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A century of coalitions in battle

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Rosella Cappella Zielinski and Ryan Grauer examine the 492 battles during interstate wars (1900-2003), revealing how battlefield coalitions fare compared to solo belligerents.

Image courtesy of interviewee. March 11, 2024

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This video video discusses a research initiative focusing on battlefield coalitions, particularly those formed during conflicts where distinct political entities collaborate in combat. The authors, drawing from their experiences with the Korean War, explore how troops from different backgrounds manage to fight together despite challenges. They differentiate battlefield coalitions from broader wartime alliances, emphasizing the logistical and coordination difficulties involved.

The research highlights the prevalence of battlefield coalitions, discovered through a dataset of battles from 1900 to 2003, revealing that about 25% of all belligerent sides formed such coalitions. These coalitions tend to perform better than solo belligerents, winning more frequently and suffering lower casualty rates.

Surprisingly, the study indicates that U.S. involvement in battlefield coalitions is less dominant than expected, being present in only a third of the coalitions. The understanding of these coalitions is essential, especially as global conflict evolves, with increasing diversity among combatants, including non-state actors.

The authors advocate for further investigation into battlefield coalitions to better inform military strategies and responses in future conflicts, reflecting on the historical significance of such groups and their impact on operational effectiveness.

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Here are five key points from the video about battlefield coalitions:

1. **Definition and Historical Convideo**: The video presents battlefield coalitions as unique groups formed by different political entities (states and non-state actors) who come together to fight side by side in combat situations. It emphasizes that these coalitions have existed throughout history, dating back to figures like Alexander the Great and various tribal coalitions.

2. **Significance of Battlefield Coalitions**: The discussion highlights that battlefield coalitions have been overlooked in political science compared to wartime coalitions or alliances. The authors argue that understanding these coalitions is crucial for grasping the dynamics of military effectiveness and the outcomes of conflicts, as they often lead to better performance on the battlefield.

3. **Research Findings and Data Collection**: The authors created a dataset analyzing 62 wars and 492 battles from 1900 to 2003. Their findings reveal that battlefield coalitions constitute nearly a quarter of all belligerent sides during this period. They found that such coalitions tend to succeed more often and suffer lower casualty rates than solo belligerents.

4. **Changing Nature of Coalitions**: The frequency of battlefield coalitions has markedly increased, especially after the Cold War, where they accounted for over half of belligerent sides involved in conflicts. Additionally, the diversity of actors participating in these coalitions has grown, indicating that both state and non-state entities increasingly collaborate in military operations.

5. **Implications for Future Conflicts**: The video suggests that as warfare evolves, understanding the dynamics of battlefield coalitions will be crucial for preparing for future conflicts. It points out that while the current focus may be on traditional alliances, the role of non-state actors and the nature of modern coalitions will become increasingly important in the convideo of global conflicts, including current situations in Ukraine and Gaza.

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Here are some key quotes from the video regarding battlefield coalitions:

1. **Definition of Battlefield Coalitions**:
- "So for us, it's amalgamations of officers, troops and materials brought together by multiple distinct political communities for the purpose of jointly waging combat in the same operational battle space."

2. **Importance of Study**:
- "These groups are old and a widespread phenomena...we're happy to shed some light on it."

3. **Overlooked Nature**:
- "Why have they been overlooked? It's hard to say."

4. **Frequency and Performance**:
- "Battlefield coalitions are pretty common. Almost one quarter of all belligerent sides from 1900 to 2003 were battlefield coalitions."

5. **Surprising Findings**:
- "They win about 53% of the time compared to about 48% of the time for solo belligerence."
- "Solo belligerents tend to suffer casualty rates around 25%, whereas for battlefield coalitions it's closer to 21%."

6. **Historical Convideo**:
- "Alexander the Great...defeats many different battlefield coalitions on its march of the Balkans Asia Minor Persia and India."

