CHARLES UNIVERSITY

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CHARLES UNIVERSITY

FACULTY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES

Institute of Political Studies Department of International Relations

Dissertation Thesis

2022 Vojtěch Bahenský

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FACULTY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES

Institute of Political Studies Department of International Relations

Vojtěch Bahenský

Theorizing Military Power Projection: Why and When Distance Matters

Dissertation Thesis

Prague 2022

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Author: Mgr. Vojtěch Bahenský

Supervisor: Mgr. et Mgr. Tomáš Kučera, Ph.D.

Year of the defence: 2022

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Matters. Praha, 2022. 213 pages. Dissertation thesis (PhD). Charles University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Political Studies. Department of Security Studies.

Supervisor Mgr. et Mgr. Tomáš Kučera, Ph.D.

Abstract

The relationship between physical distance and military power is oft-discussed and even more often assumed but arguably still poorly understood. Despite the scope of existing research on the relationship, there is little agreement on the causal mechanism connecting the two variables in question, which hampers further examination of the phenomenon. This work attempts to fill this gap by asking how and when does distance actually matter for military power projection. By connecting International Relations research on the subject with strategic and military studies understanding of the underlying processes and through an in-depth case study of the Falklands War, the thesis identified three general causal mechanisms which mediate distance’s detrimental effect on military power: temporal mechanism, contestation mechanism, and materiel mechanism.

Additionally, it also found that three mechanisms reinforce each other but generally are not causing additional military power decay in the presence of other conditions limiting war. The thesis argues that distance plays only a minor role in very small deployments into limited conflicts, but this should not be generalized lightly to possible great power wars by using quantitative methods. Possible policy implications of the theory for the United States and its allies are outlined using cases of possible conflicts with Russia or China.

Abstrakt

Vztah mezi fyzickou vzdáleností a vojenskou silou patří mezi často diskutované, a ještě častěji předpokládané fenomény, ale přesto lze tvrdit, že není dostatečně pochopen.

Navzdory rozsahu existujícího výzkumu neexistuje shoda na kauzálním mechanismu, který dvě proměnné propojuje. To brání dalšímu výzkumu fenoménu. Tato práce se pokouší o odstranění této zábrany a klade si otázky jak a kdy vzdálenost ovlivňuje projekci vojenské moci. Skrze propojení výzkumu v mezinárodních vztazích s hlubším chápáním procesů strategických a vojenských studií a s pomocí případové studie

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a materiální mechanismus. Krom toho také studie odhalila, že tři zmíněné mechanismy mají tendenci se vzájemně posilovat, ale zároveň zpravidla neoperují aditivně s dalšími faktory, které omezují válku. Vzdálenost pak podle této práce hraje poměrně malou roli ve velmi malých nasazeních síly v omezených konfliktech, což by ale nemělo být zobecňováno skrze kvantitativní metody na možné velmocenské konflikty. Možné implikace teorie pro politiky Spojených států a jejich spojenců jsou naznačeny s na dvou případových studií možných konfliktů s Ruskem a Čínou.

Keywords

Military power, distance, power projection, defence analysis, international conflict

Klíčová slova

Vojenská moc, vzdálenost, projekce moci, obranná analýza, mezinárodní konflikt Length of the work: 469 280 characters¹

1 The length of the work was calculated by including the characters from introduction to conclusion, including footnotes, and excluding abstracts, table of contents, acknowledgements, and list of used literature.

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Declaration

1. I hereby declare that I have compiled this thesis using the listed literature and resources only.

2. I hereby declare that my thesis has not been used to gain any other academic title.

3. I fully agree to my work being used for study and scientific purposes.

In Prague on the …… of ……… 2022 Vojtěch Bahenský

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Acknowledgement

Over the years of thinking about, preparing, and writing this manuscript, the author accrued great debt to many people for their support and advice. First and foremost, I have to thank my thesis advisor, Tomáš Kučera, who accepted me as his student only to suffer years of slow progress and evasion. Despite this, he continued to help and advise me diligently and most kindly, and I will be forever grateful for it. My gratitude for patience also extends to the subject board and its head doc. Plechanovová. I am also immensely grateful to both reviewers for their time and their thoughtful comments, factual corrections and suggestions, which were instrumental in improving the thesis from its first draft. Still, it has to be iterated that all the mistakes and shortcomings of the thesis are solely my own responsibility. There is a great number of friends and colleagues at the Faculty of Social Sciences who both advised and supported me over the years. To name but a few to whom I owe the most: erstwhile fellow Ph.D. students, Miroslava Kuľková, Dagmar Rychnovská, Jakub Záhora, Jan Daniel, Aleš Karmazín, Tomáš Bruner; my

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Faculty, Jan Kofroň, Miloš Balabán, Tomáš Karásek and Sylvie Burianová. Charles University Grant Agency also deserves my gratitude for graciously financing the research behind this work, and I have to express my deepest thanks and admiration for Eva Horníčková from the science department of the faculty, without whose patience and assistance I would never have been able to administer the project.

Beyond the walls of the faculty, there were many who had to suffer my bad temper and anxieties about this work, and there was other work to be done, which suffered too.

I am grateful to my colleagues from the Association for International Affairs for their patience with my endless complaints, my avoidance of additional work and less than timely delivery of the work I failed to avoid. Special thanks in this regard belong to Vít Dostál, Vlaďka Mušálková, Roksolana Dryndak, Michal Bokša, Anežka Fuchsová, Vendula Karásková as well as Tereza Jermanová, Zuzana Netolická, Adéla Denková all my other colleagues from AMO supervisory board. The same gratitude belongs to my as of yet unmentioned colleagues from the Institute for International Relations, Ondřej Ditrych, Jakub Eberle, and Matúš Halás, who provided me with both helpful advice and time needed to complete this work. Next to three workplaces, there is the fourth place of less official nature, which nonetheless deserved a degree of credit for the birth of this work. Cafe Nová Hra was for years my unofficial office, especially when it came to writing. In its chairs and with its coffee and desserts, many texts were born and edited, including the research project of this work, funding project of this work and many of its chapters. While the global pandemic recently prevented the Café from opening, I would like to express thanks to the service and café itself for creating such a welcoming and productive environment.

