Resources, Logistics, and War

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

The use of force is a common and consequential phenomenon in international relations. While scholars have intensively studied the determinants of military power, why and when actors use it, and the consequences of fighting for myriad international political phenomena, the actual mechanics of the use of force is understudied. In particular, the drivers of belligerents’ variable abilities to project and sustain military power on the battlefield, the processes involved in such efforts, and the way in which such capacities affect combat behavior remain undertheorized and largely unexamined. The papers on this panel seek to begin filling these lacunae in the scholarly literature. Kaija Schilde, in “Government or Industry? Paying for Future Military Capabilities,” examines the changing relationship between public and private investment in research and development in the United States since 1950, which has profoundly conditioned the size and nature of the stockpile of resources, equipment, and capabilities that the American military can project into theaters of operations around the world. Ryan Baker, in “Logistics and Military Power: Tooth, Tail, and Territory in Conventional Warfare,” then develops a theoretical model connecting states’ stockpiles of resources, their abilities to project them into theaters of operations, and combat performance and tests the claim through a close examination of Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union during Operation Barbarossa in 1941. Jason Schultz, in “Supplying Instability: Military Sustainment and Consequences in International Relations,” considers the process and dynamics of the United States securing and maintaining transit rights to ship personnel and equipment through partner countries during operations against terror and insurgent groups in landlocked Afghanistan since 2001, highlighting in particular the second- and third-order political effects of such efforts. Finally, Rosella Cappella Zielinski and Ryan Grauer, in “Sharing Battlespace: Aims, Ability, and Interests,” theorize the determinants of coalition partners’ not only fighting wars with one another, but sharing battlespace; evidence from the Eastern Front in World War I and Burma in World War II indicate that variation in the co-belligerents overarching war aims, logistical capacities, and stakes in upcoming battles condition the likelihood that militaries fielded by different actors choose to accept the challenges and inefficiencies of collective action in combat and fight alongside one another. Nina Kollars, an expert on the determinants and effects of variable logistical capabilities, has agreed to comment on the assembled papers. Collectively, the essays and discussion on this panel will push the existing debate on the projection of military power—and thus the use of force in pursuit of political objectives in the international arena—in new and intellectually fertile areas.

Sub Unit

• Division 21: Conflict Processes

Individual Presentations

• Sharing Battlespace: Aims, Ability, and Interests - Rosella Cappella Zielinski, Boston University; Ryan D. Grauer, University of Pittsburgh

• Government or Industry?: Paying for Future Military Capabilities - Kaija E. Schilde, Boston University

• Supplying Instability: Military Sustainment in International Relations - Jason Schultz, Brown University

• Logistics and Military Power: Tooth, Tail, and Territory in Conventional Warfare - Ryan Baker, US Marine Corps

Chair

• Ryan Baker US Marine Corps

Discussant

• Mark Souva Florida State University