St. Michael's Square, Kyiv, July 2023. Photo by author.
Ongoing Research.
Advising War: Great Power Influence Through Boots on the Ground (Book project)
Security assistance is often thought of as a superficial game of influence on the one hand or a technical enterprise focused on military goals, like interoperability and tactical proficiency, on the other. Examining the context of military advisors sent to partners actively fighting a war, I challenge this conventional wisdom by showing that states often seek to achieve ambitious political goals when engaging with a local military. Once on the ground, military advisors are tasked with developing personal relationships with their counterparts to influence every aspect of a local military – from its relationship with civilians in government to its tactics on the battlefield. Advisors emerge as local and personal extensions of great power influence, more like diplomats than soldiers. The book relies on original quantitative data on advisor deployments, and case studies of US/allied advising in Ukraine (2014-22) and El Salvador (1981-92) based on extensive archival data, and over 140 first-hand interviews with defense officials, advisors, and diplomats in the United States, Germany, Poland, and Ukraine.
NATO, Ukraine & Russia
“"Balancing Acts: Why Great Powers Underprovide Security Assistance" (under review).
Why do great powers sometimes provide a partner with too little security assistance to deter a rival, instead of sending costly arms or allying? Existing explanations argue that great powers limit their assistance to avoid entrapment. I argue that they balance two considerations when deciding on the form of security cooperation: first, whether it will deter or provoke the external rival, and second, whether to use security cooperation to pursue deterrence or to maintain or extend regional order. When great powers fear provocation and are primarily interested in order making rather than deterrence, they are more likely to choose forms of security assistance that do not significantly alter the military balance. I build this theory through a case study of US security cooperation with Ukraine between 2014-2022. I conclude by discussing the efficacy of US support to Ukraine before 2022 as well as implications for contemporary US policy toward Taiwan.
"US Preponderance in NATO: The Role of Logistics, Intelligence & IT, Training, and Coordination." with Jordan Becker, Stephen Brooks, Hugo Meijer, and William Wohlforth (working paper).
Can the United States meet the pacing challenge of a rising China without reducing its commitment to NATO, and could Europe deter Russia without a US troop presence? Spurred by Russia’s war against Ukraine and the United States’ expensive response, a rising chorus of analysts and politicians argue that the US can and must free up resources for Asia by substantially drawing down its commitment—and troop presence—in Europe. In word and deed, the Biden administration disagrees. Like all grand strategy debates, this one is ultimately about power. We advance it by providing a necessary lens for understanding US power as an alliance partner. We argue that LIT2C—logistics, intelligence (strategic), training, cyber, and coordination—captures a hidden dimension of US preponderance in NATO and within its alliances more broadly. LIT2C includes the US contribution to multinational logistics efforts to transport, supply, and sustain NATO allies’ troops in the event of a war; strategic intelligence; training activities, exercises, and broader ways in which the United States shares knowledge within NATO; offensive and defensive cyber capabilities; and US coordination of allied procurement, war plans, and alliance decision-making. We show the full extent of US contributions in these areas, demonstrating that the existing analytical toolkit underestimates what the United States brings to the table in its alliances, and thus misses the security risks of a major US drawdown in Europe even as it exaggerates the costs of securing allies in Asia.
Why do great powers sometimes provide a partner with too little security assistance to deter a rival, instead of sending costly arms or allying? Existing explanations argue that great powers limit their assistance to avoid entrapment. I argue that they balance two considerations when deciding on the form of security cooperation: first, whether it will deter or provoke the external rival, and second, whether to use security cooperation to pursue deterrence or to maintain or extend regional order. When great powers fear provocation and are primarily interested in order making rather than deterrence, they are more likely to choose forms of security assistance that do not significantly alter the military balance. I build this theory through a case study of US security cooperation with Ukraine between 2014-2022. I conclude by discussing the efficacy of US support to Ukraine before 2022 as well as implications for contemporary US policy toward Taiwan.
"US Preponderance in NATO: The Role of Logistics, Intelligence & IT, Training, and Coordination." with Jordan Becker, Stephen Brooks, Hugo Meijer, and William Wohlforth (working paper).
Can the United States meet the pacing challenge of a rising China without reducing its commitment to NATO, and could Europe deter Russia without a US troop presence? Spurred by Russia’s war against Ukraine and the United States’ expensive response, a rising chorus of analysts and politicians argue that the US can and must free up resources for Asia by substantially drawing down its commitment—and troop presence—in Europe. In word and deed, the Biden administration disagrees. Like all grand strategy debates, this one is ultimately about power. We advance it by providing a necessary lens for understanding US power as an alliance partner. We argue that LIT2C—logistics, intelligence (strategic), training, cyber, and coordination—captures a hidden dimension of US preponderance in NATO and within its alliances more broadly. LIT2C includes the US contribution to multinational logistics efforts to transport, supply, and sustain NATO allies’ troops in the event of a war; strategic intelligence; training activities, exercises, and broader ways in which the United States shares knowledge within NATO; offensive and defensive cyber capabilities; and US coordination of allied procurement, war plans, and alliance decision-making. We show the full extent of US contributions in these areas, demonstrating that the existing analytical toolkit underestimates what the United States brings to the table in its alliances, and thus misses the security risks of a major US drawdown in Europe even as it exaggerates the costs of securing allies in Asia.
Security cooperation
"I'll Be Watching You: Military Advisors as Monitors During Proxy War." (under review).
