Written By: Finn O’Connor

Introduction

The rise in the concept of a professional, salaried military coincided with the creation of the European nation-state and, in many ways, the need for the former necessitated the latter. As the size and complexity of armies grew, so too did the necessary size a state must be to compete (3). The result is that large, centralized states replaced the various European duchies and principalities consolidated into modern states by the 17th Century, either by choice or by force. One reason for the state’s evolutionary dominance lies in its taxes. Prior to the 16th Century, kingdoms levied taxes sporadically and in times of emergency. In the 1530s the Swedish state experimented in a federal tax scheme which cut out the aristocratic middlemen and, aided by centralized fiscal records, raised enough capital out of its relatively poor population to maintain one of the largest standing armies in Europe (4). The French, Spanish and Habsburgs followed suit, and through the second half of the 1500s state revenues doubled, with most of it dedicated to war (5).

Of course, the state is not solely an instrument of war. Its revenues must also fund administration, infrastructure, and social services. The critical question for states, then, is how much of their budget should they allocate towards war. This question is back in focus with NATO members pushing their allies to raise defence spending to two percent of GDP. To meet defence requirements, states can use several tools with varying degrees of impact on their population. In How States Pay for Wars, Zielinski places these options on a continuum in which direct taxes and budgetary restrictions have the largest impact on the citizenry, while foreign support and budgetary reallocations are less noticeable (6).

In deciding which tools to use, governments must assess factors such as predicted war duration, public support, and their ability to handle inflationary pressures (7). How those factors affect decision-making is the subject of Zielinski’s book but it is important to note that all of these options, even those at the end of the awareness spectrum, have consequences and how well an actor can mitigate those consequences will determine their financial strength.

How to fund an insurgency

To determine how insurgencies make money, it is first important to distinguish between terrorism and insurgency (8). Terrorism is the use of violence as a means of pursuing specific political goals whereas insurgency, the subject of this paper, is the mobilization of a group which directly challenges the authority of a state (9). These terms are often conflated, and while actors do often engage in both, a distinction between the two is important because a terrorist group does not have the same funding mechanisms available to them as an insurgency. Both terrorists and insurgents can leverage external funding, but a purely terrorist organization will not be able to tax conquered populations or extract resources.

This distinction is also important as terrorists and insurgents face distinct types of costs. Terrorist financing simply means to fund the costs associated with specific operations, as well as maintaining the organization’s logistical structure (10). While the latter requirement does necessitate enough money to maintain the organization itself, operational funds correlate to specific acts of terror and, in turn, inform the size and complexity of those acts. For insurgencies, the funding requirements are quite different. Wennmann defines two types of costs associated with insurgencies, the start-up costs associated with hiring and arming fighters, and the maintenance costs needed to refill ammunition stores and replace combat losses. Using this framework, one can judge the effectiveness of financing by its ability to meet those start-up costs and sustain an actor’s chosen strategy (financing a guerrilla operation requires less revenue than conventional ones to be considered effective) (11). To finance its strategy, an insurgency has several options. It can sell natural resources for money, tax conquered populations, pillage those captured territories for resources, or align its interests with wealthy third parties to receive external support. However, these tools are not entirely different from those available to state actors.

Resource Extraction

An armed group might be in a region where it can exploit its country’s natural resources for money. These are often valuable resources such as oil and diamonds, which fetch a high price on the international market but can also include drugs sold on the black market. Wennmann considers extraction the most effective means of financing as they are easy to centralize within the organization and create an immediate revenue stream, making this mechanism critical to covering those high start-up costs (12). Indeed, studies into the availability of resources and the likelihood of civil wars suggest that abundant and easily accessible resources can accentuate the chance of a conflict (13). For example, in weak states, higher levels of oil production correlate to higher likelihood of conflict (14). Likewise, there exists a strong positive link between secondary diamonds (those which have traveled to coasts and riverbeds through erosion and so may be more easily extracted through alluvial mining) and civil war onset in conditions of existing ethnic fractionalization (15).

