Military Technology and the Duration of Civil Conflict

Abstract

Why do some civil conflicts end quickly, while others last for years? This paper argues that an incumbent government's military forces play a crucial role in conflict duration. Specifically, "combined arms" militaries-which bring to bear a mixture of mechanized infantry, armor, and aircraft-make short conflicts more likely. The use of mechanized ground forces in combination with airpower increases the likelihood of decisive engagements early in a conflict, helping to mitigate information asymmetries that can drive violence. By contrast, less-mechanized forces have greater difficulty bringing the fight to the enemy. Combined arms militaries therefore tend to bring conflicts to more rapid conclusions. However, like maneuver warfare in conventional interstate conflict, these outcomes are not always favorable for the incumbent governments. To test this argument, we employ new, detailed data on military mechanization and airpower from civil conflicts between 1967 and 2003. The results indicate that national militaries with high combined arms capabilities are associated with significantly shorter conflicts. Perhaps surprisingly, this relationship remains robust even when the analysis is limited to insurgencies.

Military Technology and Human Loss in Intrastate Conflict: The Conditional Impact of Arms Imports

“…Small arms can be used to arm additional infantry and hence increase one's manpower. Major conventional weapons create or increase the ability to carry out highly lethal combined armed forces operations (Caverley and Sechser, 2017). Both the delivery of new small arms and major conventional weapons can thus be expected to increase the intensity of military engagements with strong insurgents.…”

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

“…Moore (2012) finds that imports of major weapons are associated with more prolonged conflicts. In contrast, results from Caverley and Sechser (2017) indicate the opposite effect: focusing not on imports, but on so-called mechanization (cf. Lyall and Wilson 2009) as the ratio of military equipment to troops, they reveal that combined air and ground mechanization reduces the length of conflict spells.…”

“…Consequently, mechanization might have a prolonging effect, when governments would be less capable of ending conflicts earlier. Caverley and Sechser (2017) analyze the duration of 129 civil conflicts covering the period 1967-2003, coming to strikingly different conclusions. They focus on the mechanization of government forces, distinguishing between "ground" and "air" mechanization.…”

“…However, he finds no statistically significant relationship for government and rebel victories. Caverley and Sechser (2017) employ the Non-State Actors dataset in their analyses and do not encounter significant effects of their rebel strength variables too. Only Moore (2012) measures the rebels' military capabilities more directly by using major conventional weapons transfers to rebels, for which SIPRI provides some data.…”

“…when aircraft allow to target rebels in difficult-to-access areas (cf. Corum and Johnson 2003;Caverley and Sechser 2017). Especially when the conflict is located at a larger distance to the government stronghold, major weapons like transport helicopters or armored vehicles contribute significantly to the government's ability to project power over geographic distance (cf.…”