Negative Returns: U.S. Military Policy and Anti-American Terrorism

Eugen Dimant, Tim Krieger and Daniel Meierrieks

No 6693, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: We investigate the effect of U.S. military aid and U.S. troop deployments on anti-American terrorism, using a sample of 106 countries between 1986 and 2011. We find that greater military commitment leads to more anti-American terrorism. We study the underlying mechanisms using a mediation analysis and show that both U.S. military aid and troop deployments in foreign countries do not improve local state capacity. Rather, we find that more military aid (but not troop deployments) is linked to poorer political-institutional outcomes in aid-receiving countries, explaining the positive association between U.S. military aid and anti-American terrorism. Our findings suggest that U.S. military policy does not make the United States safer from transnational terrorism.

Keywords: U.S. military aid; U.S. troop deployments; anti-American terrorism; transnational terrorism; mediation analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D74 F35 F50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pol
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Working Paper: Negative Returns: U.S. Military Policy and Anti-American Terrorism (2017)
Working Paper: Negative returns: U.S. military policy and anti-american terrorism (2017)
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