Sooner is better : covert action to prevent realignment

Why do states intervene covertly in some places and not others? This is a pressing question for theorists and policymakers because covert action is widespread, costly, and consequential. I argue that states wield it-whether by supporting political parties, arming dissidents, sponsoring coups, or assassinating leaders-when they fear that a target is at risk of shifting its alignment toward the state that the intervener considers most threatening. Covert action is a rational response to the threat of realignment. Interveners correctly recognize a window of opportunity: Owing to its circumscribed nature, covert action is more likely to be effective before realignment than after. This means that acting sooner is better. I test this argument in case studies of covert action decision-making by the United States in Indonesia, Iraq, and Portugal. I then conduct a test of the theory's power in a medium-N analysis of 97 cases of serious consideration of such action by the United States during the Cold War. Interveners, I suggest, do not employ covert action as a result of bias on the part of intelligence agencies. Nor do they use it to add to their power. Rather, states act covertly when they fear international realignment.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctoral

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Political Science

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Nutt, Cullen Gifford.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Barry R. Posen.

• Political Science.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/124273

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/124273