Political Implications of Military Occupation: The Creation of Social Order and the Historical Legac

Political Implications of Military Occupation: The Creation of Social Order and the Historical Legacies of the US Civil War

Megan A. Stewart & Karin E. Kitchens

American University/Virginia Tech

Abstract:

What are the long-term consequences of military occupations on the social and political institutions of an occupied territory? Previous research typically evaluates why occupations succeed or fail, or the conditions under which resistance to an occupation emerges. In doing so, such work obscures the variation in between success and failure, and obscures the fact that some success may co-exist with other failures, and an occupying armed force may nevertheless leave enduring imprints on the places touched by military and political forces. In this paper, we investigate the long-term effects of military occupation on social and political forces. We argue that when occupiers are endowed with either significant political or military resources, occupying forces can achieve some political objectives, but these changes may trigger (a potentially violent) backlash. More importantly, both the positive and negative effects of occupation can persist for decades after an occupation ends. We test our theory using historical, geo-spatial data on Union Occupation after the United States’ Civil War: a case frequently described as winning the war but losing the peace. Our results confirm our expectations and have important implications for contemporary scholarship on occupation, post-civil war reconstruction, and state-building, and have clear policy implications, especially as the United States prepares for an increased military presence in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Yemen.