The role of foreign interventions

in the balance of power system of the Greater Middle East

Research Proposal
Péter Selján
Corvinus University of Budapest
Faculty of Social Sciences and International Relations
International Relations Doctoral School
Third year PhD Student
January 3, 2019

In recent decades the number of interstate conflicts decreased, while internal conflicts
– which often escalated into civil wars – have become the most recurrent form of
conflict, and most of them are characterized by active foreign involvement. Since the
beginning of the so-called Arab Spring, the world witnessed several foreign military
interventions in the crisis of Libya, Iraq, Yemen and Syria on different scale and form.
The concept of foreign intervention and its impact on the target country and the
balance of power theory have a substantial background in the literature of
international relations on their own. However, changes in the regional balance of
power systems due to foreign involvement in internal affairs of other states remain
under-researched. This research is an attempt to fill this gap through reviewing the
literature on these topics and pointing out the link between foreign interventions and
certain changes in the balance-of-power system of the Greater Middle East region.

Introduction
Foreign military interventions are becoming a determining phenomenon of the
international relations and world politics in the 21st century, especially in Central Asia and the
Middle East, where since the start of the so called Arab Spring one external military intervention
follows another. We can see this happening in some countries struggling with civil wars and armed
conflicts like Libya, Iraq, Yemen and Syria. The empirical literature on foreign military
intervention has made considerable progress in the last few decades identifying the causes and
consequences of military intervention, but we still have much to learn about the subject. The
literature has examined the impact that military intervention has on target countries with particular
attention being given to target state democratization, increasing international terrorism,
radicalization, human rights development, and increasing conflict intensity.
According to previous studies, regardless of the way democratic change is measured, the
majority of US military interventions during the Cold War do not appear to lead to increased levels
of democracy. Exploring conflict-intensity levels and conflict-intensity changes in Africa for the
period between 1989 and 2010 research findings indicate that partisan, military and economic
interventions increase conflict intensity, whereas neutral and diplomatic interventions have no
such effect. Other research results indicate that indiscriminate U.S. military intervention is, in
general, liable to increase terrorist incidents if not more terrorist casualties. Full-scale intervention
often leads to the destabilizing of local power structures, which, like fragile states, establish a
breeding ground for terrorism. Limited interventions through airstrikes provide different results;

1
the lack of human interaction is decisive in how repercussions occur. The aerial attacks override
territorial sovereignty but provide attackers with complete safety, giving rise to the perception of
an unfair and dishonourable ‘distant war’. Where civilian casualties occur, whole communities as
well as individuals turn against those intervening. Additional research has been dedicated to the
political, economic and societal impact of foreign interventions on the target nations.
This research is an attempt to fill the gap in the scientific literature with establishing a link
between the foreign intervention as the independent variable and changes in regional balance of
power systems as the dependent variables. On the next few pages we will first review the main
findings of prior studies related to the research problem. We break the literature review into themes
like foreign interventions and balance of power theory, define the concept of foreign interventions
and interpret the theory of balance of power.
In the third section of the research proposal we will describe the overall research design by
building upon the literature review. We are taking into consideration methods that other
researchers have used and other methods that perhaps could be utilized. After specifying the
research operations that will be undertaken and the one possible way of interpretation of the results
in relations to the research problem, we list some potential barriers and pitfalls of the research
design that can be anticipated. In the last section of the paper we provide a brief summary of the
entire study in the conclusion, emphasizing why the research problem worth investigating and how
it should advance existing knowledge. At the end of the paper we cite the sources we used in
composing this research proposal, listing only the literature that we used or cited in the footnotes.

