Abstract What explains success and failure in naval warfare? Most political science research on military effectiveness focuses on land combat, often overlooking how behavior shapes outcomes at sea. This article uses a paired comparison of two World War II naval battles—Savo Island and Cape Saint George—to examine how material and nonmaterial factors interact in maritime conflict. In both battles, U.S. forces held significant material and technological advantages, yet they suffered a catastrophic defeat in the former and achieved a lopsided victory in the latter. The decisive difference, we argue, lay in commanders’ behavioral choices, organizational structure, and crew proficiency in using technology under stress. Using case study comparison and counterfactual analysis, we demonstrate how similar material conditions produced dramatically different outcomes as a result of variation in nonmaterial performance. These findings suggest that naval combat is more sensitive to human factors than prevailing materialist assessments acknowledge. As U.S.-China competition intensifies in the Western Pacific, our analysis calls for greater attention to training, leadership, and doctrine when evaluating the implications of China's growing material power. Naval warfare is a deeply social process, and understanding its outcomes requires integrating human behavior with technological and material analysis.

Will proliferated satellites enable a transparent battlefield in a way that might transform continental warfare? Many now think so. We argue, however, that anti-satellite (ASAT) capabilities will limit satellites' potential contribution, but only if land forces adapt by deploying ground-based jamming and dazzling technologies. In a sustained measure-countermeasure competition, these non-kinetic approaches enjoy advantages that can deny an opponent effective use of space for battlefield surveillance. If ground forces contest the use of space in this way, the future battlefield will be much less transparent than many now expect.

Military effectiveness created a growth in political science literature. However, this work focused overwhelmingly on continental warfare. China's rise highlights naval warfare. Do the central findings of the literature hold for war at sea? We explore this question by comparing naval and land combat patterns via a new dataset on interstate surface naval battles fought between 1649 and 1988. We find essential differences deriving from the contrasting nature of the sea and land as military environments, which have made naval outcomes more sensitive to materiel, quicker, and more one-sided. There are, however, also important similarities involving material-nonmaterial interactions. These features pose important implications for policy on future anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) warfare in East Asia, the balance of investment in skill and materiel in naval resource allocation, and research on military effectiveness.

For generations, most analysts treated state and nonstate war making as a dichotomy, with states employing high-intensity 'conventional' methods centered on seizing and holding ground, but with nonstate actors using low-intensity 'irregular' methods such as roadside bombings, ambushes, and assassinations. This article, by contrast, argues that many nonstate actors have adopted substantially conventional warfighting styles, and that more are likely to do so over time. Increasingly, the best predictor of a combatant's military methods is not its status as a state as opposed to a nonstate actor, but its internal politics - and especially its institutional maturity and war aims.

I commend Stephen Biddle and Ivan Oelrich for elucidating a vital topic: China’s antiaccess/area-denial (A2/AD) development and potential U.S. responses.1 Biddle and Oelrich document China’s growing ability to threaten Taiwan with a blockade; the high cost and risks of any U.S. planning predicated on anding and kinetically striking mobile mainland targets; and the value in the United States, Taiwan, and regional allies enhancing their own countermeasures. Geography, technology, and physics matter— and interact powerfully, requiring sober consideration. However, mistaken assumptions and oversimpliacations in describing these interactions risk underestimating how far China could extend credible combat power offshore. Emerging anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) capabilities aside, China’s current seaand air-launched anti-ship cruise missile (ASCM) capability already exceeds the seaward limits asserted by Biddle and Oelrich. Thus, contrary to their article’s optimistic projections, the United States and its regional allies already face a more challenging and uncertain military situation. Part of the problem is conceptual: Biddle and Oelrich conoate A2/AD with outright military control, when it is actually a more easily operationalized concept of sowing doubt through growing risk of denial. Most fundamentally, in categorically dismissing the possibility of China achieving A2/AD beyond 400–600 kilometers seaward by 2040, they not only ignore capabilities that China has already achieved—or is close to achieving, per its Near Seas Active Defense strategy—but, worse, dismiss nearly two and a half decades of potential future Chinese improvement, powered by what is already the world’s second-largest economy and defense budget. Few analysts in 1992 imagined

