Rethinking Small-Footprint Interventions

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This article reexamines the practices of small-footprint military interventions in light of the concept of as conceived by Thomas C. Schelling. If the concept is accurate, it can improve how we conduct such interventions. ********** Popular accounts of civil wars and insurgencies are filled with references to of and points--moments in time when the dynamics of a conflict are supposedly shifting in ways that may portend a decisive change in a war's trajectory. These concepts have been used in mainstream media accounts, professional journals, and special reports to explain recent events in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Mali, Nigeria, Syria, and elsewhere. If windows of opportunity and tipping points accurately describe junctures in conflicts and can be identified either ahead of time or as they occur (rather than solely through the benefit of hindsight), the policy implications are substantial. After the painful experiences of Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States is committed to avoiding large-scale entanglements in other nations' internal conflicts, seeking instead to develop innovative, low-cost, and small-footprint approaches to achieve our security objectives. (1) Unfortunately, US military doctrine and numerous other sources make clear that decisive intervention in civil wars and insurgencies typically is a manpower-intensive and costly endeavor. (2) If there are particular moments in time when a conflict is at a turning point, it may be possible for small-scale interjections of external forces to have disproportionately large effects. Conversely, if there are only short-lived opportunities in which the course of a conflict might be turned without a massive commitment of resources, then that knowledge might help the United States better identify when it should avoid intervention. Despite the widespread appeal of concepts like windows of opportunity and tipping points to explain the trajectories of civil wars around the globe, there have been few attempts to apply them in a systematic way and even fewer efforts to explain their implications for foreign military intervention. (3) As they are typically used, the terms do not distinguish between simple changes in a conflict's trajectory--potentially fleeting and insignificant--and more meaningful junctures. This article explores the concept of a tipping point and its implications for America's reliance on low-cost, small-footprint approaches to stabilizing embattled partner governments. More specifically, the article asks two questions: Are there identifiable opportunities in the course of an insurgency in which even relatively small actions could help tilt the conflict decisively in favor of the government? And if so, how can the United States best take advantage of these opportunities? (4) Tipping Points The concept of tipping was first formalized by the Nobel Prizewinning economist Thomas Schelling. (5) Tipping points are a subset of critical mass or threshold dynamics in which the behavior of a certain proportion of the population--a proportion that is different in every circumstance--causes others to behave in a similar manner, leading to cascading effects. Tipping point dynamics typically occur as an iterated process. In the first step, a critical mass or threshold number of people makes a particular decision--for instance, to participate in a protest against a regime. Their behavior, in turn, provides information that causes other people to act in a similar fashion. After witnesses of an anti-regime demonstration observe that the regime did not engage in violent repression, they may become emboldened to participate themselves. (6) As more and more people make the same decision, pressures continue to mount on those who had initially opposed such behavior. Loyalists, for instance, might have preferred that a regime stay in place, but once most of their neighbors change loyalties, they may feel uncomfortable, or even unsafe, engaging in public support of the regime. …