Literature review

Foreign interventions
In recent decades, civil wars have become the most recurrent form of conflict, and most of
them are characterized by the active involvement of foreign actors (another state, coalition or a
non-state actor).1 The impact of foreign interventions2 has been studied by scholars of international
relations from many aspects. However, academic research in which international military
interventions constitute a main explanatory/independent variable are sparse. In terms of lessons of
the War on Terror in Afghanistan (2001-2014) and Iraq (2003-2011) there are studies dealing with
the problem of radicalization, increasing transnational terrorism, the intervention’s effect on nation
building and education due to foreign interventions, the human rights issues and other political,

1
Sebastian von Einsiedel: Civil War Trends and the Changing Nature of Armed Conflict. United Nations University
Centre for Policy Research, Occasional Paper 10, March 2017.
2
The definition of external interventions is adapted from Regan et al. and Rosenau, where external interventions are
convention-breaking political, economic or military actions in a country targeting the authority structures of the
country (in support of the government, opposition or neutral) in order to influence the balance of power between the
parties or have an effect on the conflict process. The intervener can be a state or non-state party, but must be foreign
to the country. – Patrick M. Regan – Richard W. Frank – Aysegul Aydin: “Diplomatic Interventions and Civil War:
A New Dataset”, Journal of Peace Research, vol. 46, no. 1, pp. 135-146.; James N. Rosenau: “The Concept of
Intervention”, Journal of International Affairs, vol. 22, no. 2, pp. 165-176. – In defining international military
interventions we can also follow Pearson and Baumann (1993) in which interventions are referred to as the
movement of regular troops or forces of one country into the territory or territorial waters of another country, or
forceful military exploits by troops already stationed by one country inside another. – Pearson, Frederic – Robert
Baumann: International Military Intervention, 1946-1988, University of Missouri, St. Louis, Center for International
Studies, 1993.

2
economic and social aspects.3 Most of the existing research are dedicated to three aspects of the
effects of foreign interventions: democratization, human rights and conflict intensity.4 The impact
of foreign intervention on the national capabilities of target nations and its role in regional balance
of power systems still remains under-researched.
James Meernik, Professor of the Division of Social Sciences at the Department of Political
Science of the University of North Texas published his research in the Journal of Peace Research
in 1996 on the topic of American military interventions and the promotion of democracy during
the Cold War. Part of his argument was that if states do not war on each other because they are
democratic, does it make sense that they wage war or use force to compel others to become
democratic? In his article Meernik attempts to answer two questions related to the use of force by
the United States in order to promote democracy. First, why would the United States intervene in
the affairs of other nations to promote democracy? And second, is the use of force an effective tool
in the promotion of democracy? According to his findings in most cases, regardless of the manner
in which democratic change is measured, US military interventions do not appear to lead to
increased levels of democracy. However, when a comparison is made between nations which have
experienced intervention, with those that have not, it seems that the former group is more likely to
experience democratic growth.5
In the last few years more research on interventions has investigated the effectiveness of
intervention and its role in conflict resolution and maintaining peace. Ricardo Real P. Sousa
dedicated one chapter of his Ph.D. dissertation to the effect of external interventions on conflict
intensity.6 Based on the balance of capability model, in his research Sousa explored conflict
intensity levels and conflict-intensity changes, with a new dataset on external interventions for
Africa for the period between 1989 and 2010. Sousa confirmed that partisan, military and
economic interventions increase conflict intensity, whereas neutral or diplomatic interventions
have no such effect.7 According to Sousa, the impact of foreign interventions can be evaluated by
taking a look at a conflict’s duration, which mostly depends on the objective and type of the

