Dictators at War and Peace

265 Pages·2014·0.92 MB·English

by  Jessica L. P. Weeks

Dictators at War and Peace
A volume in the series
Cornell Studies in Security Affairs
edited by Robert J. Art, Robert Jervis, and Stephen M. Walt
A list of titles in this series is available at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu .
Dictators
at War
and Peace
Jessica L. P. Weeks
Cornell University Press
Ithaca and London
Cornell University Press gratefully acknowledges the receipt of funds from
the Smith Richardson Foundation, which aided in the publication of this book.
Copyright © 2014 by Cornell University
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts
thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing
from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press,
Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850.
First published 2014 by Cornell University Press
First printing, Cornell Paperbacks, 2014
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Weeks, Jessica L. P., author.
Dictators at war and peace / Jessica L. P. Weeks.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8014-5296-3 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-8014-7982-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Dictators. 2. Authoritarianism. 3. Military policy—Decision making.
4. War—Political aspects. I. Title.
JC495.W44 2014
321.9092'2—dc23 2014021002
Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers and
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information, visit our website at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu.
Cloth printing 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Paperback printing 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Cover photograph: Day of Remembrance for Truth and Justice, March 24 2006,
Buenos Aires Argentina. Photograph by Amit Ashckenazi.
For Jon

Contents
List of Tables and Figures ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 1
1. Authoritarian Regimes and the Domestic Politics of War
and Peace 14
Audiences, Preferences, and Decisions about War 17
Hypotheses, Implications, and Cases 34
2. Initiating International Confl ict 37
Measuring Authoritarian Regime Type 37
Modeling the Initiation of International Confl ict 41
Results 43
3. Winners, Losers, and Survival 54
Selecting Wars 54
War Outcomes in the Past Century 58
Outcomes of Militarized Interstate Disputes,
1946–2000 67
The Consequences of Defeat 70
4. Personalist Dictators: Shooting from the Hip 82
Saddam Hussein and the 1990 Invasion of Kuwait 84
Joseph Stalin: A Powerful but Loose Cannon 96
5. Juntas: Using the Only Language They Understand 106
Argentina and the Falklands/Malvinas War 107
Japan’s Road to World War II 118
[vii]
Contents
6. Machines: Looking Before They Leap 135
The North Vietnamese Wars against the United States,
South Vietnam, and Cambodia 136
The Soviet Union in the Post-Stalin Era 158
Conclusion: Dictatorship, War, and Peace 171
Appendix 179
Notes 185
Works Cited 221
Index 241
[viii]
Tables and Figures
Tables
1.1 Typology of authoritarian regimes 17
1.2 The beliefs of military offi cers and civilian elites 27
1.3 Summary of hypotheses about regime type and
international confl ict 35
2.1 Examples of authoritarian regime type 40
2.2 Directed-dyad logit analysis of dispute initiation 44
2.3 Directed-dyad logit analysis of dispute initiation,
using the raw indices 48
3.1 Regime type and war outcomes, 1921–2007 65
3.2 MID outcomes 68
3.3 Multinomial logit analysis of MID outcomes 69
3.4 Proportion of leaders ousted within two years, by war
outcome 73
3.5 War participants, war outcomes, and leader fates 76
Figures
2.1 Predicted percent of the time that Side A will initiate
confl ict 47
2.2 The interaction between personalism and militarism 50
[ix]