One cannot live from work alone, and there were many friends who supported me and lifted my spirits on many occasions. My thanks belong to Martin Mezenský, Šimon Presser, Jakub Kufčák, Ondřej Novák, and Matouš Hruška. Without you, I would have never survived this. Finally, the greatest acknowledgement belongs to my family, which carried a great burden of care for me while I busied myself with research and writing.

Namely, the thanks belong to Judita Zelbová, for her patience, support and care and to my parents for supporting me, not asking when I am going to finish my PhD quite as often as they could have and for never telling me no, when I was a kid wanting a book.

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1

Introduction

Is the military power of a country lesser further from its shores? For political science at large and International Relations, in particular, power doubtlessly ranks among the few fundamental concepts around which is much of the scholarship structured. A considerable share of researchers within the International Relations and Conflict Studies focuses on the often nebulous² concept of military power in particular, as an ‘ultimate argument of kings’ in the international arena, and the interest in military power is only likely to increase in the near future with the return of the great power competition. The approaches to the study of military power differ widely both within and between the fields. On the one hand, there are approaches requiring careful qualitative analysis with scenarios and simulations to explore the military balance between particular actors at a particular place and time, which are often associated with strategic and military studies.

On the other hand are the efforts of International Relations and Conflict studies scholars focused on quantifying the national power (of which those of realist tradition often see military power as an ultimate realization) as a capacity to allow generalized cross-country comparisons.

While there are arguments between the followers of the two approaches, as is discussed in some depth further in the thesis, both groups recognize the significance of space for military power. However, while qualitative scholars may find it easy to point out how considerations of space and time in the historical case did or in the simulated scenario would affect the ability of an actor to achieve its goals through military power, the International Relations scholars trying for more generalizable formulas face much greater difficulties in establishing the significance of space for military power application.

For better or worse, geographic distance³ between the state projecting military power and the battlefield emerged as one of the vital spatial factors, presumed to limit the ability of states to wield their military power and achieve their goals through it. Much of time and

2 The question of defining and researching military power is addressed extensively in the second chapter of this thesis. Further specification of the focus of the thesis is also discussed in the third chapter as a part of the discussion of the scope conditions. The thesis, and theory it develops, focus on landpower in a conventional interstate conflict. The discussion of the generalizability of the theory to other

understandings of military power can be found in the latter half of the fifth chapter.

3 The thesis consciously focuses on physical distance as opposed to other concepts of distance, which are discussed more in-depth in the first and third chapters. For a useful overview, see Henrikson (2002).

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4 ink was expended over the years debating the effect of the geographic distance on projected national military power. However, despite the fact, there is yet a lack of overall theorization of the widely recognized relationship between distance and military power, which constitutes the niche this work aims to fill.

This puzzle of how and when physical distance limits military power constitutes the central puzzle of this work. It should be recognized at the onset that those are broad and difficult questions to be answered definitively within a single piece of work. As the question of how or rather in what ways does distance limits military power is logically necessary for the question of when it also takes precedence in importance and focus within this work. Conveniently, as will become clear throughout the thesis, it is also the question for which much of the building blocks are already in existence if somewhat dispersed across different areas of scholarship. The task of the author in answering the first of the questions is, therefore, to combine, systematize and validate rather than create from scratch. The investigation of the second question of when or, to be more precise, under what conditions do physical distance limits military power then logically stems from the first. In comparison with the first question, however, the ambitions of the work are meagre in the case of the second. The hope is to provide conditions deductively devised from theorization and empirically explored within the in-depth case study and further illustrated through additional historical examples. While it is the hope of the author that this is not a little, it should be understood that it is a far cry from thoroughly tested propositions.

But do we really need such theorization? Given the already hinted existence of the wealth of scholarly work touching on the relationship between military power and distance, which all managed to come into existence in the absence of the general theorization, the need for the thorough theorization of the subject might appear somewhat suspect. It is, therefore, useful to introduce one of the central debates surrounding the relationship to illustrate the way in which lack of theorization hinders attempts to reach some satisfying conclusions.

While the first chapter discusses these debates in-depth, the question which is arguably the most salient one, as well as most suitable for our purpose here, is whether the significance of distance decrease with the advancement of technological development

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5 over time⁴. While some would have claimed so, as it makes the travel faster, cheaper, and possible over vast distances (for example, Markowitz and Fariss, 2013), others would counter that the same advancement also makes it possible for an enemy to contest the distance or that physical laws limit are hard to circumvent through new technology (for example Webb, 2007). Rather worryingly, scholars often reached conflicting conclusions while studying the question empirically. How is that possible? Usual culprits such as differing methodological approaches, variable operationalizations or empirical datasets might be at blame. But it might also be explainable by a general lack of theorization of the assumed relationship between physical distance and military power. As will be discussed at great lengths below, there are many different ideas about how distance affects military power, some of which are dangerously close to mistaking distance for other factors, such as the difficulty of crossing bodies of water or challenge posed by amphibious operations (in some respects Mearsheimer, 2001). But there was no attempt to systematically examine different ways through which physical distance affects military power. Moreover, without knowing how distance influences or limits military power, there is little hope of truly understanding the relationship and testing it empirically. Even more importantly, different causal mechanisms might operate to a greater or lesser degree under specific conditions – something we cannot investigate before the relationship is theorized, but also something that might prove to be the crucial piece of the puzzle to explain diverging findings of the existing scholarship on the significance of distance and its development in time. If, for example, a distance would not be a limiting factor for minor uses of military power (as will actually be argued in this work), then much of our data on interstate conflict would be of little use to explore the significance of the distance, as the major conflicts over large distances are very rare events. This would be doubly true for the post-World War two period, which is the focal point of many quantitative studies, given the availability of the data for this era. Similarly, should the contestation of the

4 The question of the implications of technological development for the significance of distance for military power projection is linked to long-running discussion on the role of technology on military power and conflict (for helpful review and a critical reflection of the debate, see for example Bousquet, 2017).