3
For more on this topics see: Margaret G. Hermann – Charles W. Kegley, Jr.: “Ballots, a Barrier against the Use of
Bullets and Bombs: Democratization and Military Intervention”, The Journal of Conflict Resolution, vol. 40, no. 3,
pp. 436-459. – Tom Pettinger: “What is the Impact of Foreign Military Intervention on Radicalization?”, Journal for
Deradicalization, 2015/5, pp. 92-119. – Matthew Powers – Seung-Whan Choi: Military Interventions and
Transnational Terrorism: An Intense Relationship, 2010. – Murat Bayar – Senem Ertan: “The Impact of Military
Interventions on the Integration of Muslim Immigrants in Western Countries, 1990-2013”, Global Society, vol. 30,
issue 4, pp. 624-641. – Brookings: Military Interventions in the Broader Middle East: Effects on Nation Building
and Education. October 29, 2013. – Dursun Peksen: “Does Foreign Military Intervention Help Human Rights?”,
Political Research Quarterly, vol. 65, issue 3, 2012, pp. 558-571. – Jeffrey Pickering – Emizet F. Kisangani:
“Political, Economic, and Social Consequences of Foreign Military Intervention”, Political Research Quarterly, vol.
59, no. 3, 2006, pp. 363-376. – Patricia L. Sullivan – Johannes Karreth: “The conditional impact of military
intervention on internal armed conflict”, Conflict Management and Peace Science, vol. 32, issue 3, pp. 269-288.
4
Jeffrey Pickering – David F. Mitchell: Empirical Knowledge on Foreign Military Intervention, Oxford Research
Encyclopedia of Politics, 2017, pp. 12-16.
5
James Meernik: “United States Military Intervention and the Promotion of Democracy”, Journal of Peace
Research, vol. 33, no. 4., 1996, pp. 391-402.
6
Conflict intensity is the count of battle deaths per month. Sousa also included other variables, like previous levels
of conflict intensity, population, GDP per capita, level of democracy, existence of natural resources (oil, gas),
Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) score – Ricardo Real P. Sousa: Effect of external interventions on conflict
intensity. Erasmus University Rotterdam, PhD thesis, Chapter 5, 2014, p. 13.
7
Ricardo Real P. Sousa: “Effect of external interventions on conflict intensity”. (Ph.D. diss. Erasmus University
Rotterdam, 2014), Chapter 5, p. 23.

3
intervention.8 According to research taken on the objectives of interventions, unilateral/one-sided
interventions can improve the chances of success for the supported side.9 In terms of types of
interventions there are research indicating that military and economic interventions tend to
prolongate conflicts.10 Studies on the economic and political determinants of civil wars have
revealed that once a civil war has started, its termination depends critically on the balance of
military capability between the government and the rebels. This balance is similarly important in
all armed conflicts as well.11
According to ripeness theory, when the parties of a conflict find themselves locked in a
situation from which they cannot escalate to victory and this deadlock is painful to both of them
(although not necessarily in equal degrees or for the same reasons), they seek a way out. In a
situation like this, if one party can gain superiority somehow over the other, maybe by a foreign
intervention by its patron, that can improve its chances for military victory, which increases the
other sides willingness to negotiate.12 It worth to note that according to Sousa’s research findings,
interventions’ effects are rather short lived than long-term. Unless interventions are constantly
renewed and redoubled, they cannot have lasting effects beyond a certain period.13
Academics and policy-makers are still looking for an answer to the question of whether
military intervention breeds terrorism. A study of Seung-Whan Choi filled the empirical gap by
conducting a cross-national, time-series analysis with a sample of 166 countries during the period
from 1970 to 2005. The empirical results of Choi’s study showed that U.S. military intervention,
in general, appears to be counterproductive; it fuels more terrorist incidents if not more terrorist
casualties. However, the different types of intervention missions lead to different consequences.14
Other studies can be found on the connection between foreign interventions and the increase in
numbers of transnational terrorism events, which can be interpreted as a reaction for the intrusion
of an external actor in an internal conflict.15 Another study has been done to fill this gap in the
scientific literature by Matthew Powers and Choi, who published their findings in a research paper
in 2010.16 The main independent variables in their analysis measured the annual number of no
troop-, small-, medium-, medium/high-, and high-scale military interventions that took place
within a country’s borders.17 Their results are indicating that military interventions employing 1 to

