The Political Economy of the Creeping Militarization of U.S. Foreign Policy
Posted: May 9, 2011 Filed under: Foriegn Intervention, Military, Reconstruction Leave a comment »http://www.bepress.com/peps/vol17/iss1/4/
U.S. Military Support and Terrorist Attacks on Americans
Posted: February 28, 2011 Filed under: Military Leave a comment »http://www.themonkeycage.org/2011/02/us_military_support_and_terror.html
Delusions of Grandeur: On the Creeping Militarization of U.S. Foreign Policy
Posted: January 9, 2011 Filed under: Military, Reconstruction Leave a comment »http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1736765
Should We End Military Recruiting in High Schools as a Matter of Child Protection and Public Health?
Posted: December 10, 2010 Filed under: Military, War Leave a comment »http://ajph.aphapublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/101/1/19?etoc
Military Spending/Gross Domestic Product = Nonsense for Budget Policymaking: The Independent Review: The Independent Institute
Posted: April 27, 2010 Filed under: Military, National Defense, Uncategorized, War Leave a comment »http://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?a=701
Daniel J. Smith
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Political Limits to Globalization — by Daron Acemoglu, Pierre Yared
Posted: February 1, 2010 Filed under: Economic Freedom, Free Trade, Military, Uncategorized Leave a comment »Sent to you via Google Reader
Political Limits to Globalization — by Daron Acemoglu, Pierre Yared
Despite the major advances in information technology that have shaped the recent wave of globalization, openness to trade is still a political choice, and trade policy can change with shifts in domestic political equilibria. This paper suggests that a particular threat and a limiting factor to globalization and its future developments may be militarist sentiments that appear to be on the rise among many nations around the globe today. We proxy militarism by spending on the military and the size of the military, and document that over the past 20 years, countries experiencing greater increases in militarism according to these measures have had lower growth in trade. Focusing on bilateral trade flows, we also show that controlling flexibly for country trends, a pair of countries jointly experiencing greater increases in militarism has lower growth in bilateral trade.
Daniel J. SmithSent Via Mobile Phone
Was the Iraq War Worth It?
Posted: November 15, 2009 Filed under: Iraq, Middle East, Military, War Leave a comment »http://jeffreymiron.blogspot.com/2009/11/was-iraq-war-worth-it.html
Your aid dollars at work… suppressing voters
Posted: September 27, 2009 Filed under: Corruption, Foreign Aid, Military, Uncategorized 1 Comment »Sent to you via Google Reader
Your aid dollars at work… suppressing voters
Colombia receives more U.S. military aid than all but Israel and Egypt. That aid is allocated in an unusual way: to specific brigades and bases of the Colombian armed forces. I wish I’d noticed that. Instead, I learn the fact in a new paper by Suresh Naidu and Oedrilla Dube.
With town-by-town variation in military aid, Dube and Naidu can look how annual changes affect local violence and politics. The result?
a 1% increase in US military assistance increases paramilitary attacks by 1.5% more in base municipalities, and lowers turnout for mayoral elections by .2% and .12% more in militarily and electorally contested regions
Their intuition: military aid indirectly helps paramilitary groups carry out political attacks and intimidate voters.
On the plus side, this at least suggests our aid is effective at something.
I wouldn’t say such evidence damns Plan Colombia. Fighting drug-funded insurgents is ugly but important. You don’t always get to pick your allies. But it suggests the U.S. might have a greater obligation to promote local democracy and safety alongside its military aid (and no, not by the military themselves).
Suresh is on the economics and political science job markets, and is easily one of the smartest and most creative scholars I know. Interview this man.
Daniel J. SmithSent Via Mobile Phone