Abstract Military effectiveness is defined as the ability to produce favorable military outcomes per se, incluuding the outcomes of minor skirmishes at the tactical level of war and the outcomes of wars or even long-term politico-military competitions at the strategic or grand strategic levels of war. An alternative, narrower definition equates “effectiveness” with skill, the ability to make the most of one’s material resources, or qualities such as “integration” and “responsiveness.” Regardless of definition, military effectiveness is a central issue for international relations and lies at the heart of key policy debates. Until very recently, military effectiveness had generated little sustained interest from scholars. However, a new generation of academics, armed with new methodologies and analytical approaches, has begun to pay more attention to the subject. Contemporary literature on effectiveness describes three classes of candidate determinants: numerical preponderance, technology, and force employment. Despite increasing attention to effectiveness per se and to non-material contributors to effectiveness, especially force employment, many topics deserve further consideration in future research. These include maritime warfare, amphibious warfare, space warfare, and cyber warfare, chemical, biological, or nuclear combat operations; effectiveness in non-combat missions such as peacekeeping, nation building, signaling, or humanitarian assistance; systematic differences in military behavior for non-state actors, or for state actors in the developing world; and the roles of organization, logistics, leadership, morale, ethnic homogeneity, civil–military relations, and social structure, for example, as determinants of military effectiveness.

After fifteen years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, many now see “small-footprint” security force assistance (SFA)–training, advising, and equipping allied militaries–as an alternative to large U.S. ground-force commitments to stabilize weak states. SFA, however, confronts challenges of interest misalignment between the United States and its typical partners. The resulting agency losses often limit SFA's real ability to improve partners' military effectiveness. For SFA, small footprints usually mean small payoffs.

Many view the doctrinal manual co-authored by then-Lieutenant Generals David Petraeus and James Amos in 2006, as advocating an approach centered on winning civilians' hearts and minds via superior public services. For most of the post–Vietnam era, the conventional wisdom among Americans held that counterinsurgency (COIN) was a hopeless project, especially for democracies like the United States (US). The Iraq surge did suggest that COIN was not impossible, and that if the United States was willing to invest the time and resources, then it could eventually defeat an insurgency. The ensuing 2009–12 surge in Afghanistan certainly looked different than Iraq's in 2007. The frustration interacted with widespread awareness among the troops that COIN was continuing to involve bitter combat with sometimes heavy US firepower. In fact, US interests will rarely align naturally with the host's in COIN. If COIN were quick and cheap, it would be worth the stakes in Afghanistan, and again no dilemma would exist.

After 15 years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, many now see 'small-footprint' security force assistance (SFA) - training, advising and equipping allied militaries - as an alternative to large US ground-force commitments. Yet, its actual military efficacy has been little studied. This paper seeks to fill this gap. We find important limitations on SFA's military utility, stemming from agency problems arising from systematic interest misalignment between the US and its typical partners. SFA's achievable upper bound is modest and attainable only if US policy is intrusive and conditional, which it rarely is. For SFA, small footprints will usually mean small payoffs.

Many analysts worry that improvements in Chinese missile, sensor, guidance, and other technologies will enable China to deny the U.S. military access to parts of the Western Pacific that the United States has long controlled. Although these antiaccess, area denial (A2/AD) capabilities are real, they are a geographically limited long-term threat. As both the United States and China deploy A2/AD capabilities, a new era will emerge in which the U.S. military no longer enjoys today's command of the global commons, but is still able to deny China military hegemony in the Western Pacific. In this new era, the United States will possess a sphere of influence around allied landmasses; China will maintain a sphere of influence over its own mainland; and a contested battlespace will cover much of the South and East China Seas wherein neither power enjoys wartime freedom of surface or air movement. This in turn suggests that the Chinese A2/AD threat to U.S. allies is real but more limited than often supposed. With astute U.S. choices, most U.S. allies in this new system will be imperfectly, but substantially, secure.

