JEFFREY A. FRIEDMAN 24 Harold Street #2, Somerville MA, 02143 [email protected] (617) 767-8207 | http://scholar.harvard.edu/friedman

EDUCATION Ph.D. in Public Policy, Harvard University, 2013 A.B. in Government, Harvard College, 2005. Magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa.

PUBLICATIONS

“Testing the Surge: Why Did Violence Decline in Iraq in 2007?” with Stephen Biddle and Jacob Shapiro International Security, Vol. 37, No. 1 (2012), pp. 7-40

- see also Biddle, Friedman, and Shapiro, “Correspondence: Assessing the Synergy Thesis in Iraq,” International Security, Vol. 37, No. 4 (2013), pp. 173-198

“Assessing Uncertainty in Intelligence,” with Richard Zeckhauser

Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 27, No. 6 (2012), pp. 824-847

“Civil War Intervention and the Problem of Iraq,” with Stephen Biddle and Stephen Long International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 56, No. 1 (2012), pp. 85-98

“Manpower and Counterinsurgency: Empirical Foundations for Theory and Doctrine” Security Studies, Vol. 20, No. 4 (2011), pp. 556-591

The 2006 Lebanon Campaign and the Future of Warfare, with Stephen Biddle Carlisle, Penn.: U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute, 2008

DISSERTATION Title: Cumulative Dynamics and Strategic Assessment: U.S. Military Decision Making in Iraq, Vietnam, and the American Indian Wars. Committee: Stephen M. Walt (chair), Robert H. Bates, Monica Duffy Toft, Richard Zeckhauser

WORKING PAPERS “How Cumulative Dynamics Affect Military Decision Making” (job market paper)

“Handling and Mishandling Estimative Probability: Likelihood, Confidence, and the Search for Bin Laden,” with Richard Zeckhauser (presented at MPSA 2013) “Political Structure and Military Behavior in the American Indian Wars” (presented at ISA 2013)

“Using Power Laws to Estimate Conflict Size” (to be presented at APSA 2013)

FELLOWSHIPS & HONORS Postdoctoral Fellow, Dickey Center for International Understanding, Dartmouth, 2013-14 Predoctoral Research Fellow, Belfer Center International Security Program, 2012-13 Dissertation Completion Fellowship, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, 2012-13 Graduate Student Associate, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, 2011-12, 2012-13 Graduate Student Fellow, Tobin Project, 2011-12, 2012-13 Certificates of Distinction in Teaching, Harvard College: Spring 2009, Spring 2010, Spring 2011

SELECTED PRESENTATIONS “Handling and Mishandling Estimative Probability: Likelihood, Confidence, and the Search for Bin Laden” Midwest Political Science Association Annual Conference (Chicago, Ill.), April 2013

“Political Structure and Military Behavior in the American Indian Wars” International Studies Association Annual Conference (San Francisco, Calif.), April 2013 Harvard-Yale-MIT Conference on Political Violence (Cambridge, Mass.), April 2013

“How Cumulative Dynamics Affect Military Decision Making” TISS New Faces in Security Studies Conference (Chapel Hill, N.C.), September 2012 International Studies Association Annual Conference (San Diego, Calif.), April 2012

“Testing the Surge: Why Did Violence Decline in Iraq in 2007?” NBER Summer Institute, Program on the Economics of National Security (Cambridge, Mass.), July 2012 PRIO/MIT Conference on Counterinsurgency and Counterterrorism (Cambridge, Mass.), November 2011

“Manpower in Counterinsurgency” U.S. Military Academy, Dept. of Social Sciences (West Point, N.Y.), March 2011 Center for Army Analysis (Ft. Belvoir, Va.), January 2011

“Is Military Assistance Destabilizing?” Midwest Political Science Association Annual Conference (Chicago, Ill.), April 2010

“Civil War Intervention and the Problem of Iraq” American Political Science Association Annual Conference (Boston, Mass.), August 2008 Peace Science Society Annual Conference (Columbia, S.C.), November 2007