8
Intervention targets can be biased and partisan, when in support of the government or opposition, or neutral, when
not intended to change the balance of capabilities of the parties. Intervention types can be grouped into military,
economic, and diplomatic interventions as well as missions by the UN and other actors.
9
Dylan Balch-Lindsay – Andrew J. Enterline – Kyle A. Joyce: “Third-Party Intervention and the Civil War
Process”, Journal of Peace Research, vol 45, issue 3, 2008, p. 345-363.
10
Ibrahim A. Elbadawi – Nicholas Sambanis: External Interventions and the Duration of Civil Wars. Policy
Research Working Paper 2433, The World Bank Development research group, 2000. – Patrick M. Regan: “Third-
party Interventions and the Duration of Interstate Conflicts”, Journal of Conflict Resolution, vol 46, issue 1, 2002, p.
55-73.
11
Elbadawi – Sambanis: ibid.
12
I. William Zartman: Ripeness: The hurting stalemate and beyond. In: Paul C. Stern – Daniel Druckman (eds.):
International conflict resolution after the Cold War (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 2000), p. 225-250.
13
Sousa, Effect of external interventions on conflict intensity, p. 8.
14
Seung-Whan Choi: Does U.S. Military Intervention Reduce or Increase Terrorism? APSA 2011 Annual Meeting
Paper, 2011, p. 3.
15
Chalmers Johnson: Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire. (New York: Henry Holt and
Company, 2000), p. 11.
16
Matthew Powers – Seung-Whan Choi: Military Interventions and Transnational Terrorism: An Intense
Relationship, 2010.
17
Data for these variables come from two complementary sources. The Pearson and Baumann (1993) data covered
the period from 1946 to 1988 while the data by Kisangani and Pickering (2007) updated the original collection for

4
1,000 troops provoke increased levels of transnational terrorist activity. The same scenario holds
for medium-scale (1,001 to 5,000 troops) and medium/large-scale (5,001 to 10,000 troops)
interventions, respectfully. Both variables positively influence transnational terrorism. The large-
scale interventions, deploying more than 10,000 troops show a positive influence on terrorism but
the overall picture suggest that extremely low-scale military interventions and extremely high-
scale interventions exert no effect on terrorism, while intermediary military interventions provoke
terrorist attacks by local people.18
Tom Pettinger in his article titled ‘What is the Impact of Foreign Military Intervention on
Radicalization?’ addressed the lack of research on the potentially radicalizing impact of the
specific form of intervention, by examining the radicalizing effects of full-scale military
engagement and the consequences of more limited, aerial intervention. Pettinger draws examples
from the ‘War on Terror’ in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the drone programme against Al-Qaeda and
coalition strikes against the so-called Islamic State, illustrating the risks and outcomes of ‘boots
on the ground’ versus engaging in more ‘distant’ warfare. He concludes that whilst other factors
clearly play a role in an individual’s journey towards extremism, intervention by a foreign power
can encourage the process of radicalization.19
While the empirical literature on foreign military intervention has made considerable
progress identifying the causes and consequences of military intervention, more research needs to
be done in order to facilitate comprehensive understanding of this subject. There are two major
approaches to conflict and the use of force that have framed much empirical research over the past
two decades: the interstate rivalry framework and the bargaining model of war. These two broad
theoretical frameworks still do not, of course, capture the totality of our knowledge on the use of
foreign military force.20 Unfortunately, mixed outcomes remain commonplace in the scientific
literature, and the researchers have only recently begun to examine several important phenomena
such as military intervention’s impact on human conditions in target societies. An additional
problem is that scholars use different data collections to test ideas about what might be broadly
construed as foreign military intervention, such as the Militarized Interstate Dispute (MID)21, the
International Military Intervention (IMI) 22, and the Military Intervention by Powerful States

the period from 1989 to 2005. The first intervention variable is an annual count of the number of no troop military
interventions in a country that do not employ any ground forces. Interventions of this nature employ either naval or
air forces into the target country but do not put any forces on the ground. second is a low-scale military intervention
variable that records the number of interventions in a country with troop levels ranging anywhere between 1 and
1,000 soldiers. The third is a medium scale military intervention variable that documents interventions with troop
levels between 1,001 and 5,000. The forth is a medium/large-scale intervention variable indicating interventions
with troop levels between 5,001 and 10,000. The last is a large-scale intervention variable that records interventions
with more 10,000 troops. They also included a number of control variables in their analysis to ensure that the results
are not influenced by missing variable bias and thus flawed. These control variables are economic development,
regime durability, population, surface area, level of democracy, state failure, interstate conflict, past terrorist attacks.
See Matthew Powers – Seung-Whan Choi: Military Interventions and Transnational Terrorism: An Intense
Relationship, 2010, pp. 17-21.
18
Powers-Choi, Military Interventions and Transnational Terrorism, p. 23.
19
Tom Pettinger: “What is the Impact of Foreign Military Intervention on Radicalization?”, Journal for
Deradicalization, 2015/5, pp. 92-119.
20
Pickering – Mitchell: Empirical Knowledge on Foreign Military Intervention, pp. 3-4.
21
Palmer, Glenn, Vito D'Orazio, Michael Kenwick, and Matthew Lane. 2015. "The MID4 Data Set: Procedures,
Coding Rules, and Description." Conflict Management and Peace Science.
22
Emzet F. Kisangani – Jeffrey Pickering: International Military Intervention, 1989-2005. Inter-University
Consortium for Political and Social Research, Data Collection No 21282, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