7. **Focus of the Study**:
- "We were really interested in trying to understand who forms these coalitions, what do they look like, how do they perform on the battlefield?"

8. **Diversity of Coalitions**:
- "Only 37% of battlefield coalitions have in our data set are comprised of members that had in peace time signed an agreement to come to the defense of one another."

9. **Future Implications**:
- "These are pretty common phenomena that we just haven't really paid a lot of attention to...it's something worth investing in."

10. **Significant Increase in Coalition Formation**:
- "From the end of the Cold War to 2003, 52% of all belligerent sides were battlefield coalitions."

These quotes effectively capture the essence of the discussion regarding the nature, frequency, and implications of battlefield coalitions in military history.

X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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We were motivated.

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Um, it started a long time ago.

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Uh, Ryan and know have known each other a long time

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and we were doing different stuff on the Korean

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War and it came together.

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We were like, wow, this is really complicated.

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The United States and the South Koreans not having a

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shared language, what's going on?

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And so that got us here.

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We're like, how did they manage

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to fight successfully together?

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And years later we started a big project on Battlefield

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coalitions for us.

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Lemme give you the academic long version

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and then I'll give you a simpler version.

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Uh, so for us, it's amalgamations of officers, troops

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and materials brought together by multiple

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distinct political communities for the purpose

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of jointly waging combat in the same

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operational battle space.

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So there's your long-winded version.

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The Fluter version is two groups fighting side

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by side on the battlefield,

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and really, again, sharing that battle space.

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And I wanna make this a little distinct from wartime

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coalitions, which most of us are probably familiar with.

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We think of the Iraq War, you know, lots of members,

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NATO members coming in.

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So we think these big coalitions,

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but we're not interested in those big coalitions.

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We're interested in those groups that take

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that next step to fight together.

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Um, tip of spear seems pretty important.

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We're preparing, and when I say we,

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we are thinking in the west to the Indo-Pacific.

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And we're all we're focused on is how, what we're gonna do

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with our partners and how that might look

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and maybe fighting side by side.

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And so not sure why it's overlooked.

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It's definitely been studied by historians,

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and military folks.

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But as political scientists,

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things have been really focused on the wartime

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coalition or the alliance level.

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But these groups are old and a widespread phenomena.

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So lemme just take it back real far back.

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Alexander the Great right confronts

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and defeats many different battlefield coalitions on its

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march of the Balkans Asia Minor Persia and India.

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Um, in around three 30 BCE,

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we can see the very IC tribes fighting together

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to stem Julius Caesar's drive into their territory.

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Um, so these go back and back and back.

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Um, so they're a really present phenomenon

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and so we're happy to shed some light on it. I

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Would just reiterate what Rosea has said so far.

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When we're thinking about battlefield coalitions,

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we are thinking about troops that are raised, trained,

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and equipped by different political communities,

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put shoulder to shoulder on the battlefield,

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in circumstances where there's a non-zero probability

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that there might be a friendly fire incident.

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So these are really tough coordination situations

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in really difficult circumstances.

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Uh, and as Rella mentioned, these are really old.

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Um, we see them throughout history on every continent on the

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face of the earth, with the exception of Antarctica.

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Um, you see them carried out by state-based militaries

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by non-state actors.

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Um, native American tribes formed many coalitions

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with one another and with white settlers, as they worked

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to, both fight each other

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and try to stem white, advances in,

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into the western part of the United States.

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So why have they been overlooked? It's hard to say.

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Um, a lot of academics tend to think at higher levels,

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think about those big alliances and wartime coalitions.

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But for us, what really is interesting here is

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that if we think about the causal chain

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between the actual implementation of force

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and those big political outcomes

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that shape the international system,

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this is a crucial missing link.

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Uh, and we're just trying to better understand it. It'll

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Be a little repetition in that just emphasizing alliances,

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and that's really what political sciences has focused on.

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But those are really peacetime agreements

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and most alliances don't translate into

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battlefield coalitions.

