For the uninitiated, diversionary wars are those in which leaders are thought to seek to distract attention from domestic problems by directing military action against a foreign target. In Diversionary War, Amy Oakes, like other scholars, argues that diversion is not an optimal policy response to domestic problems. Indeed, domestic policy choices that directly address problems at home are likely to be better than diversion. Also like other scholars, she draws an important distinction among countries and governments according to their ability to employ various policies. Rather than argue that democracies are the only ones that face obstacles to policy choices in response to domestic unrest (i.e., repression), or that focus on institutional impediments to implementing domestic policy, Oakes suggests that a set of policy alternatives are constrained by the extent to which a country is able to garner the necessary resources to address domestic discontent. Consequently, leaders may be required to substitute one policy for another. For instance, if a repression is unavailable as a viable policy choice in response to domestic unrest, leaders may substitute diversion for repression. On the other hand, if a leader lacks the resources to launch a military adventure abroad, he or she may have little choice than to employ domestic alternatives.

Unfortunately, the literature on diversion is large and ever more difficult to advance. Perhaps because of this, Oakes—mistakenly, in my view—characterizes her argument as if it is a novel contribution to the literature, suggesting that research on the diversionary use of force has paid only scant attention to the concepts of policy substitutability, institutional constraints, and resource availability. But her claims are drawn directly from the large literature on the topic. For instance, Bruce Russett, T. Clifton Morgan, and Kenneth Bickers, Christopher Gelpi, and Ross Miller have made very similar arguments since 1990. More recently, Jeffrey Pickering and Emizet Kisangani, among others, have extended these arguments and devised increasingly sophisticated tests of the theory. Although she references much of this work, Oakes appears to oversell her theoretical contribution in light of this large literature.

Be that as it may, Oakes makes an important contribution to the literature by turning her attention to the question of whether diversion actually is a beneficial policy choice relative to other alternatives. Here, she carefully considers previous work on the topic (e.g., Pickering and Kisangani) and logically connects the effects of a number of policy responses—diversion, repression, political and economic reform—on domestic unrest. She approaches the question initially from an agnostic point of view, suggesting that relationships could be either positive or negative. But when situated within her own argument concerning policy resources, she makes precise predictions, which are borne out in the analyses.

Perhaps the chief strengths of the book are found in the author’s methodological solution to the question concerning the fruits of diversion, as well as in her combination of case studies (discussed later) with large-n statistical analyses. She examines the relative effects of policy responses on domestic unrest. Rather than simply assume that diversion is a binary phenomenon, Oakes disaggregates military action into low-level spectacles—uses of force short of war—and war. She also explicitly models the effects of repression and reform on domestic unrest. Her results are intriguing: low-level spectacles increase unrest, while repression is effective in reducing it.

Although the disaggregation of military action into three categories is useful in examining the effects of diversion on unrest, it is problematic when considered as an outcome variable. Oakes suggests that leaders may choose among the military options in a decision-making framework in which implications of a low-level spectacle are weighed against a full-scale war. The point has some merit, but wars may be unintentional. Indeed, a leader’s preferences over a spectacle relative to war are defined in terms of the leader’s expectations of resistance from the target.

I find this distinction to be problematic because it relies on the expectation of the target’s behavior. And, arguably, leaders who choose diversion may find themselves in a war due to mistaken expectations. The Falklands War, which is examined in the book, is a good example; the Argentine leadership is thought to have miscalculated the response of Great Britain. Oakes considers this possibility of unintentional war and incorporates it nicely into her argument. Specifically, she hypothesizes that states with low policy (i.e., pauper states) resources are more likely to find themselves embroiled in interstate war than states with high policy resources (princely states). However, she does not adequately test this hypothesis. When assessing the probability of diversion, she examines 177 countries over a 22-year period (i.e., country-years, or monads). Rather than an examination of only monads, a dyadic analysis examining conflict initiation and reciprocation would have been more appropriate for assessing whether targets of diversion are likely to retaliate against pauper states. Given her criticism of the previous literature’s failure to account for alternatives to diversion, I also expected Oakes to empirically examine the policy choices she identifies using a multinomial model in which the dependent variable includes nominal categories consisting of each of the policy alternatives. Such a strategy would allow for the direct comparison of the alternatives under various conditions identified by her argument.

Oakes’s choice of case studies is remarkable. Her first case is the frequently examined Falkland’s War, which she deftly analyzes in comparison to the numerous other explanations of the conflict. The next case study in the book examines James Buchanan’s choice to launch a military expedition into Mormon-controlled Utah during 1857–58. This case seems an odd choice at first glance. But as the author points out, Utah under territorial governor Brigham Young was essentially a state within a state. Finally, she explores a number of other cases in which no military action was taken in response to domestic unrest. Taken together, these case studies provide an account of the theoretical mechanisms identified by Oakes in her argument.

Overall, Diversionary War is a nice contribution to research on the linkages between domestic and international politics. Although I tend to doubt that leaders explicitly consider using force abroad in response to problems at home, Oakes’s arguments and evidence are provocative enough to make me reconsider my previous position.