For those groups which benefit from available natural resources, the economic potential is enormous. In 2011, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime suggested that the sale of illicit drugs constituted half of the Taliban’s estimated $400 million in annual income (16). During the Angolan civil war, UNITA exported up to $1.2 million in diamonds each day in the late 1990s (17). However, commodities are also unstable and vulnerable to external shocks. Like on any market, price points determine the revenue from goods sold on the black market. One reason why “blood diamonds” remain infamous for their role in fueling conflicts in Angola, the DRC and Sierra Leone is because the price of diamonds is held steady by De Beers and not determined by a volatile global market (18). On top of unstable prices, goods sold on the black market can be disrupted by law enforcement activity and sanctions. By 2000, UN-led sanctions on Angolan diamonds reduced UNITA’s export revenue from $600 million in 1997 to $100 million (19).

However, states also rely on international trade to fund their militaries as well, and those exports maintain similar vulnerabilities to countermeasures. In July 1941, in response to the Japanese occupation of north Indochina, the United States cut trade ties with the Empire, cutting it off from four-fifths of its oil supply. Had Japan not seized the East Indies oil fields and instigated a war with the U.S., it would have been forced to abandon its war in China (20). More recently, the United States and its allies imposed strict sanctions on Russian oil following its invasion of Ukraine. Although it has been able to redirect most of its production to friendlier countries, Russia took a hit on its export revenues from the discounts it offered to those secondary markets (21).

The drop in Russia’s oil export prices contributed to a significant decline in overall export revenues since the invasion’s start in 2022 (22).

Unlike with Imperial Japan, the impact this has on Russia’s war-making potential is debatable, but it is certainly wearing on the Russian economy at large (23).

If an actor has access to buyers, selling resources is an accessible way to make the money needed to assemble and arm a military. It is in this regard that states have the incumbent advantage as their international recognition and existing trade routes make it easier for them to transport and sell goods. However, by establishing an underground network to trade in illicit goods or establish workarounds to sell goods on the open market, illegitimate governments can expect to make significant revenue quickly. While non-state actors risk losing those networks to global anti-trafficking efforts, states are not immune to punitive sanctions either. In both cases, the robustness of those networks, available alternatives, and the ability to evade sanctions determine economic strength. In addition, any actor benefits from a more stable source of income sourced directly from its territory and is immune to external interventions.

Taxation

Of the ways an armed group can finance their operations, taxation most closely resembles the functions of a state is through taxation. This may be levies on households or incomes or may be more complex such as taxes on goods and tolls on transportation routes. Through taxes and a one hundred percent levy on goods entering from government-controlled territory, the Houthis recorded at least $1.8 billion in diverted state revenue in 2019 (24).

Though it may represent a more long-term revenue stream, taxation benefits from stability. Unlike goods sold on the international market, taxes cannot be interfered with through countermeasures. It was in response to the wave of anti-terrorist financing measures implemented during the Global War on Terror that ISIS specifically focused on taxation and looting to avoid interference with their financial activities. However, while taxes may be stable in comparison to the other mechanisms, the income an armed group can derive from them is determined by the amount of territory they control. On one hand, continued expansion means continued growth as captured population centres contribute to higher taxable revenues. However, trouble arises when an actor loses control of that territory. After consolidating control over key cities in Iraq to make up for early territorial losses, ISIS brought in between $400 and $800 million in tax revenue in 2015. Once it lost Mosul and Ramadi in 2016, its tax revenue for that year dropped to between $200 and $400 million (25).

Unlike resource exploitation, taxes are not particularly useful in overcoming those start-up costs. To collect taxes from a population, an armed group must be able to expand its territory and must be able to maintain conflict capacity long enough to reap the rewards from taxation. This is one key way in which the state maintains its advantage, through an existing fiscal bureaucracy which may be repurposed to fund military operations. Yet once a non-state actor crosses that threshold and establishes control over a taxable population, it competes with states based on the amount of territory it controls, the wealth of the population within that territory, and how well it can mitigate the impact that taxes have on the population or the backlash that results. Even though states have more tools available to them, every fiscal lever they could pull will eventually wear on public support in a way similar to direct taxes.

However, once an insurgency establishes a tax base, the taxes they levy are not dissimilar to other funding streams available only to states. For example, a state could print more money, implement austerity measures to move capital from other social services and take on domestic debt. All these measures are what Zielinski refers to as “indirect resource extraction” (as opposed to the “direct resource extraction” of taxation) (26). While indirect measures may not be as obvious or mandatory to the citizenry as direct taxes, the impact on their lives materializes in other forms. The most obvious, printing money, which drives up inflation and reduces citizens’ purchasing power. Austerity measures can deepen poverty and cut the net incomes of middle- and lower-class citizens (27).