While the debate about technological development is used there to illustrate shortcomings of the existing scholarship, the scope of this thesis does not allow it to delve deep into this subject. Positions of the authors on the relevance of technological development for distance are noted in the first chapter, and the applicability of the theory for the present and future is discussed in the fifth chapter.

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6 physical distance by the adversary be central to its significance for projected military power, then much of the data would prove equally useless or misleading. This illustrates the theoretical need for the theorization of the relationship to advance our understanding of military power, conflict, and international politics at large by extension. Indeed, such a need was already identified by others. This work might hopefully be a partial answer to the recent call by Hulme and Gartzke, who stated that “Future research will determine scope and conditions for the ‘tyranny of distance’” (2021, p. 549) and exploration of the question which states are affected more or less by the loss-of-strength gradient.

But the theoretical contribution of providing answers to posed questions of how and when distance limits or affects military power is by no means the only reason to pursue this line of inquiry at this time. A cursory look at the current state of international politics provides just as if not more convincing arguments for the need to find the answers.

After decades of perceived obsolescence of major power war (see Mandelbaum, 1998; cf.

Mandelbaum, 2019), the great power competition returned accompanied as ever by the risk of great power war. Two cases are especially prominent in the discussions of the possibility of such a conflict – the clash between NATO and Russia in Eastern Europe and a war between China and the United States (with or without their local allies) in the Western Pacific. The prominence of those potential cases of major power wars is hardly surprising. Either of them would have serious repercussions for global order and distribution of power both in the short and long term, not least because of the impact conflict with considerable losses would have on the ability of the United States as guarantor of security in many parts of the world and Europe in particular (see, for example, Bahenský 2021). Both of those potential cases of major power war can be used as an illustration of the importance of questions with which this thesis attempts to deal.

They can and should also serve as a benchmark for the practical usefulness of its findings.

Because of this, both scenarios are briefly overviewed in the introduction, with highlighted role distance (may) play in them, to both illustrate the timeliness of the topic and provide the reader with the contemporary frame for arguments made throughout this work on the basis of history. Both scenarios are revisited in conclusion to this work in light of its findings.

The fears of major power conflict in the Baltics were stoked by the (perceived) resurgence of Russia, especially after its occupation of Crimea and participation in conflict in Eastern Ukraine. Considered scenarios differ widely from ‘hybrid’ scenario of

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7 limited conventional operation following non-military preparatory action on a lower end (for example, Radin, 2017) to conventional all-out attack conquering whole territories of the three Baltic republics on the upper end (for example, Shlapak and Johnson, 2016).

Given the assumed importance of escalation dominance for the ultimate outcome of a conflagration even in the more limited engagements, scenarios tend to gravitate to the same concerns, including NATO’s ability to prevail in a conventional struggle. But for the purpose of highlighting the possible role of distance, a case of a scenario at the upper bound of conflict intensity serves better. Let us presume that minor conflagration quickly escalates into a large-scale conventional attack of Russian forces on Baltic countries.

Local forces would have only extremely limited ability to delay the advance of the Russian army deep into Baltic countries territories (Shlapak and Johnson, 2016). There would be two possible options to forestall the loss of Baltic states. One option would be reinforcing the region in strength before the local forces are overrun. The other would be to build up even greater forces in the nearby areas to mount a campaign to repossess the Baltic states or pressure Russia elsewhere. In both cases, the American troops would play an important role, but they would arguably be indispensable in the second option, given the preponderance of American military capabilities within NATO overall and in specific capabilities in particular (for example, supply of precision-guided ammunition, see Binnendijk et al., 2020, p. 108). And both options, therefore, rest on the ability to deploy forces (and materiel) in a timely manner across considerable physical distance, especially so in the case of the United States.

It is, therefore, not surprising that the ability of the NATO allies and, most importantly, of the United States to reach Baltic countries in time to make a difference in their defence and prevent possible ‘fait accompli’ ranks among chief concerns debated with regard to Baltic defence. Physical distance plays a much lesser role in those discussions in comparison to the role of quality of infrastructure within Europe and with abilities of Russian anti-access area denial to prevent the NATO reinforcements from reaching embattled republics through the Baltic Sea or tenacious and underdeveloped land connection between Lithuania and Poland, dubbed as ‘Suwalki Gap’.

As will be discussed in greater depth in the first chapter, traditional International Relations approaches to power projection would stress the importance of the distance between the United States and the Baltics. Most of this distance is created by the Atlantic Ocean. And yet there seems to be little concern about the ability of US forces to traverse

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8 the width of the Atlantic (cf. Bahenský, 2021, pp. 64-65), which seems to be in stark contrast to the Cold War expectations about the trials and tribulations of getting reinforcing troops from the Continental United States (CONUS) to Europe across the Atlantic sealines of communication threatened by Soviet submarine force and air-raids⁵. Does the physical distance of crossing the Atlantic relevant for military power projection when not contested? How much does this physical distance between the CONUS and eastern borders of NATO truly matter for deterrence and defence of NATO? How powerful are the United States in the Baltics? How much of the effect of the distance can be eliminated by the actions or decisions of involved countries or through the new technological inventions? The existing scholarship on the relationship of physical distance and military power does not provide satisfactory answers to those questions, which are at the same time among the foremost questions of contemporary European security. Relatedly, the degree to which distance presents a barrier, especially if insurmountable, is also among the important determinants of the European security policy with respect to its alliance with the United States (see Bahenský, 2021). If the distance would in this day and time presented a major insurmountable barrier to military force, the much-discussed European Strategic Autonomy would be the way to go. If the distance no longer matters and the infrastructure or A2-AD is the problem, then alliance with the United States is all the more viable for this fact.

Similarly, the presence of the American troops in Europe became a recently hotly discussed issue. Rotational presence with prepositioned equipment is suggested as the way to circumvent difficulties imposed by the distance between the CONUS and Eastern Europe. Yet this practical military experience and knowledge are difficult to square with existing explanations of the significance of distance for the decay of military power.

Could it be that military power could be simply prepositioned near the conflict to eliminate the problems stemming from a distance?

