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" Does Doctrine Matter? The Role of Discretion During Counterinsurgency "
Bauer, Vincent
Weinstein, Jeremy
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Latin Dissertation
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| Language of Document
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English
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| Record Number
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1107125
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| Doc. No
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TLpq2431809138
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| Main Entry
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Weinstein, Jeremy
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Bauer, Vincent
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| Title & Author
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Does Doctrine Matter? The Role of Discretion During Counterinsurgency\ Bauer, Vincent Weinstein, Jeremy
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| College
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Stanford University
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| Date
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2020
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| student score
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2020
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| Degree
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Ph.D.
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| Page No
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138
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| Abstract
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This dissertation extends theoretical debates about the effectiveness of counterinsurgency strategy by looking at how these theories were implemented in practice. Focusing on a particularly important case, this dissertation studies how the US Army implemented population-centric counterinsurgency in Afghanistan from 2009 to 2014 and asks three closely related questions. First, how consistent were military units in their implementation of counterinsurgency strategy? Second, what factors explain variation in soldiers' and officers' preferred counterinsurgency approach? Third, did this variation in counterinsurgency approach have an impact on the capabilities of Taliban forces? These questions are explored in three empirical papers that combine a variety of quantitative methods including Bayesian hierarchical modeling, original surveys, and instrumental variables with qualitative historical analysis. The first paper motivates the dissertation by demonstrating that military units varied significantly in their counterinsurgency approaches using Bayesian hierarchical models and a comprehensive dataset documenting the areas of operation for every NATO battalion deployed to Afghanistan. The second paper examines the causes of this variation and uses an original survey to demonstrate that soldiers' exogenous pre-conflict personal beliefs and values impacted their preferred counterinsurgency approach. The third paper examines the consequences of this variation and uses an instrumental variable approach to demonstrate that, all-else being equal, units which incurred more friendly casualties were more likely to employ enemy-centric tactics which then increased insurgent capabilities and escalated the cycle of violence. The broad take away from this research is that implementation on the ground often diverged significantly from how strategy was conceived by civilian and military leaders. Most importantly, the experiences and personalities of individual commanders often colored how they perceived and reacted to local conditions that were otherwise largely similar. As a result, some military units conducted operations that seemed to align closely with the official strategy while others diverged from this guidance. While some degree of flexibility is certainly necessary to conduct effective operations in such complex and ever-changing environments, this inconsistency may have undermined the effectiveness of international efforts to contain insurgency in Afghanistan. The results stress the importance of screening, selecting, and training soldiers and officers for specific mission requirements. This lesson is also likely to be applicable in other organizational settings where leaders must balance flexibility with consistency, such as domestic policing.
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| Subject
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Military history
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Military studies
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Political science
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