What Is Next?: “Costly Calculations: A Theory of War, Casualties, and Politics”

Session Submission Type: Author meet critics

Session Description

The US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq fused together studies of international conflict and domestic politics into a transformative, interconnected blend of the dynamics driving local, national and global politics. Driving this fusion was the reconceptualization of the role of military casualties on all aspects of politics. Gartner and Segura, in their recently published book “Costly Calculations: A Theory of War, Casualties, and Politics” attempt to develop a general theoretical framework for understanding war initiation, war policy, and war termination in democratic politics, and the role that citizens and their deaths through conflict play in those policy choices. “Costly Calculations: A Theory of War, Casualties, and Politics” considers the costs of war – both human and political – by examining the consequences of combat at home, on domestic politics. The personal costs of war—military war dead and injured—are the most salient measure of war costs generally and the primary instrument through which war affects domestic politics. Gartner and Segura advance what is known as the rational approach by developing a cost-benefit analysis to how people update their beliefs about the price of war through its losses. A major contribution of their work is the development of local casualties as the main theoretical and empirical engine driving the casualties-politics nexus.

In exploring support for the theoretical argument, the book employs a variety of empirical methods and experimental studies, including a number of sophisticated statistical models, social network analysis, experimental methods, and vignette studies. The authors draw on a wide variety of data including: state of the art political experimental studies, examination of Iraq, Vietnam and Korean casualties and individual opinion, public opinion, elections, and media coverage. Finally, the book identifies and examines a number of policy ramifications flowing from the theoretical framework.

In this panel, we ask, what’s next? What follows “Costly Calculations: A Theory of War, Casualties, and Politics”? In particular, we examine: 1) Did Gartner and Segura identify the casualty-politics nexus correctly when compared to the data and alternative explanations? 2) Will their approach apply to the next American war? 3) Does their approach help us to understand conflicts such as the Ukrainian War? 4) How do advances in Information and Misinformation? Social networking? AI? And other disrupters influence these dynamics? 5) What are the policy implications of this study and the future work it facilitates?

To answer these questions we have put together a highly diverse set of outstanding panel participants: Dr. Christopher Gelpi, Ohio State, is a chief proponent of the major alternative approach to Gartner and Segura and can help both to critique their approach and to address the future needs for this line of research to move forward. Dr. Stephen Nicholson, UGA, a scholar of American politics can address whether the recent changes in American politics necessitate rethinking the casualty-politics nexus delineated by Gartner and Segura. In addition, with the late Dr. Michael Koch, Nicholson developed innovative studies of how casualties influenced specific and important political dynamics like voter turnout. Dr. Kelly Kadera, Iowa, a well-known international relations scholar can help to situate the study into larger international relations issues and the conflict in the Ukraine and identify the questions that follow on studies need to ask. Dr. Victor Asal, SUNY Albany, is one of the top scholars of violence by non-state actors and can address the applicability of the casualties-based approach to terrorism and other violent events. Dr. Scott Althaus, Illinois Dept. of Communications, is an expert in political information and transmission and has conducted research on wartime casualties and behavior. He can also speak to recent, rapid changes in the dynamics and array of communications and how they might affect the casualties-politics nexus. Finally, Ambassador Dennis Jett, Penn State, former US Ambassador to Peru and Mozambique and a highly published scholar of US foreign policy can address the policy implications of this approach.

These diverse and distinguished panelists will be joined by the authors acting as co-chairs: Scott Sigmund Gartner, Naval Postgraduate School, a US national security scholar whose work currently bridges the academic and policy worlds, and Gary M. Segura, UCLA, a well known, highly published scholar of American behavior and former Principal Investigator of the American National Election Study.

Together this panel will help to advance our understanding of war and domestic politics, today and into the future.

Sub Unit

• Division 21: Conflict Processes

Chairs

• Scott Sigmund Gartner Naval Postgraduate School

• Gary M. Segura University of California, Los Angeles

Presenters

• Christopher F. Gelpi The Ohio State University

• Kelly M. Kadera University of Iowa

• Victor Asal University at Albany, SUNY

• Scott L. Althaus University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

• Dennis Jett Penn State University