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And so that is a big disconnect

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that we're interested in understanding.

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And the other thing that has been really focused on

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is US and nato.

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And while wonderful that we look at us

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and nato, these are really distinct relationships.

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This transatlantic partnership, right?

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It's a longstanding alliance with deep ties

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amongst military members.

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And those are gonna look really different than let's say,

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those golic tribes that I mentioned,

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or various other types of battlefield coalitions.

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And so in focusing, in the western, you know,

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political science sense very narrowly on alliances

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or NATO members, we're really missing a bigger picture.

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And this will be especially problematic

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as we think about the future

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of war in which we will be fighting with non NATO allies.

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As Illa said, they, this data set effort really grew out

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of conversations that we had about

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what we were observing in our separate research projects

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about dynamics during the Korean War.

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Uh, and we were really interested in trying to understand

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who forms these coalitions, what do they look like,

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how do they perform on the battlefield?

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And looking around in the existing political science

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literature, the military history literature,

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there was no unified place where we could go just

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to even find out how common these these groups are.

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And so we set out to build a data set, even though both

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of us, are much happier sitting in archives

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looking through dusty papers.

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Um, we were, were building a, a quantitative data set.

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Um, so what we did is we, we looked from the time from 1900

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to 2003 and relying on military historians to tell us

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what counts as a major battle in big interstate wars.

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Um, we looked at 62 wars

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and we found 492 battles.

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And on each side, you've got two sides for each battle.

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So we constructed a data set

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of 984 belligerent sides.

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Uh, and so for each of these entries,

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we include information about who actually bought,

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as part of that side.

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Um, we look at when the battle started, when it ended.

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Um, if the belligerents were democracies, non democracies,

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if they were state actors, if they were non-state actors,

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how many troops did they field?

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Which was surprisingly hard to find in many cases,

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even some big battles,

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including ones out of the world wars.

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Um, how many casualties did they suffer

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if there was a battlefield coalition?

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On one side, we also looked

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to see whether there were preexisting treaty agreements,

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if the groups had fought together previously, in battle,

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or if one actor a part of the Battlefield Coalition,

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kind of held back and only contributed

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airstrikes, for example.

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So collecting all of this information on both,

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battlefield coalitions

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and solo belligerence allows us for the first time

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to really get at our hands around,

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how common are these groups?

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What do they look like, how do they perform?

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And it allows us to compare them to belligerents

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that fight on their own rather than with partners.

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Most surprising things that came out for us is

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that battlefield coalitions are pretty common.

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Um, almost one quarter of all

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of those belligerent sides from 1900

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to 2003 were battlefield coalitions.

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So we're talking about a pretty common collective action

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phenomenon that, as we were talking about a few minutes ago,

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hasn't really received much attention from scholars.

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Um, we found that they tend

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to fight better than solo belligerent.

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They win about 53% of the time compared to about 48%

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of the time for solo belligerence.

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They also fight more efficiently.

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So solo belligerents tend to suffer casualty rates

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around 25%, whereas

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for battlefield coalitions it's closer to 21%.

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I, and they, that might sound like a a small difference,

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but, but if you just take some average numbers from our

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dataset, the average belligerent side in our dataset

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numbered about 40,000 troops.

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And so if you think what a 25% casualty rate killed wounded

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missing looks like that's 10,000 people,

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a 21% casualty rate, that's about 808,300 people.

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So we're, we're talking about more than 1500

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person difference in casualty rate,

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moving from solo belligerent to Battlefield Coalition.

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Um, also to our surprise,

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we found this really isn't a US story.

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The US was only involved in about a third

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of the battlefield coalitions that formed between 1900

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and 2003, which given American dominance in the

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international system over the 20th century,

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you can kind of expect more of.

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Um, it's also not a a, a NATO story.

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NATO only participated in four of the battles,

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in our dataset.