COURSES TAUGHT Introduction to International Relations, Harvard College, Spring 2009, Teaching Fellow Origins of Modern Wars, Harvard College, Spring 2010 & Spring 2011, Head Teaching Fellow Analytic Frameworks for Policy, Harvard Kennedy School, Fall 2011, Teaching Fellow Doctoral Research Seminar, Harvard Kennedy School, Fall 2012, Co-Instructor

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Research Assistant, The World Bank, International Finance Corporation, 2005-06 Research Associate for Defense Policy, Council on Foreign Relations, 2006-08 International Security Assistance Force-Afghanistan, Summer 2010 Research assistance to Commanders Initiatives Group in Kabul

REFERENCES Stephen M. Walt (dissertation chair) Belfer Professor of International Affairs, Harvard University | [email protected] Robert H. Bates Eaton Professor of Government, Harvard University | [email protected] Stephen D. Biddle Professor of Political Science, George Washington University | [email protected] Dustin Tingley Assistant Professor of Government, Harvard University | [email protected] Monica Duffy Toft Professor of Government and Public Policy, Oxford University | [email protected] Richard Zeckhauser Ramsey Professor of Political Economy, Harvard University | [email protected] ABSTRACTS – Published Work JEFFREY A. FRIEDMAN

“Testing the Surge: Why Did Violence Decline in Iraq in 2007?” with Stephen Biddle and Jacob Shapiro International Security, Vol. 37, No. 1 (2012), pp. 7-40 Combines recently-declassified data on local-level violence in Iraq with information gathered from an original series of 70 structured interviews with Coalition officers in order to test why violence declined in Iraq in 2007. Through both quantitative and qualitative analysis, the article argues that this process was driven by an interaction between the Surge and the Sunni Awakening: both were necessary but neither alone was sufficient, whereas other explanations (including the dynamics of sectarian cleansing) cannot account for local or national violence trends. An important implication of this argument is that while U.S. policy deserves partial credit for reducing Iraq’s violence, similar methods cannot be expected to work elsewhere without local equivalents of the Sunni Awakening.

“Assessing Uncertainty in Intelligence,” with Richard Zeckhauser Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 27, No. 6 (2012), pp. 824-827 Applies insights from Bayesian decision theory to critique current U.S. intelligence methods (or “tradecraft”). Argues that the goal of estimative intelligence should be to assess uncertainty, and yet many existing tradecraft methods are instead designed to reduce (and ideally to eliminate) uncertainty in a fashion that can impair the accuracy, clarity, and utility of intelligence products. The article is based on a review of prominent tradecraft manuals, interviews with intelligence analysts and officials, and empirical analysis spanning 379 declassified National Intelligence Estimates.

“Civil War Intervention and the Problem of Iraq,” with Stephen Biddle and Stephen Long International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 56, No. 1 (2012), pp. 85-98 Since at least 2006, much of the debate over U.S. policy in Iraq has turned on different assessments of the prospective danger of foreign intervention following U.S. withdrawal. This paper systematically assesses that risk via a two-stage analysis: first, by using dyad-year data to assess the way specific factors central to the Iraq debate correlate with the incidence of civil war intervention more broadly; and second, by leveraging this empirical model through a Monte Carlo simulation to predict the likelihood that Iraq’s neighbors might intervene in potentially renewed civil violence.

“Manpower and Counterinsurgency: Empirical Foundations for Theory and Doctrine” Security Studies, Vol. 20, No. 4 (2011), pp. 556-591 Examines the relationship between force size and counterinsurgency outcomes using original data on 171 cases since World War I. These data allow for the first systematic, cross-sectional analysis of several prominent claims about force sizing in counterinsurgency, including the often-cited rule of thumb in official U.S. military doctrine that successful counterinsurgents require twenty troops per thousand people in the area of operations. The data do not support this claim and there do not appear to be any reliable “thresholds” for force sizing. Troop density is positively related to counterinsurgent success, but the relationship is not particularly strong. This pattern holds for a diverse range of subsets within the data, and it does not appear to be driven by strategic selection.

