Dictators at War and Peace (Cornell Studies in Security Affairs)

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On the one hand, the potential for removal at the hands of civilian elites for failed foreign adventures induces caution in the leaders of Machines. Weeks makes the most convincing case yet that, like leaders of democracies, many autocratic leaders are accountable to domestic audiences who rein in riskier behavior and thus help prevent many of the worst foreign policy mistakes.

P. Weeks explains why certain kinds of regimes are less likely to resort to war than others, why some are more likely to win the wars they start, and why some authoritarian leaders face domestic punishment for foreign policy failures whereas others can weather all but the most serious military defeat. These regimes are likely to be more aggressive, since civilian leaders may be removed for opposing the use of force rather than for going to war unsuccessfully, and civilian elites cannot prevent the military from taking action. Future work might seek to integrate civil-military relations to provide additional nuance to Weeks’s typology. When civilians are firmly in charge and civilian and military officials have congruent preferences, states will be able to assess their strategic environment accurately and are likely to have positive military outcomes.Weeks attributes this effect to the presence of a civilian audience, which holds leaders accountable for policy missteps and hence averts the kinds of risk-taking seen in more personalist regimes.

But it seems entirely plausible to propose that leaders value the same good differentially because it brings them different private benefits [27] of war, thereby eliminating the bargaining range. This is a different line of argument to link the Falklands War to the survival of Galtieri, in office and beyond, than the standard fear of a popular revolt. Unconstrained leaders, however, are far more likely than constrained leaders to survive defeats, further signaling their immunity from punishment by a domestic audience. This suggests that the presence of an audience might prod leaders into wars they would not have selected if they had not had such an audience.

The clearly articulated theoretical argument makes a compelling case for focusing on the two central variables – domestic audiences and civilian vs. Between Machines and Juntas, the latter are somewhat more conflict-prone and likely to lose wars because the military background of the leader and the audience create a more permissive environment for the use of force. One issue that these three essays skirt, and which I wish to touch on here, concerns the policy ramifications of Weeks’s argument. Nasser survived the defeat, but only by confronting and purging his competitors in the military, and finally subordinating it to his control.