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Introduction
Be it thy course to busy giddy minds
With foreign quarrels; that action, hence borne out,
May waste the memory of the former days.
âWilliam Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 21
In the late summer of 1998, at the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, U.S. President Bill Clinton authorized air strikes against alleged terrorist targets in Sudan and Afghanistan. Several Clinton critics asserted that the bombings were intended to shift focus from the presidentâs admission that he had lied about having an improper relationship with White House intern Lewinsky. In a Salon editorial, for example, Christopher Hitchens wondered why the president hurried to attack: âThere is really only one possible answer to that question. Clinton needed to look âpresidentialâ for a day.â2 And every major media outlet, from the New York Times and the Washington Post to ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox, and NBC, ran stories on the speculations that the bombings were an attempt to divert attention from the scandal.3
Indeed, on several occasions the administrationâs top national security aides were compelled to deny publicly that the attacks were linked to the presidentâs personal and legal troubles. For example, Secretary of Defense William Cohen was asked during a press conference whether he had seen the movie Wag the Dog, in which a Washington spin doctor fabricates a war to distract the public from the presidentâs liaison with a teenage girl. Cohen declined to answer directly, saying that âThe only motivation driving this action today was our absolute obligation to protect the American people from terrorist activities.â4 Meanwhile, video rentals of Wag the Dog soared.5
Despite the administrationâs emphatic denials, the event exhibited many hallmarks of a classic diversionary use of force, which is to say an international conflict provoked to whip up nationalist sentiment and rally the populace behind the regime or simply to distract the public from the governmentâs failings. First, the timing was felicitous. Clinton gave the mission a green light on the same day he was asked to provide federal investigators with a DNA sample, which signaled that the Starr Commission had potentially damning forensic evidence of intimate contact with Lewinsky. The White House also announced the strikes just three days after Clintonâs prime-time television appearance, in which he confessed to âa critical lapse in judgment, a personal failureâ in having an affair with Lewinsky.6 And the attacks themselves coincided with Lewinskyâs second and final grand jury appearance, in which she was questioned about the veracity of Clintonâs testimony.
Second, the operation was generally popular. The target, Osama bin Ladenâs terrorist network, was believed to be responsible for the deadly bombing of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. As a result, even the Republican leadership praised Clintonâs decision to use force. House Speaker Newt Gingrichâs reaction was typical when he remarked that âif you saw the TV coverage of the two embassy bombings and the caskets come home to America, you know that this is real. . . . I think, based on what I know, that it was the right thing to do at the right time.â7 The publicâs response was also favorable. In a poll conducted immediately after the raids, 68 percent of respondents approved of Clintonâs foreign policyâa high point in his presidency. Most people believed he had acted to protect U.S. national security, not to distract them from the scandal.8 The American public may have distrusted their president, but they also believed that he was a capable commander-in-chief. Whatever Clintonâs actual motivation, the attacks changed the national conversation from sordid assignations in the Oval Office to combating global terrorism.
This is a book about diversionary war. Do leaders use foreign adventure to improve their domestic political fortunes? If so, under what conditions are unpopular governments most likely to deploy this strategy? Are diversionary uses of force successful in reducing domestic discontent? Is diversionary war a more-effective response to internal unrest than, say, making political concessions to opposition groups or suppressing dissent?
Conventional wisdom among the political class maintains that leaders in trouble routinely initiate diversionary conflicts. Since World War II, for example, most U.S. presidents have been suspected, at one point or another, of provoking or escalating a foreign conflict to rally support for the government or divert attention from the administrationâs blunders.
In 1948 Harry Trumanâs political opponents accused him of aggravating the conflict with the Soviet Union, particularly during the Berlin blockade, in order to win votes in a tough election.9 If Truman had excited tensions with Moscow to increase his popularity with voters, he would have been following the advice of his campaign strategists. Trumanâs advisors crafted a memo predicting that he would benefit politically if the âbattle with the Kremlinâ intensified because the âworse matters get, up to a fairly certain pointâreal danger of imminent warâthe more is there a sense of crisis. In times of crisis the American citizen tends to back up his President.â10
John F. Kennedy also was thought to have engaged in âaggressive posturing in international affairs . . . to improve his domestic image,â in particular in his handling of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.11 Republicans argued that the president manufactured the conflict, which became public less than one month before midterm elections, to help Democrats keep their majority in both houses of Congress. For example, Representative Thomas Curtis of Missouri told his constituents that the crisis was âphony and contrived for election purposes.â12 Even the presidentâs allies questioned his motives. Robert Hilsman, a Kennedy appointee to the Department of State, commented that âbehind the policy choices loomed domestic politics. . . . The United States might not [have been] in mortal danger but the administration certainly was.â13
In May 1975, Gerald Ford sent a Marine task force to rescue the 39-person crew of the U.S. freighter Mayaguez, which had been seized by Cambodian Khmer Rouge forces in international watersâa mission described by the Wall Street Journal as having âall the elements of an Errol Flynn swash-buckler.â14 When the prisoners were freed, the presidentâs approval ratings surged by 11 pointsâeven though more U.S. troops died in the operation than there were hostages to be rescued.15 Five years later, while under fire for not using force in the Iranian hostage crisis, Jimmy Carter implied in an interview that Ford had acted in a self-serving manner: âI have a very real political awareness that at least on a transient basis the more drastic the action taken by the President, the more popular he is. When President Ford expended 40 American lives on the Mayaguez . . . it was looked upon as a heroic action, and his status as a bold and wise leader rose greatly. This is always a temptation.â16
