Tugging on Superman’s Cape: Why Some Insurgencies Are Targets of Foreign Militaries

Why do foreign militaries attack some insurgencies and not others? Although foreign involvement in civil conflicts is on the rise, many insurgencies are not targeted militarily by external powers. Current research suggests organizations that are lethal or that attack democracies should be targeted more often. We argue that organizations that have vital markers of capabilities, such as alliances with other violent non-state actors (VNSAs) and territorial control, and the ability to attack members of a powerful country, in this case, U.S. citizens at home or abroad, are more likely to be targeted. Our empirical analysis supports this contention: we use a logistic regression model and, in post-estimation, predicted probabilities and a Classification and Regression Tree (CART) model to understand the effect of potential factors on international military interventions.