International Security: Militaries Beyond the Battlefield Virtual Poster Session

Session Submission Type: Virtual Poster Session

Session Description

Armies are usually conceptualized as primarily engaged in the management of externally directed violence. Modern militaries, however, do much more. As the norms of what the military ought to do are changing around the world, scholarship is just beginning to wrestle with what this means for civil-military relations and the intersection between the armed forces and democratic, humanitarian, and diplomatic goals. This panel investigate the implications of the growing use of the military in roles beyond the battlefield from a number of complementary theoretical perspectives and methodologies.

Shelef, Erickson, and Kljajic investigate the causes and consequences of domestic military deployments in response to natural disasters – both in the context of the current pandemic and historically. Using cross-national statistical analysis of the domestic deployment of armed forces in response to natural disasters (including COVID-19), their paper shows both that democracies are as likely to use the military domestically in a coercive capacity as authoritarian regimes in such contexts, and that doing so has significant consequences for civil-military relations in a state. Fazal and Stundal focus on the use of the military for diplomatic rather than violent ends. They show that the Chinese and American militaries actively compete with each other in the provision of “health diplomacy” and examine the role of military medical personnel in the securitization of health diplomacy. Soldiers, however, do not just provide healthcare. Carla Martinez Machain and coauthors turn to the impact of soldier’s criminal behavior outside the battlefield and explore the ways in which this behavior undermines the soft power exerted by the US military. Finally, Risa Brooks shows that militaries are not passive actors when it comes to their use outside the conventional battlefield. At least in the US context, the military has actively resisted the expansion of its portfolio of activities to encompass issues beyond the external application of violence. Taken together, the papers outline an ambitious and comprehensive research agenda that explores the impact of military deployments beyond the battlefield.

Sub Unit

• Division 19: International Security 

Individual Presentations

• Domestic Military Deployments in Response to Natural Disasters - Nadav G. Shelef, University of Wisconsin, Madison; Peter M Erickson, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Marko Kljajic, University of Wisconsin-Madison

• Crimes by and Against Deployed U.S. Military Personnel - Carla Martinez Machain, Kansas State University; Michael E. Flynn, Kansas State University; Michael A. Allen, Boise State University; Andrew Stravers, University of Texas, Austin

• Mapping U.S. and Chinese Bilateral Health Aid - Tanisha Fazal, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities; Logan Stundal, University of Virginia

• Subverting Civilian Control: Military Resistance to Non-Conventional Operations - Risa A. Brooks, Marquette University; Peter M Erickson, University of Wisconsin-Madison

• Appeasing Allies: State Responses to Terror Threats in Sub-Saharan Africa - Jemima Ackah-Arthur, London School of Economics and Political Science

• Assessing the Link Between Nonaggression Pact Formation and Violent Repression - Jerry Urtuzuastigui, Indiana University - Bloomington; Jeffery Shih-Chieh Wang, Indiana University Bloomington

• Gravity of Dissatisfaction: An Indicator of Conflict Escalation & War Initiation - Hsiao-chuan Liao, National Taiwan University

• Identifying Effective Civil Conflict Peace Agreements - Matthew Hauenstein, University of Notre Dame

• Latent Deterrence or Symbolic Retaliation: Revisiting China’s Nuclear Strategy - Hongyu Zhang, University of North Carolina at Wilmington

• Logics of Armed Mobilization - Andrea Ruggeri, University of Oxford; Stefano Costalli, Università di Firenze

• The Diffusion of Peace: UN Peacekeeping and Militarized Interstate Disputes - Yu Bin Kim, University of Missouri; Heather M. Kopp, University of Missouri; Bryce W. Reeder, University of Missouri

• UN Peacekeeping, the Rule of Law, and FDI: Subnational Evidence from Liberia. - Patrick Hunnicutt, University of California, Santa Barbara

Chair

• Nadav G. Shelef University of Wisconsin, Madison

Discussant

• Michael Horowitz University of Pennsylvania