Costly Military Intervention by the Great Powers, 1918-2022

• In Event: New Research on Military Intervention

Abstract

What explains unexpectedly costly military interventions? Why, when states use military force abroad, do we see costly, drawn out interventions in some cases, but not in others? For such an important policy issue, there has been surprisingly little research on the subject. In this project, I examine costly military interventions by the great powers in the 20th and 21st centuries. By costly military interventions, I mean military interventions that last significantly longer, entail significantly greater material commitments, and/or involve the toleration of significantly greater human costs than were originally expected. I examine these questions using a mixed-methods research strategy, combining quantitative analysis and qualitative historical case studies. For the quantitative component, I have compiled data on military interventions by the great powers from 1918 to 2022 (n = 135). I plan to code each intervention observation as to whether it was unexpectedly costly or not, and analyze the data in order to uncover the correlates of costly great power military intervention. For the qualitative component, I will select a subset of the observations from the data in order to conduct in-depth comparative case studies.

Author

• Nicholas Anderson, The George Washington University