This event will be streamed via Zoom. Please contact iscs@gwu.edu for an event link.
The Institute for Security and Conflict Studies invites you to the inaugural talk in its new book launch series. This series aims to bring the authors of the best new books in security studies to GW to discuss their work. Prof. Lyall will discuss his book in conversation with ISCS co-director Alex Downes, to be followed by Q&A from the audience.
Featuring Jason Lyall, James Wright Chair in Transnational Studies and Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth College, discussing his new book Divided Armies: Inequality and Battlefield Performance in Modern War (Princeton, 2020)
About the Author
Jason Lyall is the inaugural James Wright Associate Professor of Transnational Studies at Dartmouth College. He also directs the Political Violence FieldLab at the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding and is a member of the 2020 class of Andrew Carnegie Fellows. His research examines the effects and effectiveness of political violence in civil and conventional wars. Current projects include: (1) the relationship between inequality and violence; (2) assessing the effectiveness of aid programs in conflict settings; and (3) civilian casualties and the dynamics of blame attribution in civil wars. His research has been published in the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, International Organization, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Peace Research, Journal of Politics, and World Politics, among others. He has received funding from AidData/USAID, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the Folke Bernadotte Academy, the MacArthur Foundation, and the United States Institute of Peace. He has conducted fieldwork in Russia and Afghanistan, where he served as the Technical Adviser for USAID’s Measuring the Impact of Stabilization Initiatives (MISTI) project during 2012-15.
About the Book
Divided Armies: How do armies fight and what makes them victorious on the modern battlefield? In Divided Armies, Jason Lyall challenges long-standing answers to this classic question by linking the fate of armies to their levels of inequality. Introducing the concept of military inequality, Lyall demonstrates how a state’s prewar choices about the citizenship status of ethnic groups within its population determine subsequent battlefield performance. Treating certain ethnic groups as second-class citizens, either by subjecting them to state-sanctioned discrimination or, worse, violence, undermines inter-ethnic trust, fuels grievances, and leads victimized soldiers to subvert military authorities once war begins. The higher an army’s inequality, Lyall finds, the greater its rates of desertion, side-switching, casualties, and use of coercion to force soldiers to fight.
In a sweeping historical investigation, Lyall draws on Project Mars, a new dataset of 250 conventional wars fought since 1800, to test this argument. Project Mars breaks with prior efforts by including overlooked non-Western wars while cataloguing new patterns of inequality and wartime conduct across hundreds of belligerents. Combining historical comparisons and statistical analysis, Lyall also marshals evidence from nine wars, ranging from the Eastern Fronts of World Wars I and II to less familiar wars in Africa and Central Asia, to illustrate inequality’s effects.
Sounding the alarm on the dangers of inequality for battlefield performance, Divided Armies offers important lessons about warfare over the past two centuries—and for wars still to come.