This chapter examines the theory and practice of continental warfare, with particular emphasis on the relationship between ideas on conventional land warfare and actual experience since 1900. It considers technological change, including mechanization, as the central challenge facing modern theorists as well as tactical and doctrinal responses that emerged very quickly in reaction to modern weapons' radical lethality. These responses emphasized cover, concealment, tight integration of suppressive fire and movement, depth, and reliance on withheld reserves at the cost of lighter forward deployments. These concepts subsequently formed the foundation for most modern systems of tactics and doctrine. The chapter explores the relationship between theory and practice in continental warfare by focusing on four case studies: the European theatre in the First and Second World Wars, the Arab–Israeli War of 1973, and the Gulf War of 1991.

The war in Afghanistan is not over. Nor is it ending any time soon. The U.S. role may end in 2016, in whole or in part, but the war will continue— and its ultimate outcome is very much in doubt. The conflict is now stalemated militarily, and will likely stay that way as long as outsiders pay the large bills needed to keep the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) in the field and fighting. The war will thus grind onward until this funding dries up or the two sides negotiate a compromise settlement, neither of which is imminent. Depending on how any talks unfold, historians in 2050 could thus look back on this war as a costly but tolerable outcome for the West, as a wasteful disaster, or as something in between; for now, all we know for sure is that it continues. Yet, for many Americans the war is already receding in the rearview mirror. President Obama, for example, often suggests that by as early as 2014 “this long war will come to a responsible end.” It will not, in fact, but Americans could be excused for thinking otherwise, given such framing. Nor is the President alone in this thinking, though many of his compatriots are taking a notably less optimistic tone in their retrospectives. Among the most important of these pre-postmortems is an emerging debate on the war’s lessons. Perhaps the most common position is that Afghanistan shows the futility of counterinsurgency (COIN). By contrast with the

April 01 2013 Correspondence: Assessing the Synergy Thesis in Iraq John Hagan, John Hagan John Hagan is John D. MacArthur Professor at Northwestern University and Codirector of the Center on Law and Globalization at the American Bar Foundation. He received the 2009 Stockholm Prize in Criminology and the 2012 Law and Society Association Harry J. Kalven Prize. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Joshua Kaiser, Joshua Kaiser Joshua Kaiser is a J.D.-Ph.D. student in sociology and law at Northwestern University. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Anna Hanson, Anna Hanson Anna Hanson is a Ph.D. student in sociology at Northwestern University. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Jon R. Lindsay, Jon R. Lindsay Jon R. Lindsay is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation. He was a military officer responsible for tribal engagement and information operations in Western Iraq with Special Operations Task Force West. The opinion expressed herein is of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of any U.S. government entity. The author thank Chris Conner, Gian Gentile, Brendan Green, Carrie Lee, Carter Malkasian, Douglas Ollivant, Roger Petersen, Joshua Rovner, and Paul Staniland for comments on earlier drafts. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Austin G. Long, Austin G. Long Austin G. Long is Assistant Professor at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. He was a civilian analyst first with Multinational Force—Iraq's Task Force 134/Detention Operations and then with Multinational Force—West headquarters. The opinion expressed herein is of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of any U.S. government entity. The author thank Chris Conner, Gian Gentile, Brendan Green, Carrie Lee, Carter Malkasian, Douglas Ollivant, Roger Petersen, Joshua Rovner, and Paul Staniland for comments on earlier drafts. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Stephen Biddle, Stephen Biddle Stephen Biddle is Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University, and Adjunct Senior Fellow for Defense Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Jeffrey A. Friedman, Jeffrey A. Friedman Jeffrey A. Friedman is a Ph.D. candidate in public policy at Harvard University. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Jacob N. Shapiro Jacob N. Shapiro Jacob N. Shapiro is Assistant Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Article Information John Hagan John Hagan is John D. MacArthur Professor at Northwestern University and Codirector of the Center on Law and Globalization at the American Bar Foundation. He received the 2009 Stockholm Prize in Criminology and the 2012 Law and Society Association Harry J. Kalven Prize. Joshua Kaiser Joshua Kaiser is a J.D.-Ph.D. student in sociology and law at Northwestern University. Anna Hanson Anna Hanson is a Ph.D. student in sociology at Northwestern University. Jon R. Lindsay Jon R. Lindsay is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation. He was a military officer responsible for tribal engagement and information operations in Western Iraq with Special Operations Task Force West. The opinion expressed herein is of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of any U.S. government entity. The author thank Chris Conner, Gian Gentile, Brendan Green, Carrie Lee, Carter Malkasian, Douglas Ollivant, Roger Petersen, Joshua Rovner, and Paul Staniland for comments on earlier drafts. Austin G. Long Austin G. Long is Assistant Professor at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. He was a civilian analyst first with Multinational Force—Iraq's Task Force 134/Detention Operations and then with Multinational Force—West headquarters. The opinion expressed herein is of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of any U.S. government entity. The author thank Chris Conner, Gian Gentile, Brendan Green, Carrie Lee, Carter Malkasian, Douglas Ollivant, Roger Petersen, Joshua Rovner, and Paul Staniland for comments on earlier drafts. Stephen Biddle Stephen Biddle is Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University, and Adjunct Senior Fellow for Defense Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. Jeffrey A. Friedman Jeffrey A. Friedman is a Ph.D. candidate in public policy at Harvard University. Jacob N. Shapiro Jacob N. Shapiro is Assistant Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University. Online ISSN: 1531-4804 Print ISSN: 0162-2889 © 2013 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology2013 International Security (2013) 37 (4): 173–198. https://doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_c_00118 Cite Icon Cite Permissions Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Search Site Citation John Hagan, Joshua Kaiser, Anna Hanson, Jon R. Lindsay, Austin G. Long, Stephen Biddle, Jeffrey A. Friedman, Jacob N. Shapiro; Correspondence: Assessing the Synergy Thesis in Iraq. International Security 2013; 37 (4): 173–198. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_c_00118 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentAll JournalsInternational Security Search Advanced Search © 2013 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology2013 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Americans are inclined to remember their nation’s wars victoriously. “Let it be remembered,” President Barack Obama told the Minneapolis American Legion veterans of the Vietnam War on August 30, 2011, “that you won every major battle of that war.”1 He repeated this message on May 28, 2012, during the commemoration ceremony of the aftieth anniversary of this war at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.2 How soon might we hear talk of winning the major battles in Iraq? Stephen Biddle, Jeffrey Friedman, and Jacob Shapiro (hereafter Biddle et al.) caution that “[t]he decline of violence in Iraq in 2007 does not mean that the war was necessarily a success.”3 Their implication, however, is that the war was not necessarily a failure either. Biddle et al. write that the 2007 drop in violence from 2006 was a “remarkable reversal.” They ask, “What caused this turnaround?” (p. 7). Their answer is that the United States devised a strategy that stopped the violence in Iraq with a “synergistic” combination of the U.S. troop surge and the U.S. subsidized Sunni Awakening that “stood up” the Sons of Iraq (SOI). Correspondence: Assessing the Synergy Thesis in Iraq