Looting

Looting simply means to steal property during times of instability, such as during a rebellion (28). It can be direct, raiding federal arsenals for weapons and ammunition or robbing individuals and institutions for liquid capital. This is the fastest way to fund an insurgency with an immediate return on investment. Then there is indirect looting, stealing valuable items to sell on the black market. Indirect looting requires an actor to have access to a market through which they can sell their ill-gotten goods, but they usually require less investment (in the form of men and materiel) than assaulting a weapons stockpile and can invite foreign investment through international exchange with other actors. For the purposes of this paper, indirect looting also includes ransoming kidnapped civilians and captured soldiers for payment.

For the non-state actor which should be treated as a state, ISIS relied heavily on primitive looting to maintain its spread. In 2016, the U.S. House Financial Services Committee reported that ISIS made between $100 million and $200 million off the sale of looted artifacts in Syria and Iraq alone (29). ISIS also pillaged the areas it captured and frequently raided Syrian weapons stockpiles accruing more weapons and money as it spread (30). Armed groups in Manipur frequently raid police camps, and those of other militias, to secure weapons, ammunition, and explosives (31).

Yet looting is hardly as effective as it seems. Since a resource can only be looted once, it is also hardly sustainable enough to sufficiently cover long-term maintenance costs. Unlike taxes, which may be raised multiple times in one region, an economy based on asset seizure is one that requires constant territorial expansion (32). Despite making anywhere between $500 million and $1 billion through looting in 2014, ISIS only earned as much as $190 million in 2016 after expansion stalled (33).  Even when a resource has not yet been exploited, widespread looting may prompt entrenchment that makes it difficult in the future. Federal forces, now aware of their vulnerable arsenals and local populations keen to protect themselves and their property will respond to looting by arming themselves and organizing into defensive militias (34). The police in Manipur have taken steps to fortify their camps while village volunteers engage in firefights with looters. These responses, in turn, mean that an actor must expend more men and materiel in future looting operations, cutting their return on investment to the point those operations may even cease to be profitable.

Looting’s long-term impact on revenue is also not contained solely to future looting but can hurt other means on which an insurgency relies. Popular insurgencies rely on local support (or failing that, local taxation) to sustain themselves. Pervasive looting risks complicating efforts to secure those sources of support, a reason groups who employ looting are usually those who do not enjoy popular support (36). Though looting can be lucrative at first, it is not a sustainable source of finance and ultimately hurts the long-term prospects of a group.

Due to its diminishing returns, looting should be best suited to covering those expensive start-up costs, save for the fact that those costs must already be covered, at least in part, to make looting an option. An up-and-coming insurgent cannot simply walk into a military installation and drive out with a tank, to fund an armed group through looting, an actor must already be an armed group (37). Like with taxation, an actor must be capable of taking territory to secure its supplies and valuables or, short of that, must have sufficient operational capacity to loot at a scale large enough to fund itself.

However, since looting requires not only the existence of an armed military but also the successful execution of an operation, it is one means by which the state does not have an automatic advantage. Exports and taxes are part of the regular function of the modern state, conquest is not. Additionally, while states often loot their enemies for supplies, the marginal gains that a smaller insurgency can expect from the practice are much higher than that of a state-backed army. This makes looting useful for an exceedingly small period of time in an insurgency’s development, where it is achieving rapid enough territorial gains to outpace its financial needs, but where it is still worthwhile to invest in looting operations. Beyond this window, however, its steep diminishing returns make it a poor means of financing a war. Even still, both state and non-state actors’ ability to use looting as a source of revenue is predicated on their continued expansion and the rate at which they can conquer fresh territory as well as the ability to weather the hostile responses against their actions.