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And it's not even really an alliance story as,

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as Rosea was alluding to earlier, only 37% of the,

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battlefield coalitions that we have,

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have in our data set are comprised of members

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that had in peace time signed an agreement to come

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to the defense of one another.

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So we've got a really diverse set of actors coming together

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and for whatever reason, they tend

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to fight better together than they do alone.

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I was kind of pleased in the sense

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that it's really a non-native story as a scholar

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because so much of what we focus on is nato,

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which is wonderful, but this isn't that story.

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So that was really interesting to me.

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And I think really just the takeaway that they are bigger,

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they fight together

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and win more often than we anticipate,

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is just something to really think about.

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And from a policy perspective,

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it's something worth investing in.

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If we're thinking, wow, these groups win, we wanna be part

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of these groups and we also wanna think about

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and be aware of these goose wins,

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what if the other side are forming such groups?

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So it's really interesting for me to think about, wow, they,

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they're really coming together and,

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and being quite successful.

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The core takeaway for us from this portion of our,

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our larger research agenda, which wait,

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we're gonna spend many years, of our, our careers sort

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of unpacking things that we're finding is

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that battlefield coalitions matter.

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Um, these are pretty common phenomena

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that we just haven't really paid a lot of attention to.

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Um, one other finding that, that emerges from the data.

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Looking at the formation

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of these battlefield coalitions over time, between 1900

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and roughly 1990,

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battlefield coalitions showed up about 25% of the time,

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but from the end of the Cold War to 2003, 52%

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of all belligerent sides were battlefield coalitions.

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So what we're seeing is a really remarkable

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increase in the frequency with which, states

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and non-state actors bring their forces together

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to fight on the battlefield.

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And, and sort of mirroring that jump in the frequency

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of battlefield coalitions is an increase in the frequency

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of non-state actors participating in that.

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So we can think about Afghanistan, right?

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The, the us partners

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with the Northern Alliance at the outset

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of the war forms a battlefield coalition.

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You have American Special forces

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and Northern Alliance fighters working together, shoulder

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to shoulder fighting against the Taliban,

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the Taliban when it's still in power Partners with Al-Qaeda

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and the Pakistani Taliban.

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Uh, and then once the,

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the Afghan Taliban is ejected from power,

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you've got those three groups, all as non-state actors,

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still forming battlefield coalitions at places like Torah

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Bora during Operation Anaconda.

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Uh, and so what we're seeing is just this increased

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frequency in battlefield coalitions,

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but also an increased diversity in the kinds

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of actors that make them up.

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Uh, and as we look forward, yes,

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there are big questions about the Indo-Pacific, right?

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There probably aren't gonna be a whole lot

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of non-state actors participating in any battlefield

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coalitions waged, in the Western Pacific.

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But that's not the only place

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that conflict is going to emerge.

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We see that right now with respect to Ukraine,

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with respect to the fighting, in and around Gaza, right?

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States and non-state actors are going to partner.

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And so understanding more about what they look like,

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which provides us a, a baseline from which we can sort

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of dig in deeper and figure out how they do so effectively

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and less effectively, will give us better leverage on

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what conflict might look like moving forward.

