Duration of Intrastate Wars of Attrition: The Causal Impact of Military Build-Ups

Abstract

Scientific knowledge on the effectiveness of governmental military build-ups to terminate intrastate conflicts is sparse and inconclusive. Developing a war-of-attrition framework, we derive the impact of governments' armaments on the duration of these conflicts: military build-ups, as reflected in inflows of major conventional weapons, enable the government to inflict costs onto its adversaries, forcing them to withdraw earlier from the conflict. This type of weapons is required in particular to project military power over larger distances and to fight rebels in remote areas. Using SIPRI arms transfer data for the first time in a disaggregated dyadic design, covering 418 government-rebel group dyads in 134 conflicts, we empirically corroborate the formal model's predictions. As endogeneity issues might arise when governments procure arms in anticipation of a protracted conflict, we ensure causal identification with an instrumental variable survival approach based on the Aalen additive hazards model.

Rage and the Machines? Force Mechanization and Violence against Civilians

“…While not good at collecting information, mechanized forces are thus a plus on the battlefield, allow the government to boost its military effectiveness, that is, "destroying hostile forces while preserving one's own" ( Biddle and Long 2004 , 528), and therefore bring it closer to military victory. Along these lines, there is evidence that imports of such major conventional weapons enable governments to inflict more fatalities upon rebels ( Mehrl and Thurner 2020 ;Fritz et al 2022 ), who in turn become more likely to bow out of the conflict ( Mehltretter and Thurner 2021 ). Government forces' mechanization thus implies a shift in the distribution of military power that affects rebels negatively and counterinsurgents, in turn, positively.…”