The 2006 Lebanon Campaign and the Future of Warfare, with Stephen Biddle Carlisle, Penn.: U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute, 2008 The 2006 conflict in Lebanon generated a high-profile debate about the sources of Hezbollah’s military effectiveness against Israel, and what this implies for the future of conflict with non-state actors. Some argue that Hezbollah waged an especially effective form of asymmetric warfare; others argue that the group demonstrated a non-state actor’s ability to fight in remarkably conventional ways. This monograph addresses that debate by way of original structured interviews with 36 IDF officers, providing a systematic assessment of Hezbollah’s military behavior in 2006. The evidence shows that Hezbollah combined attributes of “conventional” and “irregular” militaries in a manner that defies standard conceptual dichotomies and previous assessments of the case. Rather than following the typical distinction between states and non-states, the monograph argues that both types of actors should be viewed on a common theoretical spectrum of brute force versus coercion. ABSTRACTS – Working Papers JEFFREY A. FRIEDMAN

“How Cumulative Dynamics Affect Military Decision Making” Examines why military decision makers often struggle realize their strategic mistakes. Existing theoretical frameworks predict that the longer rational decision makers go without achieving their objectives, the more pessimistic they should become about their ability to do so, and the more likely they should be to change course. This paper challenges those ideas and explains why there are many cases where we should expect the very opposite. The theoretical crux of this argument is that standard models of learning and adaptation revolve around the assumption that decision makers are observing repeated processes with dynamics similar to slot machines and roulette wheels – but in war and other contexts, decision makers often deal with cumulative processes, which follow a very different logic. After presenting these concepts, the paper applies them to evaluate U.S. military strategy during the American Indian Wars. This experience is unusually well-suited for a study of strategic decision making because more than 100 tribes fought against the United States; it is thus possible to compare commanders’ expectations with a relatively large body of objective empirical evidence, including original, event-level data spanning roughly 3,000 frontier engagements. The paper closes by drawing implications for decision making in fields beyond national security.

“Handling and Mishandling Estimative Probability: Likelihood, Confidence, and the Search for Bin Laden” with Richard Zeckhauser In a series of reports and meetings in Spring 2011, intelligence analysts and officials debated the chances that Osama bin Laden was living in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Estimates ranged from a low of 30 or 40 percent to a high of 95 percent. The president stated that he found this discussion confusing, even misleading. Motivated by that experience, and by broader debates about intelligence analysis, this article examines the conceptual foundations of expressing and interpreting estimative probability. It explains why a range of probabilities can always be condensed into a single point estimate that is clearer (but logically no different) than standard intelligence reporting, and why assessments of confidence are most useful when they indicate the extent to which estimative probabilities might shift in response to newly gathered information.

“Political Structure and Military Behavior in the American Indian Wars” There is currently a debate among political scientists about whether political groups that are more cohesive are also more prone to using violence and/or more effective in doing so. The American Indian Wars provide an unusual opportunity to gain empirical traction on this issue. These conflicts present a cross-section of experience with a relatively high degree of unit homogeneity; it is possible to gather information on tribes that fought as well as those that did not; scholars have recorded information about the tribes’ political and economic structures in detailed and consistent ways; and because these institutions took shape prior to military contact with U.S. and British forces, they are plausibly exogenous to the wars the tribes fought. This paper examines 167 tribes, showing how groups with more centralized political institutions were more likely to engage in political violence, to wage large-scale “wars,” to fight conflicts that were more destructive, to fight for more protracted periods, and to achieve more favorable battlefield outcomes. These results shed light on open historical debates about the American Indian Wars while speaking to broader theoretical questions about how intragroup politics affect intergroup conflict, along with methodological questions about what scholars can learn about this relationship from cross-sectional evidence.

“Using Power Laws to Estimate Conflict Size” How can scholars estimate the size of armed conflicts? Thorough research only goes so far in making such assessments – there will almost always be missing data, and thus a need to draw inferences about how comprehensively violence has been recorded. This paper addresses that challenge by developing an estimation strategy based on the observation that violent events are generally distributed according to power laws, a pattern which structures expectations about what event data on armed conflict would look like if those data were complete. This technique is applied to estimate the number of Native American and U.S. casualties in the American Indian Wars between 1776 and 1890, demonstrating how scholars can use power laws to estimate conflict size, even (and perhaps especially) in cases where previous literature has been unable to do so.