Dissertation Project
“Advising War: Limited Intervention in Conflict,” considers why great powers send military advisors to work with local militaries during conflict, what military advisors do, and what their effects are on human rights and civil-military relations during conflict. When fighting war by relying on a local partner, great powers send military advisors to manage agency problems by monitoring and transforming its military. Furthermore, advisors actually can influence the local military like interveners expect, although effects vary depending on the intervener, how thoroughly advisors are embedded in the local military, and whether they are accompanied by diplomatic pressure on the local partner. The project formulates these questions using game theory, and empirically evaluates the theory using archival research conducted at eight physical and digital archives, interviews with US military advisors, and original quantitative data on intervention with military advisors by the United States, Russia, China, France, and the United Kingdom from 1946-2019. Qualitative case studies focus on U.S. intervention in El Salvador under the Carter and Reagan administrations (1979-89), Soviet intervention in Afghanistan prior to the Soviet invasion (1978-79), and US and Russian intervention in Ukraine from 2014 to present.
Dissertation committee: Paul Poast (chair), Austin Carson, Monika Nalepa, and Paul Staniland
Dissertation committee: Paul Poast (chair), Austin Carson, Monika Nalepa, and Paul Staniland
Publications
Poast, Paul and Chinchilla, Alexandra. Good for democracy? Evidence from the 2004 NATO expansion. International Politics (2020).
Did NATO expansion foster democratic development in Eastern Europe? Past scholarship offers conflicting answers to this question. We seek to bring clarity by focusing on the 2004 NATO expansion to include the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, as well as Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. We leverage the fact that we now as many years of data since NATO entry as we have between the collapse of the Soviet Union and the 2004 NATO expansion. We also use newly available and highly refined data on regime type. We show that NATO membership and anticipation thereof had little to no influence on democratic development in Eastern Europe. However, anticipation of European Union membership appears to have bolstered democratic development. Although the results cannot fully rule out NATO playing a secondary role, they make clear that NATO membership was not a necessary condition for democratic survival in Eastern Europe.
Chinchilla, Alexandra and Poast, Paul. Defense Institution Building from Above? Lessons from the Baltic Experience. Connections QJ 17, no. 3 (2018): 61-71.
Defense institution building (DIB) seeks to create the means and mechanisms that enable effective capability aggregation within NATO. Can external assistance with DIB help states become suitable NATO members? We discuss the post-Cold War experience of the Baltic States to understand the role of external assistance in defense institution building and how this can enable a state to gain NATO membership. We then consider whether lessons in the Baltic experience are applicable to Georgia and Ukraine.
"Introducing the New CPOST Dataset on Suicide Attacks." with Robert A. Pape and Alejandro Albanez Rivas, University of Chicago (Accepted, Journal of Peace Research).
Did NATO expansion foster democratic development in Eastern Europe? Past scholarship offers conflicting answers to this question. We seek to bring clarity by focusing on the 2004 NATO expansion to include the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, as well as Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. We leverage the fact that we now as many years of data since NATO entry as we have between the collapse of the Soviet Union and the 2004 NATO expansion. We also use newly available and highly refined data on regime type. We show that NATO membership and anticipation thereof had little to no influence on democratic development in Eastern Europe. However, anticipation of European Union membership appears to have bolstered democratic development. Although the results cannot fully rule out NATO playing a secondary role, they make clear that NATO membership was not a necessary condition for democratic survival in Eastern Europe.
Chinchilla, Alexandra and Poast, Paul. Defense Institution Building from Above? Lessons from the Baltic Experience. Connections QJ 17, no. 3 (2018): 61-71.
Defense institution building (DIB) seeks to create the means and mechanisms that enable effective capability aggregation within NATO. Can external assistance with DIB help states become suitable NATO members? We discuss the post-Cold War experience of the Baltic States to understand the role of external assistance in defense institution building and how this can enable a state to gain NATO membership. We then consider whether lessons in the Baltic experience are applicable to Georgia and Ukraine.
"Introducing the New CPOST Dataset on Suicide Attacks." with Robert A. Pape and Alejandro Albanez Rivas, University of Chicago (Accepted, Journal of Peace Research).
Work in Progress
"Warlord Coordination As State-Building In Post-Maidan Ukraine." with Jesse Driscoll, University of California San Diego.
"Authoritarian Commitment to Military Professionalism: How Security Alliances Reduce Coups and Coup Attempts Under Dictatorships." with Tolgahan Dilgin, University of Illinois.
"Training Future Leaders: The Effect of US Military Training on Human Rights in Recipient Countries," with Genevieve Bates and Andres Uribe, University of Chicago.
"Do Threats Work? Third Party Intervention and Humanitarian Violations in Civil War."
"Gray Zone Bargaining: Coercion through Low Intensity Warfare and the Credible Threat of Escalation." with Jonathan Askonas, Catholic University.
"Authoritarian Commitment to Military Professionalism: How Security Alliances Reduce Coups and Coup Attempts Under Dictatorships." with Tolgahan Dilgin, University of Illinois.
"Training Future Leaders: The Effect of US Military Training on Human Rights in Recipient Countries," with Genevieve Bates and Andres Uribe, University of Chicago.
"Do Threats Work? Third Party Intervention and Humanitarian Violations in Civil War."
"Gray Zone Bargaining: Coercion through Low Intensity Warfare and the Credible Threat of Escalation." with Jonathan Askonas, Catholic University.
Other Writing
Alexandra Chinchilla. Review of Groh, Tyrone L., Proxy War: The Least Bad Option. H-Diplo, H-Net Reviews. May, 2020.
Rauta, Vladimir, Matthew Ayton, Alexandra Chinchilla, Andreas Krieg, Christopher Rickard & Jean-Marc Rickli (2019) A Symposium – debating ‘surrogate warfare’ and the transformation of war, Defence Studies, 19:4, 410-430.
"The Development of the Modern U.S.-Polish Relationship and Its Future Prospects." with Stephen D. Mull in Projekt 'Polska': Silne i Bezpieczne Panstwo? ed. Anna Antczak-Barzan. Warszawa: Vizja Press, 2014: 255-267.
Rauta, Vladimir, Matthew Ayton, Alexandra Chinchilla, Andreas Krieg, Christopher Rickard & Jean-Marc Rickli (2019) A Symposium – debating ‘surrogate warfare’ and the transformation of war, Defence Studies, 19:4, 410-430.
"The Development of the Modern U.S.-Polish Relationship and Its Future Prospects." with Stephen D. Mull in Projekt 'Polska': Silne i Bezpieczne Panstwo? ed. Anna Antczak-Barzan. Warszawa: Vizja Press, 2014: 255-267.