A few paragraphs above introduced many questions regarding the potential significance of the distance for possible confrontation between NATO and Russia in Eastern Europe. The inability of contemporary theoretical approaches to answer the

5 For a contemporary discussion of the general issue of transatlantic logistics of NATO, see Kidd, 2018.

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9 question of the relationship between military power and distance in case of possible conflict between NATO and Russia highlights the need for a more comprehensive theory.

The prospect of the possible war between major powers in Europe is, therefore, one of the two benchmark hypothetical cases, with the second one being a potential war between the United States and China in Western Pacific. And if the question of distance generally only lurks in the background of the discussions of a possible European major war scenario hidden behind concerns about access and infrastructure, it features prominently in debates about a possible American war in Western Pacific.

Discussions of the possible war between the United States and China are old and can be traced back to the age-old conundrum of Thucydides trap, as China rises, and the position of the United States as undisputed global hegemon erodes (see, for example, Coker, 2015; Allison, 2017; Rosecrance and Miller, 2014). Nonetheless, those concerns were thoroughly reinvigorated in recent years. The cause for this is both the gradual rise of Chinese military power, especially through its modernisation and China’s rising ambitions, which are voiced increasingly openly and with greater assertiveness. Growing suspicion, if not outright hostility with which is China viewed globally, does little to alleviate the fears of possible conflict. And while the focal point of conflict with China has so far been international trade, China’s appalling human rights record and sphere of technological innovation, the military engagement is far from far-fetched. On a pragmatic level, if the likelihood of conflict is enough to drive concerns and developments of both militaries, it is worthy of attention (for broader argument, see Bahenský, 2021, pp. 60- 61). There are at least five flashpoints of a possible war with China. Going from north to south, those would be escalation on Korean peninsula, drawing in both China and the United States and its allies, East China sea conflagration, most likely starting between China and Japan, Chinese attempt to force solution of its problem with Taiwan, either through blockade or outright occupation, and South China Sea conflict. The last fifth possible flashpoint would be overlapping territorial claims between China and India. With the exception of the last case, all conflict would start but also probably largely take place in Western Pacific. And, needless to say, if the physical distance between the theatre of war is playing a role, then the United States should be at a major disadvantage in any such conflict.

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10 While the debate about a possible war between the United States and China is obviously much broader⁶, distance does seem to concern American planners (Montgomery, 2014, p. 126). Both critical supplies and reinforcements would have to reach the theatre and American units already present in it after crossing the Pacific Ocean in a timely fashion (see, for example, O’Hanlon, 2019). The American ability to facilitate such sealift under wartime conditions is increasingly coming under scrutiny recently, not least because of the decay of its dedicated government-owned sealift ships, lack of marines to man them, lack of readiness and because lack of experience with sealift under possible hostile threat of interdiction (see for example Waking, 2019; Walton et al., 2019;

Bradley and Yardley, 2019). Some of the more sceptical authors would go as far as declare that era of traditional power projection in the form of deployment of conventional forces over vast distances is over for the United States (Mazarr, 2020). The war in the Western Pacific might seem like a prime candidate for the debilitating influence of the distance on military power. But there are at the same time many factors, which should be counted against this expectation. The chief among those is local allies of the United States and their bases, plausibly being made available to the United States military forces, as well as local sources of some supplies.

In many respects, the case of possible war between the United States and China highlights the lack of meaningful theory of the effect of physical distance on military power even more than the case of the defence of Baltics. It is vaguely possible to make a detailed military scenario, taking into account all the possible variables and reaching some conclusion about the relative military capabilities of both countries and the likely results of their engagements (see, for example, Gompert et al., 2016). But the existing theoretical literature on the relationship of distance and military power provides limited and contradictory theoretical guidance for judging localized military capabilities of a hegemon and would-be hegemon in a possible major war with international system altering potential.

Interestingly, both scenarios highlight anxiety stemming from a lack of recent experience with comparable conflicts. Ever since World War II, the military conflicts which were waged over large distances were generally minor in the context of national

6 For a brief review in the context of power projection, see Bahenský 2021, pp. 59-63.

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11 resources, and the major ones, such as Gulf War and Iraq War, were still profoundly asymmetrical in comparison to possible wars explored in two hypothetical cases above.

The technological advancements since the end of World War II only compound this lack of reliable knowledge and make even the most proximate experience stemming from Cold War preparations and exercises of dubious value. This only further signifies the need for a theoretical understanding of the relationship between physical distance and military power, which could serve as a lens through which likely impacts of technological developments can be apprised.

In review, the thesis aims to solve the puzzle of in what way and when does physical distance limits or diminishes the military power of a state. This is important theoretically to advance the understanding of military power, international conflict, and politics. It is also significant and timely practically, as we live in a world in which major war over large distances between peer or near-peer adversaries seems more likely than ever in the last thirty years. Lastly, before delving into the issues introduced above, the structure of the thesis has to be presented.

The thesis is structured into two broader parts. The first of those is a chiefly theoretical one, focusing on the theoretical investigation of the relationship between military power and the distance over which it is projected. In this part of the thesis, the existing scholarship is explored, and different strands of the literature are combined to construct a rough theoretical sketch of the relationship, which is then explored empirically and in greater depth in the second part of the thesis.

The first part opens with the first chapter covering the existing scholarship on the relationship between distance and military power, both to provide the introduction to the topic at hand and to identify existing hypotheses and findings on causal mechanisms connecting the distance with a decrease in military power. The second chapter follows the first one, attempting to complement existing scholarship on the relationship between military power and distance by introducing and combining a deeper understanding of military power as a crucial concept and military logistics as a field examining the premier of hypothesised causal mechanisms identified in the first chapter. Both additional sources of theorization of the relationship stem from the limits of the existing scholarship, identified in the first chapter. A more informed understanding of the concept of military power is needed to conceptually capture the distinction between potential power, military power and finally deployed military power, constrained by the effect of the distance and

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12 possibly other factors. A deeper understanding of military logistics is called for as the existing literature relies on the limits of military logistics as the pathway connecting distance and military power. The second part of the second chapter, therefore, discusses state of the art in the field of theory of military logistics, focusing on the role of distance in military logistics and the effect of military logistics on military power.

