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Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Political Science, 2014., Cataloged from PDF version of thesis., Includes bibliographical references (pages 622-679)., States respond to rebellion differently, often shaping the intensity, duration, and outcome of the conflict as well as prospects for stability and state consolidation. Puzzling cross-national variation in counterinsurgency-sometimes brutal, sometimes minimalist-has drawn some inquiry, but sub-national variation by the same state incumbent has largely been neglected. This study develops a core-periphery theory to explain why states choose different strategies to fight rebellions based on what is at stake and who is rebelling. The theory identifies the variation in state strategy along two dimensions of effort and violence and contends the sub-national variation can best be explained by the value of the contested territory and the identity of the rebelling group. First, the contested territory's value, in economic, strategic, and ideational terms, will shape the strategy of effort the state is willing to deploy. When a rebellion, regardless of its size, threatens core territory, the state is likely to employ a strategy involving significant effort to decisively defeat the rebellion and regain control. Peripheral territory offers comparatively lower incentives resulting in minimalist containment strategies. Second, the positional status of the identity group composing the rebel base will shape the state's incentives and constraints for the strategic use of violence. Core social identity groups with high group worth and embeddedness within the state will motivate greater restraint as co-identity serves to limit state violence through affective mechanisms of empathy and trust and strategic mechanisms of vulnerability and information. Peripheral rebel groups are less likely to trigger such restraint and are therefore met with strategies of greater violence. The theory is tested with 29 cases of rebellion from India and Pakistan to leverage within-country variation with macro-structures of state capacity and institutions fairly constant. The study draws on extensive fieldw, by Sameer Prem Lalwani., Ph. D.

With the United States exhausted by more than a decade of war and facing severe fiscal limitations, decisionmakers are striving to place American defense policy on a more sustainable footing. Central to this effort is a commitment to work through partner nations wherever possible, providing support to countries with which the United States shares interests or values while also ensuring that the primary responsibility for these nations' security remains their own. This emphasis on partnership strategies is particularly central to U.S. efforts to manage the security externalities of fragile and conflict-affected states. Such states increase the risk of spillover conflicts throughout the region in which they occur, damage the economies of neighboring states, contribute to flourishing transnational crime networks, and foster transnational terrorism. When pursuing partnerships with regimes that are fighting insurgencies, however, the likelihood of success using such small-footprint approaches is inextricably bound with the local context and particularly the nature of the partner government. Too often the importance of local context is minimized in discussions of U.S. security strategy, particularly in relation to the problems of fragile states. Proponents of small-footprint and indirect approaches overwhelmingly cite as models the recent U.S. operations in the Philippines and Colombia. This study seeks to understand the extent to which the success stories of U.S. partnerships, such as those with the Philippines and Colombia, can be generalized, or phrased differently, to understand the conditions under which the small-footprint model is likely to succeed in bringing an end to an insurgency that both the United States and its partner seek to combat. It explores how local circumstances shape the art of the possible in such partnerships and how the United States can best maximize the potential and minimize the risks of these often uneasy alliances.