External Support

Should an insurgency align itself with the political goals of an external benefactor, it may be able to finance its operations with injections of capital and supplies. In Wennmann’s view, external finance is equally as effective as resource exploitation and can be sufficient to overcome high barriers to entry. However, external support is not well suited to covering maintenance costs as it cannot always be relied upon and is constantly at the whims of a patron’s changing political agenda. Despite previously backing the Supreme Assembly for the Islamic Revolution (SAIRI) in Iraq, Iran drastically cut back on assistance during the Gulf War to avoid confrontation with the U.S. (38). Even in the most stable political climate, the recipient should expect to put aside its own goals to pursue those of its patron, possibly even making sacrifices in manpower and other materials or making concessions on its postwar sovereignty. Iran continually pressured SAIRI to embark on costly operations during the Iran-Iraq war, prioritizing the goals of the patron over that of the recipient (39).

States also frequently rely on external support to sustain operations and must balance similar drawbacks. Most famously, the United States supported the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union in their fight against Nazi Germany through the Lend-Lease act. This decision to supply its allies of circumstance was not without its conditions. For one, the recipients were expected to repay the loans. By 1945, Britain accrued debts equal to 270 percent of its GDP, with most of it owed to American creditors, which was finally paid off in 2008 (40). The Lend Lease agreement signed with the United Kingdom also included provisions that removed the British system of imperial preference in trade, opening up America’s access to markets and supporting a broader vision of economic liberalism (41). These conditions can also impact wartime decisions. During its counteroffensive in the Spring of 2023, Ukrainian commanders and their American advisors disagreed over strategy. The former, hoping to preserve its manpower, preferred to concentrate on limited regions, while the latter urged a full assault across the southern flank to achieve significant victories (42). While aid was never directly threatened in these exchanges, the episode demonstrates that even states with aligned goals will often come to blows with their patrons over decisions. Support between states can also be outright unstable. Future U.S. funding to Ukraine hinges on the resolution of domestic disputes in Washington.[1]

To access external support, both state and non-state actors must first have strategic goals that align with a potential patron. Therefore, those with goals shared with more, wealthier countries will have the advantage. In addition, those better able to accept concessions both during and after the war will be able to access more external funding. However, given the volatility of external support, an actor will always be at an inherent disadvantage against an economy backed with abundant natural resources and a larger tax base.

The Market of Violence

            In a monopoly, the market is dominated by an incumbent who is protected by high entry costs and benefits from economies of scale to cover operating costs. In political philosophy, the state’s “monopoly on violence refers to its status as the sole entity possessing the legal use of force. This paper argues that this term may also describe the economic relationship between state and non-state armed groups. That is, both exist within the same market of violence where states hold the position of monopolist by virtue of the high barriers to entry that newcomers face. This difference in position, not any fundamental differences in financial opportunities, is what distinguishes militias from state armies. Therefore, if a non-state actor can mobilize enough capital to overcome the barrier to entry, they effectively annul the inherent financial advantage of the state. In those circumstances, the actor with the financial edge is the one who can effectively leverage the various funding opportunities: resource extraction, taxation, looting, and external support, while mitigating their weaknesses. Regardless of if the actor is a state or non-state, the balancing act is key to financing their war effort.

The argument that state and non-state armies are separated only by high barriers to entry is consistent with findings that half of the government victories occur within the first year of the war, with 90 percent occurring in the first five years (43). If an insurgency is not able to meet the costs of entering the market, then it will be swiftly defeated.

This proposition also contributes to the literature within the security and military studies discipline which argues that the perceived differences between state and non-state actors are built on surface-level comparisons and that the two exist within the same system and are thus subject to the same constraints with differences existing only because of where they exist in relation to each other. As Biddle argues in Nonstate Warfare, there are no intrinsic differences between the different tactics employed by state and non-state actors. They exist on the same continuum with their position determined by where they exist within the same modern system of combat (44). Similar to how internal politics and bureaucratic maturity influence where an actor lies on Biddle’s continuum, several factors: available resources, the ability to avoid or insulate against economic countermeasures, the wealth of controlled populations, the ability to tax those populations and avoid public backlash from those taxes, the availability of lootable resources, the power of possible patrons, and the ability to make concessions to those patrons, all determine where an actor lies in the market. States and non-state actors of varying sizes all exist within the same monopolistic market with every actor forced to make the same trade-offs to access the necessary funding and every apparent contrast determined by their position within that market, rather than a fundamental difference.

Works Cited

(1) ABC News, “ISIS an ‘Incredible’ Fighting Force, US Special Ops Sources Say,” ABC News, August 25, 2014, https://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/isis-incredible-fighting-force-us-special-ops-sources/story?id=25116463.