5
(MIPS)23 data sets. Since these data sets capture different types of interstate military force, they
often produce incompatible results. Besides, research linking system-level dynamics to the use of
force remains limited and incomplete.

Balance of power theory

Wars have several direct and indirect consequences, short- and long-term effects on
countries and societies. The economy may suffer devastating impacts during and after a foreign
military intervention. Everyday activities of communities are disrupted, and property may be
damaged. This can result in a decrease of the national capabilities, while non-state actors on the
sidelines of the conflict can take advantage of the weakening state to thrive. In political science,
the term “power vacuum” supposed to describe a situation like this, when a government has no
identifiable central power or authority. The physical analogy suggests that in a power vacuum,
other forces will tend to “rush in” to fill the vacuum as soon as it is created. This other force can
be an armed militia, insurgents, a warlord or a dictator, or another state through its proxies.
In international relations theory, the concept of anarchy means that there is no superior
power within a system that would be able to enforce rules. This does not mean that anarchy always
results in chaos and the unrestricted use of violence. Effective governments have a monopoly on
the legitimate use of force. In anarchical systems, there is no such monopoly. This means that there
is no central agency that would ensure peace or uphold order. The units within an anarchical system
must perform these tasks on their own. In case of a foreign intervention that had a debilitating
effect on the target country’s national capabilities, the destruction can result in an anarchical
system where there is no monopoly on the use of force and the non-state actors can rise freely.
A balance of power order is organized around the principle of anarchy, in which there is
no topmost authority.24 In a condition of anarchy, sovereign states do not stand in any fixed,
hierarchical relation with one another, and incentives exist for states to balance. Security/survival
is the fundamental goal of states, and because of uncertainty, states will be very sensitive to their
relative power position. When powerful states emerge, secondary states will rather seek protection
in countervailing coalitions of weaker states than risk domination. Alliances emerge as temporary
coalitions of states formed to counter the concentration of power. As the distribution of power
shifts, coalitions will shift as well.25
Waltz contrasts balancing with “bandwagoning”. According to him, as we can see in
domestic politics, once a leader is finally selected, the losers tend to bandwagon, to support the
winning leader.26 In international politics, bandwagoning means the emergence of a “world

23
Patricia L. Sullivan; Michael T. Koch, 2011, "Replication data for: Military Intervention by Powerful States
(MIPS)".
24
Kenneth Waltz: Theory of International Politics (Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 1979), pp. 88-93.
25
On the balance of power theory see also: Martin Wright: The Balance of Power, in: Butterfield – Wight (ed.):
Diplomatic Investigations (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966), pp. 149-176.; Edward V. Gulick: Europe’s
Classical Balance of Power (New York: W. W. Norton, 1967); Inis L. Claude Jr.: Power and International
Relations (New York: Random House, 1962), p. 3-93.; Claude: “The Balance of Power Revisited”, Review of
International Studies, vol. 15 (April 1989), pp. 77-86.; Ernst Haas: “The Balance of Power: Prescription, Concept or
Propaganda”, World Politics, vol. 15, no. 3 (1953), pp. 370-398.; Stephen M. Walt: “Alliance Formation and the
Balance of World Power”, International Security, vol. 9, no. 4, 1985, pp. 3–43.; Stephen M. Walt: The Origins of
Alliances (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987); Glenn H. Snyder: Alliance Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1997); Michael W. Doyle: Ways of War and Peace (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997).
26
Kenneth Waltz: Theory of International Politics, p. 126.; See also Arnold Wolfers: “The Balance of Power in
Theory and Practice”. In: Discord and Collaboration (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1962), pp-122-
124.