Following the U.S. invasion of Grenada on October 25, 1983, Ronald Reagan faced scrutiny from members of Congress and the media, who hinted that the president might have sought to distract the public from the deadly suicide bombing of American and French barracks in Beirut two days earlier.17 For example, Democratic Representative Peter Kostmayer of Pennsylvania declared that âI havenât seen a single shred of evidence that American lives were in danger in Grenada.â18 Francis Clines of the New York Times went further, baldly asserting that Reagan had used a ârallying âround the flagâ strategy.19
In 1989 George H. W. Bush dispatched more than 24,000 troops to depose the government of Manuel Noriega and restore democracy to Panama. Observers wondered whether the administration was simply âtrying to cure its political image problems at home,â as the president had âlong been accused of being a âwimpââ in matters of foreign policy.20 But when the administrationâs press secretary, Marlin Fitzwater, was asked whether the invasion of Panama âwas the test of fire that will cause [the president] to be more respected at home and abroad,â Fitzwater responded simply: âWe see him . . . as the same bold, visionary, outstanding, strong, macho, strong, whatever, leader heâs always been.â21
Critics of George W. Bush maintained that the president escalated the crisis over Iraqi weapons of mass destruction in the summer and fall of 2002 in order to guarantee Republican control of Congress in the upcoming midterm elections. For example, columnist Frank Rich wrote that Bushâs political strategists knew that âan untelevised and largely underground war [on terror] . . . might not nail election victories without a jolt of shock and awe. It was a propitious moment to wag the dogâ in Iraq.22 Vice President Dick Cheney, in an interview on Meet the Press, described such allegations as âreprehensible.â23
Presidents have often been accused of using force to distract attention from domestic ills. But do governments actually provoke diversionary wars? And do they work?
Investigating the existence of a diversionary motivation for war is a critically important task for several reasons. First, there is little consensus regarding the accuracy of the diversionary theory of war. Some media and political elites see diversionary war as pervasive, but many scholars deny the existence of a diversionary motivation for interstate conflict, describing it as a âmyth.â24 By clarifying when leaders use diversionary tactics, this book contributes to an important research program in the field of international relations.
Second, interstate wars have enormous consequences in international politics. War can bankrupt treasuries, trigger revolutions, and reshape cultures. And conflict is one of the chief mechanisms by which wealth and power are redistributed in the international system. If there is a relationship between domestic unrest and foreign adventurism, exploring that link may help policy makers anticipate and head off these wars. For example, following the death of North Koreaâs leader, Kim Jong Il, analysts have conjectured that his son and successor, Kim Jong-un, might be tempted to provoke a diversionary war with South Korea to consolidate his rule and promote domestic cohesion.25 Insight into the plausibility of this scenario, as well as strategies to dissuade Pyongyang from using diversionary tactics, would be valuable given the potential for such a conflict to destabilize the region.
Third, if governments put their troops in harmâs way for domestic political gain rather than to promote the national interest, this is a major issue for legitimate rule. Diversionary war is widely considered immoral, if not criminal. In a democracy the public demands a voice in policy making, but for leaders to use force to win their favor may amount to an impeachable offense.
To some degree, a relationship between domestic politics and the use of force abroad is uncontroversial. The effect of public opinion on foreign policy decision making can be thought of as concentric rings, like those on a shooting target. In the outermost ring are cases in which the willingness of the public to tolerate a leaderâs decision, say, to commit ground troops is a necessary condition for the use of force. Here, the public has a veto on the governmentâs behavior: if the leader perceives a significant domestic political downside from a bellicose foreign policy, a different course of action will be taken. In 1994 the Clinton administration declined to intervene militarily in the Rwandan genocide, in part because it concluded that the conflict was not a sufficient threat to U.S. interests to expend the political capital required to overcome widespread domestic opposition to action.26 Almost all uses of force in a democracy such as the United States fall at least within this circle, where domestic opinion provides an acceptability constraint.
In the middle band of the target, we find instances in which domestic political gains are seen as a side benefit of the use of force. Here, generating a rally effect does not contribute to the final policy choice, but the government takes advantage of any domestic dividends from using force. Several of the examples discussed above may fall into this category. For example, Reagan would have invaded Grenada regardless of events in Beirutâthe plan to send troops was set before the bombing. And when he was warned that his opponents might accuse him of using diversionary tactics by intervening in Grenada, Reagan reportedly said that âif this [invasion] was right yesterday, itâs right today and we shouldnât let the act of a couple terrorists dissuade us from going ahead.â27 Nevertheless, his administration skillfully used the successful mission in Grenada to shelter the president from criticism over his policy in Lebanon.28
In the center of the target are international conflicts that are provoked primarily to reduce the publicâs opposition to the government, that is, where domestic discontent is a necessary condition for a leaderâs decision to use force abroad. It is these casesâtrue diversionary warsâthat are most contested by scholars.
In Diversionary War I argue that the key to understanding the relationship between domestic and international conflict can be found through a new model of government decision making based on the concept of policy substitutability drawn from the literature on foreign policy analysis.29 The central insight is that governments choose their responses to a given problem from a menu of alternatives that can be substituted for one another. Thinking in terms of policy substitutability puts us in a decision makerâs shoes so that we view diversionary war as one option among many for managing civil unrest. The challenge for the scholar is then to explain why embattled governments initiate diversionary wars instead of attempting a rival solution to their domestic problems, such as buying off opponentsâin...