Yesterday Barack Obama gave a special television address to the American public to announce the end of combat operations in Iraq. The announcement represents another step in Obama’s goal of ending American’s military involvement in Iraq by the end of 2011. Although there are still 50,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, they no longer officially have a combat role with the Iraqis assuming responsibility for their own security. Meanwhile, Obama is escalating America’s military presence in Afghanistan as he believes more U.S. troops are needed to secure the country.
When I thought about Obama’s policies in Iraq and Afghanistan yesterday I remembered that all of this should not be a surprise for me because Obama is attempting to do what he said he would do before the 2008 election: try to end the war in Iraq and try to increase U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan.
For my Political Science senior honors thesis I analyzed the role that domestic politics may have on the way democrat leaders conduct wars. More specifically, I analyzed whether the proximity of an election has an impact on a democrat leader’s war termination decisions. Here is the abstract or summary of my senior honors thesis:
A decision a democratic leader inevitably faces during a war is whether to end it. I argue that a democratic leader’s foreign policy decision, specifically her war termination decision, is affected by electoral pressures. I unveil a model identifying several factors that democratic leaders may consider when they make foreign policy decisions and hypothesize that these factors vary in importance at different points in a country’s election cycle. To test these hypotheses, I apply chi-square and population-average regression to a new data set covering several wars that democracies have participated in from 1950-2006. I find that electoral pressures during the campaign season do not affect a leader’s propensity to move towards or away from terminating a war, but does affect what factors a leader looks at when they make foreign policy decisions. I also find that a democratic leader is more likely to deescalate a war and a newly elected democratic leader is more likely to terminate a war in the few months following an election.
In other words, domestic politics sometimes matters when a democratic leader attempts to decide what to do next in war. The public’s opinion on a war and the opposition political party(s)’s stance on a war is irrelevant to a democratic leader when formulating wartime policy decisions if the next election is a long ways away and a lot of time has passed since the last election (like where we are right now). Therefore, Obama is unlikely allowing what the Republicans and what the public thinks about Afghanistan influence his decisions relating to the level of U.S. military involvement in the country at the moment.
My model’s findings confirmed a widely believe notion that newly democratic leaders tend to pursue promised wartime policy actions shortly after they are elected. Therefore, Obama’s decision to escalate America’s presence in Afghanistan at the beginning of his second month as President should have been no surprise because this action is what he supported and promised people he would do during his 2008 election campaign.
The Future
The American public currently supports the ongoing military efforts in Afghanistan (47% approve while 42% disapprove) while Obama and the Republicans currently favor an escalation policy. My model’s findings suggest that the size of the U.S. military’s presence in Afghanistan will heavily depend on what Obama feels is best up until 2012. Consequently, the U.S. military’s presence in Afghanistan will continue to increase as long as Obama favors an escalation policy.
- Obama says that he hopes to begin deescalating America’s military presence in Afghanistan in July 2011. My model suggests that Obama will deescalate America’s military involvement in July 2011 with the way he currently thinks. However, this outcome is not set in stone because Obama’s thinking on the situation change could change. Obama’s position on Afghanistan could easily change depending on how successful the troop surge is and how domestic Afghan politics develop.
American domestic politics could potentially become a major factor influencing the level of U.S. military involvement in 2012 as Obama succumbs to the pressure of needing to win reelection. Obama may begin decreasing the U.S. military’s presence in Afghanistan in 2012 if the American public suddenly sours on the war and/or if the Republicans suddenly run on an anti-war agenda even if he rather keep the troop levels the same or raise them further. The reason Obama would choose to deescalate in face of his own personal preferences is that he would want to appease valuable voters and to protect himself from having anti-war voters flock to the Republicans. The ultimate goal for Obama like most politicians is to win reelection by any means necessary…
My honors thesis was the only one which received an “A” that year and won me the distinguished honor of being the top Political Science undergraduate of my college class. Whether I deserve an “A” on these predictions will be determined in the next couple of years. Whatever happens just remember that I am not prophet nor claim to be one.