Why did violence decline in Iraq in 2007? Many policymakers and scholars credit the “surge,” or the program of U.S. reinforcements and doctrinal changes that began in January 2007. Others cite the voluntary insurgent stand-downs of the Sunni Awakening or say that the violence had simply run its course with the end of a wave of sectarian cleansing; still others credit an interaction between the surge and the Awakening. The difference matters for policy and scholarship, yet this debate has not moved from hypothesis to test. An assessment of the competing claims based on recently declassified data on violence at local levels and information gathered from seventy structured interviews with coalition participants finds little support for the cleansing or Awakening theses. Instead, a synergistic interaction between the surge and the Awakening was required for violence to drop as quickly and widely as it did: both were necessary; neither was sufficient. U.S. policy thus played an important role in reducing the violence in Iraq in 2007, but Iraq provides no evidence that similar methods will produce similar results elsewhere without local equivalents of the Sunni Awakening.

Outside intervention in civil warfare is important for humanitarian, theoretical, and practical policy reasons—since 2006, much of the debate over the war in Iraq has turned on the danger of external intervention if the United States were to withdraw. Yet, the literature on intervention has been compartmented in ways that have made it theoretically incomplete and unsuitable as a guide to policy. We therefore integrate and expand upon the theoretical and empirical work on intervention and apply the results to the policy debate over the US presence in Iraq using a Monte Carlo simulation to build upon the dyadic results of probit analysis. We find that Iraq is, in fact, a significantly intervention-prone conflict in an empirical context; the prospect of a wider, regional war in the event that violence returns in the aftermath of US withdrawal cannot safely be ignored.