IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hoo/wpaper/17106.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Negative Returns: U.S. Military Policy and Anti-American Terrorism

Author

Listed:
  • Eugen Dimant
  • Tim Krieger
  • Daniel Meierrieks

Abstract

We investigate the effect of U.S. military aid and U.S. troop deployments on anti-American terrorism, using a sample of 106 countries between 1986 and 2011. We find that greater military commitment leads to more anti-American terrorism. We study the underlying mechanisms using a mediation analysis and show that both U.S. military aid and troop deployments in foreign countries do not improve local state capacity. Rather, we find that more military aid (but not troop deployments) is linked to poorer political-institutional outcomes in aid-receiving countries, explaining the positive association between U.S. military aid and anti-American terrorism. Our findings suggest that U.S. military policy does not make the United States safer from transnational terrorism.

Suggested Citation

  • Eugen Dimant & Tim Krieger & Daniel Meierrieks, 2017. "Negative Returns: U.S. Military Policy and Anti-American Terrorism," Economics Working Papers 17106, Hoover Institution, Stanford University.
    • Handle: RePEc:hoo:wpaper:17106
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.hoover.org/sites/default/files/research/docs/17106-diman-krieger-meierrieks.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Oeindrila Dube & Suresh Naidu, 2010. "Bases, Bullets, and Ballots: The Effect of U.S. Military Aid on Political Conflict in Colombia," Working Papers 197, Center for Global Development.
    2. Imai, Kosuke & Keele, Luke & Tingley, Dustin & Yamamoto, Teppei, 2011. "Unpacking the Black Box of Causality: Learning about Causal Mechanisms from Experimental and Observational Studies," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 105(4), pages 765-789, November.
    3. Thomas Gries & Daniel Meierrieks & Margarete Redlin, 2015. "Oppressive governments, dependence on the USA, and anti-American terrorism," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 67(1), pages 83-103.
    4. Tim Krieger & Daniel Meierrieks, 2015. "The rise of capitalism and the roots of anti-American terrorism," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 52(1), pages 46-61, January.
    5. Tony Addison & Mansoob Murshed, 2005. "Transnational terrorism as a spillover of domestic disputes in other countries," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(2), pages 69-82.
    6. Simeon Djankov & Jose Montalvo & Marta Reynal-Querol, 2008. "The curse of aid," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 13(3), pages 169-194, September.
    7. Eric Neumayer & Thomas Plümper, 2011. "Foreign terror on Americans," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 48(1), pages 3-17, January.
    8. Andrew Boutton & David B. Carter, 2014. "Fair-Weather Allies? Terrorism and the Allocation of US Foreign Aid," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 58(7), pages 1144-1173, October.
    9. Tim Kane, 2016. "The Decline of American Engagement: Patterns in U.S. Troop Deployments," Economics Working Papers 16101, Hoover Institution, Stanford University.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sidita Kushi & Monica Duffy Toft, 2023. "Introducing the Military Intervention Project: A New Dataset on US Military Interventions, 1776–2019," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 67(4), pages 752-779, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Eugen Dimant & Tim Krieger & Daniel Meierrieks, 2024. "Paying Them to Hate US: The Effect of US Military Aid on Anti-American Terrorism, 1968–2018," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 134(663), pages 2772-2802.
    2. Dimant, Eugen & Krieger, Tim & Meierrieks, Daniel, 2022. "The risks of nation-building through military aid and intervention," Discussion Paper Series 2022-04, University of Freiburg, Wilfried Guth Endowed Chair for Constitutional Political Economy and Competition Policy.
    3. Meierrieks, Daniel & Krieger, Tim, 2015. "Modernization and Islamist Conflict," VfS Annual Conference 2015 (Muenster): Economic Development - Theory and Policy 113142, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    4. Daniel Meierrieks & Thomas Gries, 2020. "‘Pay for It Heavily’: Does U.S. Support for Israel Lead to Anti-American Terrorism?," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(2), pages 160-176, February.
    5. Simplice A. Asongu & Stella-Maris I. Orim & Rexon T. Nting, 2019. "Terrorism and Social Media: Global Evidence," Journal of Global Information Technology Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(3), pages 208-228, July.
    6. Lis, Piotr, 2018. "The impact of armed conflict and terrorism on foreign aid: A sector-level analysis," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 283-294.
    7. Andrew Boutton, 2019. "Of terrorism and revenue: Why foreign aid exacerbates terrorism in personalist regimes," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 36(4), pages 359-384, July.
    8. Ziesemer, Thomas H.W., 2010. "The impact of the credit crisis on poor developing countries: Growth, worker remittances, accumulation and migration," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 27(5), pages 1230-1245, September.
    9. Richard Chisik & Nazanin Behzadan & Harun Onder & Apurva Sanghi, 2016. "Aid, Remittances, the Dutch Disease, Refugees, and Kenya," Working Papers 062, Toronto Metropolitan University, Department of Economics.
    10. Samuel Brazys & Krishna Chaitanya Vadlamannati, 2021. "Aid curse with Chinese characteristics? Chinese development flows and economic reforms," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 188(3), pages 407-430, September.
    11. Askarov, Zohid & Doucouliagos, Hristos, 2015. "Spatial aid spillovers during transition," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 40(PA), pages 79-95.
    12. Broich, Tobias, 2017. "Do authoritarian regimes receive more Chinese development finance than democratic ones? Empirical evidence for Africa," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 180-207.
    13. Austin L. Wright, 2016. "Economic Shocks and Rebel," HiCN Working Papers 232, Households in Conflict Network.
    14. Balázs Szent-Iványi, 2015. "Are Democratising Countries Rewarded with Higher Levels of Foreign Aid?," Acta Oeconomica, Akadémiai Kiadó, Hungary, vol. 65(4), pages 593-615, December.
    15. Acharya, Avidit & Blackwell, Matthew & Sen, Maya, 2016. "Explaining Causal Findings Without Bias: Detecting and Assessing Direct Effects," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 110(3), pages 512-529, August.
    16. Thierry Kangoye, 2008. "Instability from trade and democracy: the long-run effect of aid," Post-Print hal-00331902, HAL.
    17. Asteris Huliaras & Sotiris Petropoulos, 2016. "European Money in Greece: In Search of the Real Impact of EU Structural Funds," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 54(6), pages 1332-1349, November.
    18. Christoph Dworschak, 2024. "Bias mitigation in empirical peace and conflict studies: A short primer on posttreatment variables," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 61(3), pages 462-476, May.
    19. Parker Hevron, 2018. "Judicialization and Its Effects: Experiments as a Way Forward," Laws, MDPI, vol. 7(2), pages 1-21, May.
    20. Liya Palagashvili & Claudia R. Williamson, 2021. "Grading foreign aid agencies: Best practices across traditional and emerging donors," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(2), pages 654-676, May.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    U.S. military aid; U.S. troop deployments; anti-American terrorism; transnational terrorism; mediation analysis;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D74 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Conflict; Conflict Resolution; Alliances; Revolutions
    • F35 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - Foreign Aid
    • F50 - International Economics - - International Relations, National Security, and International Political Economy - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hoo:wpaper:17106. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Webmaster (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/hostaus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.