of U.S. ground interventions to identify factors that determine where and when the United States is most likely to intervene militarily. The report focuses on interventions into armed conflicts, stability operations, and deterrence missions. It identifies signposts of future interventions that can be used by Army planners and also explores intervention lead time, duration, and resource constraints.

What Are the Trends in Armed Conflicts, and What Do They Mean for U.S. Defense Policy?

This report assesses trends in armed conflict and their implications for defense planning. The incidence of such conflict has declined in recent decades and only sharply different alternative future scenarios are likely to change such trends. Several key political, economic, and strategic factors, including the deterrent effect of the U.S. military, appear to have contributed to this decline and are likely to continue to do so in the future.

Limited Intervention: Evaluating the Effectiveness of Limited Stabilization, Limited Strike, and Containment Operations

The foreign policy and defense communities have intensively debated the efficacy of lowcost and small-footprint military options for crises such as those in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen. This report provides a statistical analysis of hundreds of cases, supplemented by case studies, to evaluate the strategic effects of each option across a range of irregular warfare operations and in a range of operational environments.