Exploring Battlefield Coalitions Through History

00:00:00 - We were motivated. it started a long time ago. Ryan and know have known each other a long time and we were doing different stuff on the Korean War and it came together. We were like, wow, this is really complicated. The United States and the South Koreans not having a shared language, what's going on? And so that got us here. We're like, how did they manage to fight successfully together? And years later we started a big project on Battlefield coalitions for us. Lemme give you the academic long version and then I'll give you a simpler version. so for us, it's amalgamations of officers, troops
00:00:36 - distinct political communities for the purpose of jointly waging combat in the same operational battle space. So there's your long-winded version. The Fluter version is two groups fighting side by side on the battlefield, and really, again, sharing that battle space. And I wanna make this a little distinct from wartime coalitions, which most of us are probably familiar with. We think of the Iraq War, you know, lots of members, NATO members coming in. So we think these big coalitions,
00:01:07 - We're interested in those groups that take that next step to fight together. tip of spear seems pretty important. We're preparing, and when I say we, we are thinking in the west to the Indo-Pacific. And we're all we're focused on is how, what we're gonna do with our partners and how that might look and maybe fighting side by side. And so not sure why it's overlooked. It's definitely been studied by historians, and military folks. But as political scientists, things have been really focused on the wartime
00:01:37 - But these groups are old and a widespread phenomena. So lemme just take it back real far back. Alexander the Great right confronts and defeats many different battlefield coalitions on its march of the Balkans Asia Minor Persia and India. in around three 30 BCE, we can see the very IC tribes fighting together to stem Julius Caesar's drive into their territory. so these go back and back and back. so they're a really present phenomenon
00:02:07 - Would just reiterate what Rosea has said so far. When we're thinking about battlefield coalitions, we are thinking about troops that are raised, trained, and equipped by different political communities, put shoulder to shoulder on the battlefield, in circumstances where there's a non-zero probability that there might be a friendly fire incident. So these are really tough coordination situations in really difficult circumstances. and as Rella mentioned, these are really old.
00:02:41 - face of the earth, with the exception of Antarctica. you see them carried out by state-based militaries by non-state actors. native American tribes formed many coalitions with one another and with white settlers, as they worked to, both fight each other and try to stem white, advances in, into the western part of the United States. So why have they been overlooked? It's hard to say. a lot of academics tend to think at higher levels,

Understanding Battlefield Coalitions and Political Outcomes

00:03:14 - But for us, what really is interesting here is that if we think about the causal chain between the actual implementation of force and those big political outcomes that shape the international system, this is a crucial missing link. and we're just trying to better understand it. It'll Be a little repetition in that just emphasizing alliances, and that's really what political sciences has focused on. But those are really peacetime agreements and most alliances don't translate into
00:03:44 - And so that is a big disconnect that we're interested in understanding. And the other thing that has been really focused on is US and nato. And while wonderful that we look at us and nato, these are really distinct relationships. This transatlantic partnership, right? It's a longstanding alliance with deep ties amongst military members. And those are gonna look really different than let's say, those golic tribes that I mentioned, or various other types of battlefield coalitions. And so in focusing, in the western, you know,
00:04:19 - or NATO members, we're really missing a bigger picture. And this will be especially problematic as we think about the future of war in which we will be fighting with non NATO allies. As Illa said, they, this data set effort really grew out of conversations that we had about what we were observing in our separate research projects about dynamics during the Korean War. and we were really interested in trying to understand who forms these coalitions, what do they look like, how do they perform on the battlefield?
00:04:50 - literature, the military history literature, there was no unified place where we could go just to even find out how common these these groups are. And so we set out to build a data set, even though both of us, are much happier sitting in archives looking through dusty papers. we were, were building a, a quantitative data set. so what we did is we, we looked from the time from 1900 to 2003 and relying on military historians to tell us
00:05:24 - we looked at 62 wars and we found 492 battles. And on each side, you've got two sides for each battle. So we constructed a data set of 984 belligerent sides. and so for each of these entries, we include information about who actually bought, as part of that side. we look at when the battle started, when it ended.
00:05:55 - if they were state actors, if they were non-state actors, how many troops did they field? Which was surprisingly hard to find in many cases, even some big battles, including ones out of the world wars. how many casualties did they suffer if there was a battlefield coalition? On one side, we also looked to see whether there were preexisting treaty agreements, if the groups had fought together previously, in battle,

