When Does the Mission Determine the Coalition? The Logic of Multilateral Intervention and the Case of Afghanistan

Using the debate between the logic of appropriateness and consequences as a theoretical backdrop, I argue that neither is able to explain the United States' choices between unilateralism and multilateralism in post-Cold War military interventions. The logic of appropriateness is theoretically flawed because states are ultimately unwilling to compromise operational effectiveness on behalf of “oughtness,” and the logic of consequences has until now been insufficiently specified for the purposes of explaining military cooperation behavior. In this article, I suggest that “consequences” are best specified according to time horizon, which creates intertemporal tradeoffs between the long-term benefits of multilateralism and immediate payoffs of unilateralism, and the nature of the intervention, which affects the operational payoffs of multilateralism. I test this argument and the existing explanations against the case of Afghanistan. Its within-case variation—largely unilateral in combat operations and robustly multilateral in post-conflict phases—lends strong support to the logic of consequences as specified according to time horizon and operational payoff.     

Treatment format and external validity in international relations experiments

Political scientists use short vignettes or mock news stories to embed treatments in experimental survey designs. We investigate whether the choice of format entails a trade off between internal and external validity. On the one hand, short vignettes may improve internal validity by isolating key variables without overloading respondents with information, thereby mitigating satisficing and improving data quality. On the other hand, mock news stories may improve external validity by approximating the circumstances under which individuals consume political information, which may enhance the credibility of the information. We find no evidence, however, that short vignettes mitigate satisficing more than mock news stories. Nor do we find that mock news stories enhance individual perceptions of the credibility of the information. Instead, we find that short vignettes are susceptible to confounding, which mock news story mitigate. These findings have important implications for debates about the use of survey experiments in political science.     

Shifting Currents: Changes in National Intelligence Estimates on the Iran Nuclear Threat

Lost in the political fallout of the Iran National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of 2007 was any discussion about historical parallels and what those might say about intersection between intelligence, policy, and politics. This article argues that the NIEs on the ballistic missile threat of the 1990s offer a useful analogy. In a short period of time, the NIE's assessment of the threat from so-called ‘rogue states’ went from modest to non-existent, provoking charges of politicization, eliciting investigations, and pausing the US missile defense program. A similar sequence of events followed the NIEs on Iran, whose tenor appeared to shift from alarmist in 2005 to dismissive in 2007. If the experience of the ballistic missile NIEs is any guide, then it is not clear that the `cure’– investigations and commissions – are better than the disease. Both cases illustrate the need for the intelligence community to remain detached but not unaware of the policy environment into which these estimates are introduced. They also reaffirm that estimates are just estimates, probabilistic rather than deterministic judgments about future events.     

American Grand Strategy after Iraq

To the extent that a grand strategy can be discerned in the first year of the Obama Administration, its defining features are not a break from the past but continuity. As the President himself has analogized since taking office, crafting grand strategy is like parallel parking. He has only been able to make changes to grand strategy around the margins since a number of existing commitments limit his freedom of action. This article first identifies the structural determinants of grand strategy, pointing to the international distribution of power, American bureaucracy, and public as the key sources of strategic constraint and opportunity. It then shows how shifts in these factors—comparatively less U.S. power, an overstretched military organized around counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and an American public weary from an aggressive grand strategy—produced a shift in grand strategy that predated the 2008 election and that remains consistent with the current strategic setting. It is for these reasons that the 2008 “change” election has produced considerable continuity in American grand strategy.     

Is a Refrigerator Good or Evil? The Moral Evaluation of Everyday Objects

Certain objects such as family heirlooms are often treated as if they have intrinsic moral qualities, including sacredness and infinite value. Other objects such as instruments of torture are often seen as inherently repellent. Do people also evaluate more mundane objects such as refrigerators as morally good or bad? Here we explore the nature and scope of moral object evaluation through two experiments that asked participants to rate how morally good or bad a large set of familiar objects were. We find that (a) everyday objects tend to be seen as morally positive and (b) unlike mere liking, the moral evaluation of objects is positively linked to the age and political conservatism of the participants. These findings are discussed in relation to research on automatic evaluation, mere exposure effects, and the relationship between affective states and moral judgments.     

Pragmatism's contributions to international relations

This article examines the methodological and substantive contributions that pragmatism stands to make in the field of international relations (IR) theory. The methodological advantages that pragmatism offers have been described by many scholars in recent years, but the substantive contributions that classical American pragmatists (1870–1930) made to the study of international order have been largely overlooked. It suggests that a careful reading of this philosophical canon, particularly the writings of Charles Sanders Peirce and Josiah Royce, will provide important resources for today's IR theorist.