The second part of the thesis opens with the third chapter, outlining the methodology used to further develop the theoretical framework in the empirical case study as well as presenting the scope conditions within which is the theory crafted. The fourth chapter is an in-depth exploration of identified causal pathways and the effect of other variables on their operation in the case of British projection of military power in the Falklands War.

The fifth chapter completes the argument by presenting the theory of the relationship between military power and the distance over which it is projected. It presents a deductively constructed theorisation of the relationship between military power and the distance over which it is projected. It first outlines the theory as a whole, discussing the pathways connecting the two variables of distance and deployed military power. It follows with a more detailed discussion of each of the pathways, focusing on how different intervening factors can influence the presence or significance of those pathways.

In the conclusion, the research puzzle and the key arguments and findings of the thesis are reviewed and summarized. Beyond that, the conclusion also ventures to outline both theoretical and practical implications of the findings. Practical implications of the proposed theory are discussed through a return to the two hypothetical cases of major power wars, which were introduced above. While the primary attention in this context is paid to the advisability of certain defence and foreign policies available to actors in such hypotheticals, several new promising research directions implied by the findings of this thesis with regard to the two possible wars are also suggested. In the area of theoretical implications, the conclusion to the thesis focuses on further research needed to investigate the relationship between physical distance and military power but attempts to also point out some possible implications of the findings for the broader fields of conflict studies, strategic studies, and International Relations.

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1 Review of scholarship

It was already mentioned in the introduction that the relationship between distance and military power and between geography and conflict more generally received substantial scholarly attention. This chapter delves into this wealth of literature with three specific goals in mind. The first of those is to introduce the reader to existing scholarship and its discontents and disagreements, with special focus on several authors who came closest to addressing the core questions of this work and are therefore of special significance, especially as a benchmark upon which this thesis should improve. The second purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate both the absence of proper theorization of the relationship between physical distance and military power on the one hand and the need for such theorization on the other hand. The third and last goal of the chapter is to provide a basic framework of the theory by combining theoretical linkages between physical distance and military power hypothesised or explored by the scholars introduced in the chapter.

While the chapter had three goals, it would make little sense to divide it into subchapters addressing each of those in turn. Instead, the chapter is structured into three subchapters based on three broadly defined areas of scholarship dealing with the subject covered by this thesis. The first chapter covers Kenneth Boulding as arguably the first author of the theoretical conception of the relationship between military power and physical distance and Bueno de Mesquita as an author who followed Boulding’s thinking into developing operationalization of the relationship. The second subchapter then introduces broader and mostly quantitative and empirical literature on distance and conflict within International Relations or conflict studies. The third subchapter focuses on a more qualitative approach to the question of the decay of military power with distance within the strategic studies.⁷ The last subchapter is a conclusion to the chapter, summarizing the review of the literature and distilling the key information to fulfil the

7 The identification of the subfields is obviously to a large degree arbitrary, and a number of authors and works do not fit neatly in one or the other box. Beyond those discussed in this chapter, others should be at least noted. In offence-defence theory, the ease and speed of transport are seen as favouring offence (see, for example, Fearon, 1995; Lieber, 2000; Biddle, 2001). Among realist scholars, Walt (1985) and Mearshimer (2001) utilized distance and military power in their research. From military science or strategic studies perspective, the relationship was in one way or the other tackled, for example, by Huth and Russett (1984), Sakaguchi (2011) or Montgomery (2014).

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14 second and the third purpose of this chapter, namely staking out lacuna for this work and systematizing causal mechanisms connecting physical distance with military power which were hypothesised in the existing literature.

1.1 Boulding’s law of diminishing strength

Kenneth Boulding can be considered as a forefather of the academic study of the phenomenon. In his magnum opus ‘Conflict and Defense: A General Theory’ (1962), he outlined ‘loss-of-strength gradient’ (LSG). Heavily borrowing from the microeconomics, he postulated that the national strength of a state decreases with a distance and ‘loss-of- strength gradient’ was to denote the slope of the line capturing speed of decreasing of national strength on Y-axis with the variation of distance on X-axis (Boulding, 1962, p.

230). Boulding was working with the concept on an extremely general level, and the law of diminishing strength (where the better-known term ‘loss-of-strength gradient’ denotes the rate of diminishing of strength) was approached as one of the assumptions for his formal modelling enterprise. As the assumptions do not need to be perfectly correct, it is understandable that Boulding did not go into much depth in his exploration of the concept and did not investigate it empirically.

At the same time, Boulding did provide some tentative elaboration of both theoretical and empirical arguments to back his assumption in the appendix of his book.

In this elaboration, Boulding’s main argument behind the law of diminishing strength is based on the length of supply lines. The longer the supply lines, the more men are needed to maintain these lines, and every man that is needed to maintain them cannot be deployed by the state as a part of the coercive force at the end of the logistical string. Additionally, Boulding argues that the supply line needs to be supplied as well, which results in not entirely linear LSG (Boulding, 1962, pp. 245-247) even though he at the same time reached a conclusion that “deviations from linearity [of loss of strength] are not likely to be great” (Boulding, 1962, p. 231). In this can be seen the context of his assumption, which was later not recognized by the scholars. The Boulding was interested in the idea in the context of the ‘viability’ of states in their relative positions, assuming reasonably (and understandably - especially in the context of a world not that long after the end of the Second World War) that states would mobilize to their utmost for war to the death (of a country). This oversight will become important later and will be explored in some depth in the next chapter.

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15 This understanding of underpinning principles behind LSG is consistent with Boulding’s expectations regarding the impact of technological change (and cost of transport in particular) on loss-of-strength gradient (Boulding, 1962, p. 262; see also Markowitz and Fariss, 2013). But it is less consistent with his arguments about the impact of offensive and defensive weapons or the impact of military bases on the gradient, neither of which is explained in any detail, especially in their potential role of supporting one’s projection of force (Boulding, 1962, pp. 262-263). Despite that, it is important to keep in mind that Boulding recognized that the loss-of-strength gradient of a country could be influenced by other sides countermeasures. While this potential influence on the gradient was also not explored by Boulding beyond brief mention, it is notable that it was not perused further by any of his later followers working with the concept (e.g., Markowitz and Fariss, 2013).

