Insurgency has two main strategies, guerrilla warfare and terrorism, which should be treated as linked, but distinct, strategies. This thesis examines the role of incumbent violence in leading insurgents to select one, or both, of these strategies. It argues that incumbent violence can create support for insurgency by causing fear and a desire for revenge and reshaping the social structures of a community. It also argues that incumbent violence increases popular support for terrorism in particular by creating outbidding incentives and desires to respond in kind to civilian deaths and as a way of punishing norm violations against attacking civilians on the part of the incumbent. The paper tests this theory with a qualitative case study of the conflict in Northern Ireland during the 1970s and a quantitative analysis of insurgent violence in the Kirkuk, Diyala, Babylon, and Salah al Din provinces during the 2003-2009 Iraq conflict

<p>What determines variation in military behavior toward civilians? In this dissertation, I examine the determinants of military behavior toward civilians, exploring the factors that lead armed groups to brutalize—or respect—civilian populations. I argue that military cultures embodying norms of civilian immunity can shape combatant preferences and, ultimately, military conduct, leading to battlefield restraint toward civilians. Focusing on case studies of the U.S. Army in Vietnam and Iraq and the Ugandan military, I examine the effect of military culture on conflict behavior utilizing detailed qualitative and quantitative data at macro- and micro-levels of analysis, including historical case studies, combatant survey data, field interviews, and a quantitative analysis of U.S. Army war crimes prosecution data. I find that military culture can fundamentally transform the preferences of combatants at all levels of the military organization, increasing combatants’ preferences for respect for civilians and producing restraint toward civilians in conflict. The findings of this research thus show that military cultures based in norms of civilian immunity can lead to the protection of civilians in war, even in the face of significant countervailing pressures that would otherwise produce mass civilian victimization.</p> / Dissertation

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