Military Technology and the Duration of Civil Conflict

Why do some civil conflicts end quickly, while others last for years? This paper argues that an incumbent government’s military forces play a crucial role in conflict duration. Specifically, “combined arms ” militaries – which bring to bear a mixture of mechanized infantry, armor, and aircraft – make short conflicts more likely. The use of mecha-nized ground forces in combination with airpower increases the likelihood of decisive engagements early in a conflict, helping to mitigate information asymmetries that can drive violence. By contrast, less-mechanized forces have greater difficulty bringing the fight to the enemy. Combined-arms militaries therefore tend to bring conflicts to more rapid conclusions. However, like maneuver warfare in conventional interstate conflict, these outcomes are not always favorable for the incumbent governments. To test this argument, we employ new, detailed data on military mechanization and airpower from civil conflicts between 1967 and 2003. The results indicate that national militaries with high combined arms capabilities are associated with significantly shorter conflicts. Per-haps surprisingly, this relationship remains robust even when the analysis is limited to insurgencies. ∗For helpful comments on previous drafts, we thank Nikolaos Biziouras, Alexander Downes, Scott