(2) Faysal Itani, “To Defeat ISIS, We Must Treat It Like a State,” TIME, August 14, 2014, https://time.com/3111276/isis-terror-iraq-treat-it-like-a-state/.

(3) Richard Bean, “War and the Birth of the Nation State,” The Journal of Economic History 33, no. 1 (1973): 219.

(4) Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990-1992, Rev. pbk. ed, Studies in Social Discontinuity (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1992), 79.

(5) Bean, “War and the Birth of the Nation State,” 214.

(6) Rosella Cappella Zielinski, How States Pay for Wars (Ithaca London: Cornell University Press, 2016), 14.

(7) Cappella Zielinski, 18–22.

(8) The term insurgency is used both to define a group and its tactics. As noted in the remainder of this paragraph, an insurgent group is a counter-state which strives to replace the incumbent, also referred to a rebellion. Insurgent tactics (though not always the tactics of an insurgency) are small-unit, hit-and-run operations also referred to as guerilla warfare. The term insurgency as used in this paper refers to the group and not necessarily the tactics as financial opportunities can determine if an insurgent group engages in insurgent tactics.

(9) Alan J. Vick et al., Air Power in the New Counterinsurgency Era: The Strategic Importance of USAF Advisory and Assistance Missions, 1st ed. (RAND Corporation, 2006), 11, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7249/mg509af.

(10) Colin P. Clarke, “The Financing of Armed Groups in Conflict,” Armed Conflict Survey 4, no. 1 (January 1, 2018): 23, https://doi.org/10.1080/23740973.2018.1482062.

(11) Achim Wennmann, “Economic Dimensions of Armed Groups: Profiling the Financing, Costs, and Agendas and Their Implications for Mediated Engagements,” International Review of the Red Cross 93, no. 882 (June 2011): 341–43, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1816383111000361.

(12) Wennmann, 344.

(13) James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin, “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War,” The American Political Science Review 97, no. 1 (2003): 87.

(14) Macartan Humphreys, “Natural Resources, Conflict, and Conflict Resolution: Uncovering the Mechanisms,” The Journal of Conflict Resolution 49, no. 4 (2005): 527.

(15) Päivi Lujala, Nils Petter Gleditsch, and Elisabeth Gilmore, “A Diamond Curse?: Civil War and a Lootable Resource,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 49, no. 4 (August 1, 2005): 559, https://doi.org/10.1177/0022002705277548.

(16) United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, “The Drug Problem and Organized Crime, Illicit Financial Flows, Corruption and Terrorism,” World Drug Report 2017 (United Nations, June 30, 2017), 10, https://doi.org/10.18356/c595e10f-en.

(17) Security Council Committee established pursuant to resolution 864 (1993) concerning the situation in Angola, “Angola: Supplementary Report of the Monitoring Mechanism on Sanctions against UNITA (S/2001/966),” October 12, 2001, 29.

(18) Assis Malaquias, “Diamonds Are a Guerrilla’s Best Friend: The Impact of Illicit Wealth on Insurgency Strategy,” Third World Quarterly 22, no. 3 (2001): 312.

(19) Jakkie Cilliers, Philippe Le Billon, and Richard Cornwell, “Angola’s War Economy,” November 1, 2000, 284.

(20) Irvine H. Anderson, “The 1941 De Facto Embargo on Oil to Japan: A Bureaucratic Reflex,” Pacific Historical Review 44, no. 2 (1975): 201–2, https://doi.org/10.2307/3638003.

(21) Tania Babina et al., “Assessing the Impact of International Sanctions on Russian Oil Exports,” CEPR, April 20, 2023, https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/assessing-impact-international-sanctions-russian-oil-exports.

(22) Isaac Levi, “January 2024 — Monthly Analysis of Russian Fossil Fuel Exports and Sanctions,” Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, February 14, 2024, https://energyandcleanair.org/january-2024-monthly-analysis-of-russian-fossil-fuel-exports-and-sanctions/.

(23) John Psaropoulos, “Sanctions on Russian Oil Have Failed. Were They Ever Meant to Succeed?,” Al Jazeera, December 20, 2023, https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2023/12/20/sanctions-on-russian-oil-have-failed-were-they-ever-meant-to-succeed.

