Blood and Treasure: Money and Military Force in Irregular Warfare

Abstract

Among the most important choices made by groups fighting a civil war -- governments and rebels alike -- is how to allocate available military and pecuniary resources across the contested areas of a conflict-ridden territory. Combatants use military force to coerce and money to persuade and co-opt. A vast body of literature in political science and security studies examines how and where combatants in civil wars apply violence. Scholars, however, have devoted less attention to combatants' use of material inducements to attain their objectives. This dissertation proposes a logic that guides combatants' use of material benefits alongside military force in pursuit of valuable support from communities in the midst of civil war. Focused on the interaction between the military and the local population, the theory envisions a bargaining process between a commander and a community whose support he seeks. The outcome of the bargaining process is a fiscal strategy defined by the extent to which material benefits are distributed diffusely or targeted narrowly. That outcome follows from key characteristics of the community in question that include its sociopolitical solidarity (or fragmentation) and its economic resilience (or vulnerability). I evaluate the theory of fiscal strategies through a series of case studies from the Philippine-American War of 1899-1902. As a further test of external validity, I consider the theory's applicability to key events from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.