Great powers frequently aid local partners involved in conflict to avoid the cost of fighting with their combat troops. While intervention is common, an emerging consensus among scholars is that it rarely succeeds. The literature identifies three primary reasons: miscalculation, mismanagement of relationships with local partners, and insufficient knowledge about the local environment. I argue that intervening states can overcome their lack of knowledge by sending military advisors to embed with the local military and gather information. However, interveners face a tradeoff between effective monitoring and becoming too deeply involved in the conflict. Using a formal model, I show that when monitoring is costly, interveners are more likely to send military advisors to more misaligned local militaries. Analysis of original quantitative data on global advisor deployments by the United States, Russia, China, France, and the United Kingdom (1946-2019) shows that great powers indeed deploy advisors more often to weak militaries who disagree significantly with them. These findings suggest that a lack of local knowledge is not to blame for intervention failure. Great powers can exercise their power through intrusive, social forms of information collection—the challenge is effectively acting on this hard-won information after having selected incompatible local partners.
Great powers frequently aid local partners involved in conflict to avoid the cost of fighting with their combat troops. While intervention is common, an emerging consensus among scholars is that it rarely succeeds. The literature identifies three primary reasons: miscalculation, mismanagement of relationships with local partners, and insufficient knowledge about the local environment. I argue that intervening states can overcome their lack of knowledge by sending military advisors to embed with the local military and gather information. However, interveners face a tradeoff between effective monitoring and becoming too deeply involved in the conflict. Using a formal model, I show that when monitoring is costly, interveners are more likely to send military advisors to more misaligned local militaries. Analysis of original quantitative data on global advisor deployments by the United States, Russia, China, France, and the United Kingdom (1946-2019) shows that great powers indeed deploy advisors more often to weak militaries who disagree significantly with them. These findings suggest that a lack of local knowledge is not to blame for intervention failure. Great powers can exercise their power through intrusive, social forms of information collection—the challenge is effectively acting on this hard-won information after having selected incompatible local partners.
Publications.
Chinchilla, Alexandra, Kyle Atwell, Alexis Bradstreet, Catherine Crombe, and Luther Leblanc. "Irregular Warfare and Strategic Competition." Defence Studies, 2023.
Chinchilla, Alexandra. "Formal Theory and Proxy Wars." in Routledge Handbook of Proxy Wars, edited by Moghadam Assaf, Vladimir Rauta, and Michel Wyss, 2023.
Chinchilla, Alexandra and Paul Poast. "Good for democracy? Evidence from the 2004 NATO expansion," in Goldgeier, J., Shifrinson, J.R.I. (eds), Evaluating NATO Enlargement, 2023 [reprint of International Politics piece in light of Russia's war in Ukraine].
See related article: Poast, Paul and Chinchilla, Alexandra. "Good for democracy? Evidence from the 2004 NATO expansion." International Politics. 2020.
Chinchilla, Alexandra and Jesse Driscoll. "Side-Switching as State-Building: the Case of Russian-Speaking Militias in Eastern Ukraine." Studies in Conflict and Terrorism. 2021.
"Forum - Conflict Delegation in Civil Wars," with Niklas Karlén, Vladimir Rauta, Idean Salehyan, Andrew Mumford, Belgin San-Akca, Alexandra Stark, Michel Wyss, Assaf Moghadam, Allard Duursma, Henning Tamm, Erin K Jenne, Milos Popovic, David S Siroky, Vanessa Meier, Kit Rickard, Giuseppe Spatafora. International Studies Review. 2021.
Pape, Robert A., Alejandro Albanez Rivas, and Alexandra C. Chinchilla. "Introducing the new CPOST dataset on suicide attacks." Journal of Peace Research. 2021.
Chinchilla, Alexandra and Poast, Paul. "Defense Institution Building from Above? Lessons from the Baltic Experience."Connections QJ. 2018.
Chinchilla, Alexandra. "Formal Theory and Proxy Wars." in Routledge Handbook of Proxy Wars, edited by Moghadam Assaf, Vladimir Rauta, and Michel Wyss, 2023.
Chinchilla, Alexandra and Paul Poast. "Good for democracy? Evidence from the 2004 NATO expansion," in Goldgeier, J., Shifrinson, J.R.I. (eds), Evaluating NATO Enlargement, 2023 [reprint of International Politics piece in light of Russia's war in Ukraine].
See related article: Poast, Paul and Chinchilla, Alexandra. "Good for democracy? Evidence from the 2004 NATO expansion." International Politics. 2020.
Chinchilla, Alexandra and Jesse Driscoll. "Side-Switching as State-Building: the Case of Russian-Speaking Militias in Eastern Ukraine." Studies in Conflict and Terrorism. 2021.
"Forum - Conflict Delegation in Civil Wars," with Niklas Karlén, Vladimir Rauta, Idean Salehyan, Andrew Mumford, Belgin San-Akca, Alexandra Stark, Michel Wyss, Assaf Moghadam, Allard Duursma, Henning Tamm, Erin K Jenne, Milos Popovic, David S Siroky, Vanessa Meier, Kit Rickard, Giuseppe Spatafora. International Studies Review. 2021.
Pape, Robert A., Alejandro Albanez Rivas, and Alexandra C. Chinchilla. "Introducing the new CPOST dataset on suicide attacks." Journal of Peace Research. 2021.
Chinchilla, Alexandra and Poast, Paul. "Defense Institution Building from Above? Lessons from the Baltic Experience."Connections QJ. 2018.