(24) The Panel of Experts on Yemen, “Final Report of the Panel of Experts on Yemen (S/2021/79),” January 29, 2021, 35–36, https://reliefweb.int/report/yemen/final-report-panel-experts-yemen-s202179-enar.

(25) Stefan Heißner et al., “Caliphate in Decline: An Estimate of Islamic State’s Financial Fortunes” (King’s College London: The International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation Political Violence, 2017), 7.

(26) Cappella Zielinski, How States Pay for Wars, 12–13.

(27) Krisnah Poinasamy, “The True Cost of Austerity and Inequality: UK Case Study,” Oxfam, September 2013, 3.

(28) Another brief note on terms. “Looting” as used in the literature can refer to any strategy used by non-state actors to raise funds from its area of operations. By this definition, exploiting resources means is to “loot” them from controlled territory, while raising taxes is a form of “regularized looting.” This term is not applied so broadly in this paper.

(29) House Financial Services Committee, “ISIS Looting and Destroying Cultural Artifacts on ‘Unprecedented Scale,’” April 19, 2016, https://financialservices.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=400587.

(30) Gabe Joselow, “ISIS Weapons Arsenal Included Some Purchased by U.S. Government,” NBC News, December 14, 2017, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/isis-weapons-arsenal-included-some-purchased-u-s-government-n829201.

(31) Utpal Parashar and Prawesh Lama, “Challenge for Security Forces in Manipur: Looted Sophisticated Arms, Ammos with Miscreants,” Hindustan Times, May 30, 2023, https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/growing-challenge-for-security-forces-as-arms-and-ammunition-are-looted-in-manipur-101685386427938.html; Jimmy Levion, “Arms and Ammunition Looted from Designated Camp for Militant Groups in Manipur,” The Indian Express (blog), April 9, 2023, https://indianexpress.com/article/north-east-india/manipur/arms-and-ammunition-looted-from-designated-camp-for-militant-groups-in-manipur-8547448/.

(32) atrick Johnston et al., Return and Expand? The Finances and Prospects of the Islamic State After the Caliphate (RAND Corporation, 2019), 41, https://doi.org/10.7249/RR3046.

(33) Heißner et al., “Caliphate in Decline: An Estimate of Islamic State’s Financial Fortunes,” 8.

(34) Vijaita Singh, “Weapons, Ammo, Police Vehicles Looted in Imphal Mob Attack,” The Hindu, November 2, 2023, sec. Other States, https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/weapons-ammo-police-vehicles-looted-in-imphal-mob-attack/article67489899.ece.

(35) Anthony Vinci, “The ‘Problems of Mobilization’ and the Analysis of Armed Groups,” The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters 36, no. 1 (March 1, 2006): 59.

(36) Vinci, 55.

(37) Daniel Byman, ed., Trends in Outside Support for Insurgent Movements (Santa Monica, CA: Rand, 2001), 102.

(38) Byman, 102.

(39) Ashley Seager, “For the British Treasury, Only Today Is the War Over,” The Guardian, December 29, 2006, sec. Business, https://www.theguardian.com/business/2006/dec/29/politics.secondworldwar.

(40) Warren F. Kimball, “Lend-Lease and the Open Door: The Temptation of British Opulence, 1937-1942,” Political Science Quarterly 86, no. 2 (1971): 247, https://doi.org/10.2307/2148009.

(41) Washington Post Staff, “Miscalculations, Divisions Marked Offensive Planning by U.S., Ukraine,” Washington Post, December 4, 2023, sec. Europe, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/12/04/ukraine-counteroffensive-us-planning-russia-war/.

(42) The Economist, “House Republicans Fear Trump Too Much to Aid Ukraine,” The Economist, February 14, 2024, https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/02/14/house-republicans-fear-trump-too-much-to-aid-ukraine.

(43) T. David Mason, Joseph P. Weingarten, and Patrick J. Fett, “Win, Lose, or Draw: Predicting the Outcome of Civil Wars,” Political Research Quarterly 52, no. 2 (1999): 256, https://doi.org/10.2307/449218.

(44) Stephen Biddle, Nonstate Warfare: The Military Methods of Guerillas, Warlords, and Militias (Princeton Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2021).