6
hegemony”. In anarchy, the only effective way to contain the rising power of another state is to
combine with other weaker states to resist domination. This is the logic of balance within anarchy
that gives shape to international order. Hegemonic order is also based on the distribution of power
among states, but the relations of power and authority are defined by the organizing principle of
hierarchy. Balance of power and hegemonic orders are both creatures of the international
distribution of power. Balancing orders reflect to the prevailing distribution of power, which is
driven by the fundamental interest that states have to maintain their position and not to be
dominated by a hegemonic state. As the distribution of power shifts, so too do the balancing
coalitions. Hegemonic orders are established and maintained by the concentration of unchecked
power.27
Foreign interventions have become the most common phenomena of the international
relations of the 21st century, and they can be catalysators of the redistribution of power capabilities
among states in regional systems, similarly to major wars as Ikenberry described it in his book
‘After Victory’. According to Ikenberry, the most important characteristic of interstate relations
after a major war is that a new distribution of power suddenly emerges, creating new asymmetries
between powerful and weak states.28 Especially in the broader Middle East region, where in the
recent years one military intervention follows another, while we still do not have comprehensive
knowledge on their complex effects and long-term impacts.

Research design and methods

This explanatory research project attempts to answer the following three questions related
to foreign interventions, undertaken qualitative and quantitative means as well. First, can a foreign
military intervention induce notable shifts in the regional balance of power through the
redistribution of the national capabilities among the states in the system during the postwar period?
Second, is there a direct relationship between foreign military interventions and changes in balance
of power systems? Third, does foreign military intervention lead to increasing non-state actor
activities in the target-country due to the decreasing national capabilities of that state? My main
hypotheses are as follows: H1: A large-scale foreign military intervention29 leads to decreased
levels of national capabilities for the target country due to increasing conflict intensity. H2:
Decreased levels of national capabilities lead to a more anarchical system. H3: A large-scale
foreign military intervention leads to the rise of non-state actors in the target country.
To answer these questions, first and foremost, two pieces of information required. On the
one hand, the independent variable of foreign military intervention must be defined and
documented. On the other hand, the dependent variable of change of balance of power (alliance
formation, balancing, omnibalancing) must be operationalized and measured. We consider a

27
G. John Ikenberry: After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order after Major Wars
(New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2001), pp. 23-29.
28
In his book, After Victory, Ikenberry states that “the best place to look for the sources of order among industrial
democracies is the situation after wars, when order takes shape”. The question of how to create and maintain order
in a world of sovereign states is a fundamental problem of international relations. In the cases of major wars, serious
changes can occur within the international system, when the old order has been destroyed by war and newly
powerful states try to reestablish basic organizing rules and arrangements. See also Vesna Danilovic: Balance of
Power and Power Shifts: Global Interests at Stake. In: When the Stakes Are High: Deterrence and Conflict among
Major Powers (Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 2002), pp. 71–97.
29
A military intervention can be considered large-scale if more than 10000 ground troops were deployed or, in case
of an air campaign, a no-fly zone was established. Additional case selection criteria can be outlined during the
research project.

