How Low Can You Go? The Effects of Low Credibility False Flag Incidents

• In Event: Forward Deployment, Coercive Diplomacy, and Conflict

Abstract

What are the international and domestic effects of low credibility false flag incidents? One way in which wars occasionally start (as in the case of the 2022 Ukraine war runup) is with false flag incidents- in other words the war seeking state staging one or more attacks on their own border (or internationally deployed) troops, blaming the would-be target country for them, and then using the staged attacks as a casus belli for war with the target. Such attacks are meant to reduce the costs of war to the war seeking state both domestically and internationally by making the other country seem as if it caused the war. However the low credibility of most such false flag incidents puts in question what gains if any war seeking states make from these incidents. This paper, using a set of survey experiments, will examine what benefits, if any, such false flags bring to the war seeking state.

Author

• Dov H. Levin, University of Hong Kong