While Boulding’s thinking on the subject obviously lacked depth, precision, and empirical validation, it should be nonetheless recognized how well thought out, and relatively comprehensive his concept was. He had a mechanism in mind explaining how distance translated into diminished strength (through lack of those who man the supply chain on the battlefield) and also provided thinking about factors that influence this mechanism, namely technological development, military basing, and hostile contestation of the distance. As will become clear from the next paragraphs, many of those aspects got side-lined or forgotten in subsequent research.

Boulding’s scholarship regarding the role of the distance found influential followers as Robert Gilpin (1981, pp. 56-59) and Bruce Bueno de Mesquita (1981). Gilpin confined himself to a general endorsement of the idea of loss-of-strength gradient even though he admitted that the concept is an oversimplification and that “… the factors affecting this gradient are complex and by no means solely technological” (Gilpin, 1981, pp. 56-57). He stressed its utility, especially in connection to technological development (in transportation and communication), for an explanation of expansion and political unification.

In contrast to Gilpin, Bueno de Mesquita made a much larger original contribution to Boulding’s original thesis by constructing the operationalization of loss-of-strength gradient and subsequently used it fruitfully in empirical analysis. The first thing to be noted about the contribution of Bueno de Mesquita is that he uses Boulding’s idea of the loss-of-strength gradient in the same fashion as Boulding, namely as an assumption in a

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16 broader model, in this case of explaining the outbreak of war through relative power balance (Bueno de Mesquita 1981). While he illustrates the general meaningfulness of the assumption by few references to historical events, but he does not make any systematic inquiry into the validity of the assumption. But importantly, for the purpose of this work, he dedicates several pages to explaining his (deductive) reasoning for why and crucially how would the assumed mechanism linking physical distance with military power operate. His thinking about loss-of-strength gradient, therefore, still provides noteworthy insight. In the beginning, he outlines four major ways through which distance debilitates national power (or rather ability to execute combat). “Combat over long distances (a) introduces organizational and command problems; (b) threatens military morale (c) invites domestic dissent (d) debilitates soldiers and their equipment.” (Bueno de Mesquita, 1981, p. 41).

Already on the basis of those four points, a rather striking difference can be seen in comparison to the thinking of Boulding introduced above. Despite the fact that Bueno de Mesquita directly references Boulding, he does not list key Boulding’s rationale for the existence of the LSG – the costs and resources associated with transportation over the distance – among his four points elaborating why distance affects military power. The only points at which he touches the subject are his two remarks, that “When soldiers must be transported over large distances, one cannot ignore the logistic problems that arise in maintaining supply lines to provide ammunition, spare parts, food, clothing, and a host of other items that may not be readily available near the battlefield, especially if the soldiers are on enemy territory.” (Bueno de Mesquita, 1981, p. 41) and that “Long journey … have generally been accompanied by heavy casualties due to malnutrition, exposure, exhaustion, and a host of other maladies” (Bueno de Mesquita, 1981, p. 42). But both of those arguments are clearly distinct from Boulding’s original rationale. The first of those appears to focus more on the organizational issue of long-distance force projection. The second remark references attrition and is mostly connected to over-land travel or sail era sea travel rather than resources needed for transportation itself.

Beyond these points introduced above, Bueno de Mesquita provided a great number of individual observations explaining why the distance matters, including unfamiliarity of terrain to a distant military power projection state, the difference between

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17 language and culture of the projecting country and in the theatre of operations⁸, or general suitability of armed forces training tactics and leadership for local conditions⁹ (Bueno de Mesquita, 1981, pp. 41-42). This list of observations constitutes a rather impressive overview, but it nonetheless suffers from two major problems. The first of those is the only tentative link of those arguments to physical distance. Why it is plausible that terrain or language and culture would become more alien with distance, it is clear that such correlation would be rather weak. The same goes for military preparation and training, which might plausibly be tailored to local conditions if expected to be used in defence of the territorial integrity, but in the case of great powers may just as well be adapted for the likely battlegrounds, which can be distant. It is, therefore, quite difficult to see those arguments as causal links connecting physical distance with a decrease in military power.

The second rather significant problem with the arguments of Bueno de Mesquita, which were introduced at the beginning of the last paragraph, is general lack of clarity on their mutual relations or relative significance since Bueno de Mesquita does not offer any way of assessing the relative importance of rationales behind his essentially composite/multidimensional view of the concept. This shortcoming was also noted by Ray and Vural, who wrote in a pointed fashion that “Those points as they stand, as well as Bueno de Mesquita's discussion of them, make it clear that he includes the loss-of- strength gradient in his model because of the impact of logistical problems on international military conflict (as in points a and d), and because of the impact that the location of a conflict has on the resolve, or the will to win of the competing parties (as in points b and c). … Bueno de Mesquita's explanation of the initiation and outcome of international conflicts based in part on the loss-of-strength gradient (and any other theory based on it) leaves the meaning of this theory not only to the reader's judgment, but in serious doubt.” (Ray and Vural, 1986, p. 332).

This problem is illuminated even in Bueno de Mesquita’s own book when he states two expectations about LSG: “First, the rate at which power declines has diminished due

8 To quote Bueno de Mesquita directly: “Soldiers fighting a long way from home are likely to be on unfamiliar terrain, surrounded by people who, though possibly friendly, speak a different and unfamiliar language, prepare foods differently, and interact differently with strangers.” (1981, p. 41)

9 To quote Bueno de Mesquita directly: “Distance increases the likelihood that a nation‘s military

equipment, training, tactics, and leadership are ill prepared or unsuited for the actual conditions of battle.”

(1981, p. 42)

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18 to the general impact of technology. Improved transport systems, medical care, and the like have generally reduced the losses that arise from moving armies great distances.