7
foreign military intervention as a political use of military force in an active attempt to influence
the behavior of other actors. Some events did not involve the hostile introduction of ground troops
in many numbers and some are rather obscure. The goal is to use a more inclusive definition of
foreign military intervention to gain a more thorough understanding of the subject. For this
purpose, in this research project we want to analyze cases of foreign interventions in the Middle
East, with a special focus on Iraq, at least from 1990 until 2011, using the Military Intervention by
Powerful States (MIPS) dataset, which may be updated up until 2016 with currently missing, but
important events. Such an update would be a great contribution to the scientific literature itself, if
done right and thoroughly. Additionally, military interventions can be classified and ranked by
using other existing datasets like the Militarized Interstate Dispute (MID) data collection compiled
by the Correlates of War Project and the International Military Intervention (IMI) project.
However, more refined categorizations of military intervention would be needed.
In order to be able to answer these questions, we also need a reliable measurement of
national power. The control over resources approach is the most widely used and accepted one for
measuring and study power and national capabilities.30 The most frequently used indicators of
national power are military expenditures, the size of armed forces, GNP and population. The
control over resources approach assumes that control over resources can be converted into control
over actors or events. However, it is not always certain that actors will be able to use resources
which are nominally under their control, and it is not always clear what types of resources should
be included in a general measure of power. Additionally, the focus on national power precludes
the consideration of the role of non-state actors in determining the outcome of conflicts.31
The lack of an adequate methodology to assess national power and anarchic patterns might
cause us to miss or misinterpret incipient changes in power capability and state-vulnerability that
may be taking place within a regional balance of power system. Appreciating the true basis of
national power may require not merely a detailing of tangible military assets, but also an
assessment of other, intangible elements. The traditional approaches to measuring power sought
to rank order the status of countries in terms of their capacity for war, charting the hierarchy of
capabilities in the international system. The various indexes can be distinguished in terms of the
number of variables they use, and each index differs from the others in terms of the number of
countries assessed, the time frames and the complexity of their formulas. However, single-variable
measures of power can be just as effective as more complex indexes for purposes of rank ordering
countries. But we should bear in mind that most traditional indexes fail to incorporate qualitative
factors that describe state capacity. Developing a universal hierarchy of national power capabilities
is not an objective of this research. We see national power as the capacity of a country to pursue
strategic goals through purposeful action, as defined by Tellis et al.32 In this regard, utilization of
the datasets of the Correlates of War Project and the Fragile States Index can be the basis of the
evaluation of changes in the regional balance of power systems.

30
See J. David Singer – Melvin Small: “The Composition and Status Ordering of the International System: 1815-
1940”, World Politics, 18 (January 1966), pp. 236-282.; George Modelski: World Power Concentrations: Typology,
Data, Explanatory Framework (New Jersey: General Learning Press, 1974).
31
Jeffrey Hart: “Three approaches to the measurement of power in international relations”, International
Organization, vol. 30, issue 2, April 1976, pp. 289-290.
32
Ashley Tellis – Janice Bially – Christopher Layne – Melissa Mcpherson – Jerry Sollinger: Measuring National
Power in the Postindustrial Age: Analyst’s Handbook. Santa Monica, California: RAND Corporation, 2000, p. 4.

8
 One way to measure national power is to apply the Composite Index of National Capability
(CINC)33 dataset from 1816 to 2012, which is a statistical measure of national power created by J.
David Singer for the Correlates of War project in 1963. It uses an average of percentages of world
totals in six different components (total population, urban population, iron and steel production,
primary energy consumption, military expenditure and military personnel ratios). These
components represent demographic, economic, and military strength. More recent studies tend to
use this score, because it better represents state power than GDP solely. Another complementary
source of data to measure anarchic patterns of states is the Fragile States Index by The Fund for
Peace, which is based on a conflict assessment framework – known as “CAST” – that was
developed by FFP for assessing the vulnerability of states to collapse.34 For a comparative analysis
the data of the different indexes can be compared.
For change in national capabilities and increasing anarchic patterns different measures can
be employed. First, the CINC score received by each target nation in two or three years prior to
the year of the intervention can be compared with the rating received in the two or three years after
the year of intervention. The post-intervention rating can be subtracted from the pre-intervention
score to obtain a final rating. The larger this number, the greater the decrease in the share of
national capabilities. This method can be applied to the measuring of anarchic patterns utilizing
the data of the Fragile States Index.
There are a few anticipated barriers and potential main limitations and pitfalls of this
research project. First, there is a lack of recent and comprehensive data on interventions, especially
in the case of the region of the Middle East, which makes harder to find and select all cases that
has to be included in the research.35 Second, in cases of foreign interventions in civil wars, the
decreasing effect of interventions on the level of national capabilities needs to be separated from
the also negative impact of the internal civil conflict itself, which cannot be done solely by using
the CINC score and FSI datasets. Third, it must be kept in mind that scholars use different data
collections to test their ideas, and the utilization of different sources can produce incompatible
results. To establish a connection between foreign interventions and changes in the regional
balance of power systems, the research method of process tracing can be applied in selected cases.

