Wars of choice: Leadership, threat perception, and military interventions

This study provides a framework for understanding when and why great powers seek to transform foreign institutions and societies through military interventions. I focus on how executive leadership influences both the decision to intervene and the choice of intervention strategy, especially the degree to which an intervention interferes in the domestic institutions of the target state. Many theories explain variation in intervention behavior across states or over long periods of time using factors such as the international environment, regime type, or international norms. I argue that most great power interventions in smaller powers are "wars of choice," and thus the analysis should focus squarely on the executives who make this choice. I develop a typology of leaders that addresses within-country variation in intervention behavior over shorter time horizons.; The critical variable distinguishing leaders is the degree to which they believe that the internal characteristics of other states are the ultimate source of threats. Some leaders, whom I term "internally focused types," see a causal connection between threatening or aggressive foreign policy behavior and the internal organization of states, and thus will be more willing to undertake "transformative" interventions, in which the intervening state is deeply involved in the building or rebuilding of domestic institutions in the target state. In contrast, "externally focused types" diagnose threats directly from the external foreign policy behavior of other states regardless of domestic institutions, and thus are more likely to pursue "nontransformative" strategies.; Using archival and historical evidence, I show that these different threat perceptions shape the cost-benefit calculation leaders make when they confront intervention decisions. Thus leaders' causal beliefs about the origin of threats have profound consequences for the decision to intervene and for the choice of intervention strategy, as well as implications for the probability of intervention success. To isolate the effect of leadership, I test the theory on United States military interventions during the Cold War, concentrating on the presidencies of Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson. After demonstrating the impact of leadership in this period, I illustrate the theory's applicability to other historical and contemporary settings.