Second, the rate at which power declines is lower for more advanced nations than for less developed nations.” (Bueno de Mesquita, 1981, p. 43). While it is easy enough to see how technology (seen as affecting costs of transportation) can lead to a change in LSG in Boulding’s case (for a similar argument see Markowitz and Fariss, 2013), in Bueno de Mesquita’s conceptualization, based to a large degree on presumed factors such as a difference of terrain or culture and language, it is a far less straightforward claim.

Similarly, it is hard to see why should more advanced nations have fewer problems with maintaining domestic support for the war, maintaining the morale of soldiers or having suitable training and equipment for local conditions.

In case of his two expectations regarding the loss-of-strength gradient, Bueno de Mesquita seems to rely on the material concept of the mechanism of the relationship, whereas in his arguments about maintaining its continued significance, he somewhat conveniently turns to the ideational side of his concept of the relationship between distance and military power, stating that “The problem of transporting supplies to soldiers in faraway places may be close to a solution, but … the problem of maintaining morale – convincing people at home that the war is important enough for them to supply the money and expertise to mount a war effort and convincing the soldiers fighting far from home, unsure of the purpose for which they are risking their lives, that the war is worth it – is still important in warfare.” (Bueno de Mesquita, 1981, p. 44). While it would be too harsh to claim he is wrong in these claims, he definitely does not provide evidence proving his claims are correct.

His operationalization does little to dispel this confusion between material and ideational aspects of the concept of loss-of strength gradient. He adopts a formula based on the decay of military power with the days of travel (Bueno de Mesquita, 1981, pp.

103-108) it takes to cross the distance. This is an elegant solution for including technological development into the formula, which he does through estimating the speed of travel in three distinct time periods covered by his data. But at the same time, it raises a number of questions, namely whether a change in speed of travel would, in his mind, affect other dimensions of his conception of the relationship, such as unfamiliarity of terrain, climate, and culture. Lastly, there is little clarity in the work of Bueno de Mesquita on two further significant issues linked with the loss-of-strength gradient. Those are from

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19 where should be the distance measured and through which way it should be measured.

On the first of those questions, he opts for ‘centres of power’ of the countries, which is rather significant, when, for example, addressing distances between Russia and Japan in the Russo-Japanese War in the early 20^th century (the example he himself raises).

Unfortunately, he offers relatively little guidance on how could be these ‘centres of gravity’ of national power systematically identified. With regard to the second question dealing with measuring of distance, he opted for measuring the length of realistic sealine or airline connections, but again offers little guidance of why should one or other be preferred and does not deal with extremely limited capability of air transport, a topic which is discussed in more depth in the latter half of the second chapter. Overall, the approaches of both Boulding and Bueno de Mesquita highlight common themes in scholarship on the relationship between distance and military power. While there is clear plausibility to the idea that states are militarily speaking weaker further from home, there is little agreement on factors that shape this.

1.2 Conflict studies

While the work of Bueno de Mesquita still had a clear connection (in reference if not in substance, as was discussed above) to Boulding’s original conceptualisation, conflict studies as a field developed largely their own approaches to the relationship between physical distance and conflict, if not directly military power. Investigation of the effect of distance on the possibility of conflict from Lemke (1995) may serve as a useful bridge between Boulding’s and Bueno de Mesquita’s thinking on the subject and broader conflict studies literature on the geographic aspects of conflict and war.

Lemke adopted Bueno de Mesquita's assumption and formula for calculating LSG in his effort to redefine relevant dyads for potential interstate conflict in conflict studies.

He adopted Bueno de Mesquita's formula with the addition of terrain features and their traversability as a factor. Lemke did achieve some success with his application of modified Bueno de Mesquita’s formula for Latin America, in that he correctly identified dyads between which war was not geographically possible. But if the theorisation behind de Mesquita’s assumption was somewhat confusing, Lemke’s assumptions about the working of the relationship seem plainly unrealistic. First of those is the reliance of his calculation of the 'effective distance' between states by taking into account terrain lying on the direct route between the capitals of the countries. While his effort to make the LSG

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20 formula more sensitive to actual conditions on the ground is surely reasonable enough, the is little reason to expect military forces to choose a direct approach from one capital to another, meeting in battle presumably on the point where the line between capitals intersects with interstate border. This is unrealistic not only with regard to other potential locations of hotspots, especially given the fact that not every war (indeed most wars) will not include attempted capture of enemy’s capital city but also in light of possible faster routes allowed, for example, by infrastructure or availability of rivers or sealift. The second unrealistic assumption, which is at least openly recognized by Lemke, is the decision that the limit for engaging in war is the ability to use at least half of the nation’s military force. Lastly, there is a problem shared to a degree with the original Bueno de Mesquita’s operationalisation of the relationship, adopting the same rate of advance/speed of transport for over-land and sea travel.

While unique in his adoption of Bueno de Mesquita's formula, Lemke's article belongs to the rich literature on international conflict, in which distance played a significant role. Especially interesting for this work is what Vasquez calls 'proximity and interactions explanation' of war (Vasquez, 1995; see also Buhaug and Gleditsch, 2006).

There is a great wealth of literature falling into this category and more broadly to research into the relationship between conflict¹⁰ and space, including the long scholarship of Most and Starr (Starr and Most, 1976; Starr and Most, 1978; Most and Starr, 1980; Starr and Siverson, 1990; Starr, 2003; Starr, 2005; Starr, 2013) and others (Buhaug and Gleditsch, 2006; Diehl, 1985; Garnham, 1976; Henrikson, 2002; Cederman, 2003; Pearson, 1974).

The key question tackled by the literature on proximity and interaction explanation of conflict is how it enables states to interact, both in positive and negative ways. While it is an important and influential area of scholarship, it is also a somewhat contentious one.

There is, for example, a somewhat substantial debate regarding whether the results of studies employing proximity are not actually driven by the contiguity of states rather than their distance (see Vasquez, 1995; 2005).

10 While the bulk of the literature on the relationship of distance and conflict focuses on interstate conflict, there are notable exceptions. For one, which is notable by its application of Boulding’s loss-of-strength gradient in the intrastate setting, see Buhaug’s (2008) investigation of the location of a rebellion within the state though estimating the ability of government to project power from capital city to the given location.