33
The Composite Index of National Capability (CINC) score aggregates the six individual measured components of
national material capabilities into a single value per state-year. The CINC reflects an average of a state’s share of the
system total of each element of capabilities in each year, weighting each component equally. In doing so, the CINC
will always range between 0 and 1. “0.0” would indicate that a state had 0% of the total capabilities present in the
system in that year, while “1.0” would indicate that the state had 100% of the capabilities in a given year (and by
definition that every other state had exactly 0% capabilities in that year.) See also: The Correlates of War Project,
National Material Capabilities (v5.0), http://www.correlatesofwar.org/data-sets/national-material-capabilities. -
Singer, J. David, Stuart Bremer, and John Stuckey. (1972). "Capability Distribution, Uncertainty, and Major Power
War, 1820-1965." in Bruce Russett (ed) Peace, War, and Numbers (Beverly Hills: Sage), 19-48. – Singer, J. David.
1987. "Reconstructing the Correlates of War Dataset on Material Capabilities of States, 1816-1985", International
Interactions, 14: 115-32.
34
The CAST framework was designed to measure this vulnerability in pre-conflict, active conflict and post-conflict
situations. The methodology uses both qualitative and quantitative indicators, relies on public source data, and
produces quantifiable results. Twelve conflict risk indicators are used to measure the condition of a state at any
given moment. The indicators provide a snapshot in time that can be measured against other snapshots in a time
series to determine whether conditions are improving or worsening. See more at http://fundforpeace.org/fsi/.
35
For case-selection, the variables of the IMI dataset can be applied. At start, the strategic and large-scale (those
where more than 10000 troops were deployed) interventions can be selected and evaluated. In order to formulate a
generally applicable framework that can be used to evaluate the impact on the regional balance of power systems the
sample size has to be increased/large enough.

9
Conclusion
So far, no research has been done to explore the role of foreign interventions in regional
balance of power systems, using external intervention as the explaining/independent variable and
balancing or bandwagoning within a regional power-balance order as the caused/dependent
variable. This study would fill this literature gap on the impact of foreign interventions from a
balance of power perspective. Besides this, an update of existing datasets of interventions or the
creation of a new dataset with a special focus on the Middle East region is long due. The specific
purpose of this study is to find out, whether a foreign military intervention can induce notable
shifts in the regional balance of power through the redistribution of power among states in the
system during the postwar period.
The timeframe from the end of the Cold War until the start of the Arab Spring was chosen
mainly because the lack of data on recent interventions in the Middle East, but it can be further
extended until 2016 as soon as a new, up to date dataset is assembled. The research area as the
Greater Middle East and North Africa includes countries from West-Africa to India (including
Iran, Israel, Turkey, Afghanistan and Pakistan). In this regard, we use the term of Middle East not
as a merely geographical term to describe a region that lies between Asia and Africa, but more as
a political one, as was introduced by George W. Bush in 2004.36 It worth to note that, if we apply
the concept of the regional security complex, Afghanistan has to be included in the research in
order to elucidate the region’s security dynamics, and, to evaluate the balance of power system of
the Middle East. For the categorization and classification of foreign interventions the utilization of
existing datasets like the IMI, MID, MIPS seems to be the right choice, which makes the project
more viable. The methodology (codebook, data tables) of the International Military Interventions
dataset seems more adequate to conduct research in this field. Further methodological choices
often determined by the circumstances of the research.
This explanatory research intends to shed light on the role of external interventions in the
balance of power systems. This approach could reshape the way we see the impact of foreign
interventions in world politics, emphasizing the aspect of the regional security complex and the
concept of balance of power system. On the one hand, we can assume that only large-scale foreign
military intervention has the capability to change the balance of power. On the other hand, small-
scale interventions can preserve or maintain that regional balance, which can be a main motivating
factor for an intervener, however, we may never be able to know real political motivations and
goals behind external interventions. We should also bear in mind that certain kind of foreign policy
creates more problems than it solves.

36
The Middle East has always been a very vague term, in which countries were added and removed depending on
the context.

10
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