US & Russian sponsored paramilitaries since 1991

[AmericanPride]

Hello all,

For one of my research projects, I am using quantitative analysis to examine and compare the effects of US and Russian sponsored paramilitaries on conflict outcomes since 1991. My definition of paramilitary includes two typologies: status and type. Status is whether the organization is official or unofficial, and type is whether the organization is political, law enforcement, etc. The conflict outcomes are favorable, mixed, and unfavorable for both the sponsor (US or Russia) and the paramilitary organization.

Is there any works anyone would recommend to add to my reading list?

I also recall a widely circulated RAND study on counterinsurgency outcomes. Is that available anywhere?

FYI, this project is for school.

[RedRaven]

Are you referring to the:

"Victory Has a Thousand Fathers: Sources of Success in Counterinsurgency"
and/or
"Counterinsurgency Scorecard"

I'd love to see how you are quantifying these.

[AmericanPride]

Hi Red,

Thanks for the titles.

I'm still early in the development phase of this project. Broadly, there will be a comparison between US and Russian sponsored paramilities to see if there's a difference in application and measurable difference in outcome. This will be more closely scrutinized by filtering through the typologies to see if there's a substantive difference in their behavior and performance by status, type, or sponsor.

On top of the typologies I identified earlier, I would like to develop 10 - 15 operational activities that influence conflict outcomes. And where possible, I will also be looking at the extent of political, technical, financial, or material aid/support provided.

I selected 1991 because of the transition from the USSR to Russia, although my concern is that there may not be sufficient data points. But we'll see.

[pjb]

I'd also be interested to see how you're going to quantify and classify paramilitaries. Are you going to control for operational region? (Paramilitaries may more similar based on constraints and culture of region than based on who was sponsoring them.)

I wrote a quant research paper on internal security forces (police + paramilitaries), my focus was different, but I found the best consistent data on paramilitaries in the International Institute for Strategic Studies’ annual Military Balance publications. The MB doesn't list foreign sponsorship of paramilitaries, so you'd probably have to do the legwork on that yourself.

(If you want to see what I did, my paper is here: http://thesimonscenter.org/wp-conten...-002-APR13.pdf)

[AmericanPride]

Hi PJB,

Thanks for the references.

First, I'm going to classify paramilitaries by status: official, official-covert, official-clandestine, and unofficial. Then I am going to classify them by type: law enforcement, special operations, political, militia, non-military security, and criminal. I want to capture the broadest range possible of paramilitary forces while excluding terrorist organizations and regular police forces.

I have to devise a method to quantify sponsorship other than material and financial aid (i.e. political support). I also have to devise a number of operational activities to form the basis of the dataset measuring the influence on conflict outcomes.

[Venenum]

SSI's Max Boot is one of the most authoritative sources. He has written a book called "Invisible Armies" which includes a database.