A Factor Endowment Theory of Military Targeting

• In Event: Targeting Civilians and Leaders in War

Abstract

How do states and their militaries select targets? To date, scholars have endeavored to explain why and when states target civilians or adopt certain strategies for targeting their enemies’ militaries. Yet relatively few scholars have attempted to explain within these broader discussions why states choose specific targets. This manuscript fills this scholarly lacuna. Drawing on economic theories of production, I build and evidence a novel theory of military power and targeting. The theory implies that, in most circumstances, states will target an opponent’s scarce factor of production in the military realm. It also suggests that targeting an opponent’s lagging civilian factor should only occur when: (1) the opponent’s lagging factor differs between the civilian and military sectors, and (2) the attacker anticipates a protracted conflict. To test the theory’s implications, my work draws on two original datasets of military objectives coded according to their relative factor intensities. The first dataset codes 196 objectives contained in 18 American color-coded war plans from the inter-war years (1919 to 1941). The second dataset compiles and codes 52,613 Russian air, drone, and artillery strikes on Ukrainian targets since February 2022. Analysis of these data sets confirms that both American and Russian military planners have empirically adhered to the expectations of the theory. This finding has important implications for our understandings of target selection, military operations design, strategy, and security.

Author

• Max Plithides, UCLA