Understanding Battlefield Coalitions: A Surprising Analysis

00:06:25 - kind of held back and only contributed airstrikes, for example. So collecting all of this information on both, battlefield coalitions and solo belligerence allows us for the first time to really get at our hands around, how common are these groups? What do they look like, how do they perform? And it allows us to compare them to belligerents that fight on their own rather than with partners. Most surprising things that came out for us is
00:06:55 - almost one quarter of all of those belligerent sides from 1900 to 2003 were battlefield coalitions. So we're talking about a pretty common collective action phenomenon that, as we were talking about a few minutes ago, hasn't really received much attention from scholars. we found that they tend to fight better than solo belligerent. They win about 53% of the time compared to about 48%
00:07:26 - They also fight more efficiently. So solo belligerents tend to suffer casualty rates around 25%, whereas for battlefield coalitions it's closer to 21%. I, and they, that might sound like a a small difference, but, but if you just take some average numbers from our dataset, the average belligerent side in our dataset numbered about 40,000 troops. And so if you think what a 25% casualty rate killed wounded missing looks like that's 10,000 people,
00:08:01 - So we're, we're talking about more than 1500 person difference in casualty rate, moving from solo belligerent to Battlefield Coalition. also to our surprise, we found this really isn't a US story. The US was only involved in about a third of the battlefield coalitions that formed between 1900 and 2003, which given American dominance in the international system over the 20th century,
00:08:29 - it's also not a a, a NATO story. NATO only participated in four of the battles, in our dataset. And it's not even really an alliance story as, as Rosea was alluding to earlier, only 37% of the, battlefield coalitions that we have, have in our data set are comprised of members that had in peace time signed an agreement to come to the defense of one another. So we've got a really diverse set of actors coming together and for whatever reason, they tend
00:09:02 - I was kind of pleased in the sense that it's really a non-native story as a scholar because so much of what we focus on is nato, which is wonderful, but this isn't that story. So that was really interesting to me. And I think really just the takeaway that they are bigger, they fight together and win more often than we anticipate, is just something to really think about. And from a policy perspective, it's something worth investing in. If we're thinking, wow, these groups win, we wanna be part

Importance and Evolution of Battlefield Coalitions

00:09:32 - and be aware of these goose wins, what if the other side are forming such groups? So it's really interesting for me to think about, wow, they, they're really coming together and, and being quite successful. The core takeaway for us from this portion of our, our larger research agenda, which wait, we're gonna spend many years, of our, our careers sort of unpacking things that we're finding is that battlefield coalitions matter. these are pretty common phenomena that we just haven't really paid a lot of attention to.
00:10:05 - Looking at the formation of these battlefield coalitions over time, between 1900 and roughly 1990, battlefield coalitions showed up about 25% of the time, but from the end of the Cold War to 2003, 52% of all belligerent sides were battlefield coalitions. So what we're seeing is a really remarkable increase in the frequency with which, states
00:10:35 - to fight on the battlefield. And, and sort of mirroring that jump in the frequency of battlefield coalitions is an increase in the frequency of non-state actors participating in that. So we can think about Afghanistan, right? The, the us partners with the Northern Alliance at the outset of the war forms a battlefield coalition. You have American Special forces and Northern Alliance fighters working together, shoulder to shoulder fighting against the Taliban, the Taliban when it's still in power Partners with Al-Qaeda
00:11:06 - and then once the, the Afghan Taliban is ejected from power, you've got those three groups, all as non-state actors, still forming battlefield coalitions at places like Torah Bora during Operation Anaconda. and so what we're seeing is just this increased frequency in battlefield coalitions, but also an increased diversity in the kinds of actors that make them up. and as we look forward, yes, there are big questions about the Indo-Pacific, right? There probably aren't gonna be a whole lot
00:11:38 - coalitions waged, in the Western Pacific. But that's not the only place that conflict is going to emerge. We see that right now with respect to Ukraine, with respect to the fighting, in and around Gaza, right? States and non-state actors are going to partner. And so understanding more about what they look like, which provides us a, a baseline from which we can sort of dig in deeper and figure out how they do so effectively and less effectively, will give us better leverage on
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