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21 Despite the wealth of scholarship on the topic in conflict studies, this area of literature will be covered in this work only sparingly. The main reason for this is limited attention paid in this generally quantitatively oriented scholarship to causal mechanisms linking distance with conflict. That is doubly so for the specific issue of military power.

While, for example, the relationship between technology and opportunity for interaction is a frequent theme (see Buhaug and Gleditsch, 2006), there are few specific arguments regarding military power projection as a specific kind of interaction. That is perfectly understandable because military power is obviously a factor enabling conflict (or making it likely). But it is nonetheless a feature that diminishes the value of this scholarship for solving the puzzle tackled in this work.

Three pieces of scholarship that will be addressed there is an article by Markowitz and Fariss (2013), a book chapter by Buhaug and Gleditsch (2006), and a recent article by Hulme and Gartzke (2021). Those were chosen both as an illustration of the broader area of scholarship but also because they are coming closest to engaging the central question of this work which makes them the most useful sources of thinking on causal mechanism linking distance with military power.

Markowitz and Fariss (2013) set out to answer the question of what determines whether and how far states project power. In their analysis, they adopted a point of view very close to the original Boulding’s view that is that the most important determinant of power projection is its cost. However, their interpretation of cost is somewhat different from Boulding’s. Where Boulding conceived of cost in terms of man and resources, Markowitz and Fariss focused on the financial cost of transport. Correspondingly to this hypothesised theoretical linkage, they focused in their research on the question of how the cost of transport in respective years and the overall national power of state influence the distance over which the states participated in militarized interstate disputes. They also followed the general convention of measuring distances to the location of an outbreak of the Militarised interstate disputes¹¹ from the capital of the participating state. They found a positive relationship between the decreasing costs of transport and increasing distance at which states participated in Militarised interstate disputes. Their conclusion, however,

11 See Braithwaite (2010) for data on locations of Militarized Interstate Disputes used by Markowitz and Fariss or Bezerra and Braithwaite (2019), respectively, for the newer version of the dataset.

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22 remains mired by several problems which make them less than wholly convincing. The first of the potential problems is using civilian transport cost as a proxy for military transport costs, which is not unreasonable, given how similar transport vessels are and the degree to which is civilian shipping regularly used to carry military cargo or personnel¹². At the same time, it points to the presence of a single overarching mechanism, determined by financial cost, which may but also may not approximate the general difficulty of travel and transport correctly. What is more concerning is the interpretation of the results by the authors, who, on the basis of their study, make claims about the impact of advances of specifically military technologies and on the power projection capability of states.

Nonetheless, hypothesising the financial cost of transport over the distance through the cost of transport is both broadly representative of the conflict studies scholarship and important contribution in the context of this work, as this was not discussed (at least explicitly) either by Boulding or by Bueno de Mesquita.

The second piece of literature which was chosen is the book chapter by Buhaug and Gleditsch (2006), which in many respects reached conclusions contrary to those of Markowitz and Fariss (2013). In their investigation of the validity of claims of decreasing significance of distance as a barrier for conflict, they found that globalisation did not diminish the influence of distance (as a proxy for an opportunity) on conflict and war.

They base this assessment on the continued significance of relative costs, despite the decline of absolute costs of interaction over distance. Their research is interesting not only because it contradicts the previously introduced research by Markowitz and Fariss but also because it illustrates certain limits of quantitative analysis of distance in the conflict studies scholarship. Despite investigating a much broader set of arguments and hypotheses going well above the question of military power, Buhaug and Gleditsch offer somewhat extensive theoretical discussion of a possible effect of globalisation (including its technological drivers) on the ability to project military power. The cost of transport, as well as the implication of speed of transportation, is discussed, but they also address technological features of weapon systems development, such as their speed, range, and accuracy. In the end, they concluded with regard to military power projection that “In

12 This is discussed further later in the second chapter of the thesis. The importance but also limits of civilian shipping for military purposes are also addressed at some length in the fourth chapter in the case study of Falklands War.

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23 fact, some types of interaction may hardly be affected [by globalisation] at all. In particular, this seems to apply to states’ military reach.” (Buhaug and Gleditsch, 2006).

The trouble is that while this seems like a meaningful interpretation of their results, it is hardly a direct test of a proposition about the ability to project military force. This has two major causes, common to most of the investigation of effects of distance on the war in conflict studies. First of those is that quantitative methods are generally ill-suited to the study of causal mechanisms. The second is the need to rely on the incidence of conflict rather than the presence and scale of deployed forces. This problem can also be seen in the above-discussed paper of Markowitz and Fariss and is mostly determined by lack of data, but it nonetheless is a problem for investigating the relationship between military power and distance in particular. Those two problems together make it difficult, if not impossible, to differentiate the effect the distance has on the incidence of conflict through making the projection of military forces costly or not possible at all, and the effect that the distance had through other causal paths altogether.

The third and the most recent article breaks with the focus on the incidence of conflict. Hulme and Gartzke (2021) focus on the performance of the United States military in interstate conflict. They argue that the military performance (measured as a success rate) decreased with the increasing distance of the conflict from the United States.

While they identify a clear and continuous trend of increase in the distance over which is American military deployed over time since the 19^th century, they show that a decrease in performance is significant even when the temporal dimension is controlled for. While the authors overview a broad spectrum of the literature on the decay of military power with distance, they themselves outline three possible causal links that, in their opinion, might explain the decrease in performance. The authors are sceptic about the first of those, which is the ‘loss-of-strength gradient’ based on Boulding (1962). Hulme and Gartzke reason that the US military should be able to correctly estimate such material limits on their power in a distant theatre, and it should not, therefore, negatively affect the performance in the conflicts the United States find itself in (Hulme and Gartzke, 2021, p.

548). Further, they are also sceptical about the likelihood of the United States consistently overestimating its power-projection capability, both because they would expect the ability to learn from the previous miscalculation and because such arguments ignore the variation in time and space. They conclude that the most likely cause of the decrease in performance with increasing distance is “the combination of inferior information about distant places

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