Death, Dominance, and State-Building

Roger D. Petersen is the Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science. He holds BA, MA, and PhD degrees from the University of Chicago and has taught at MIT since 2001. Petersen focuses on within-state conflict and violence. He has written three books: Resistance and Rebellion: Lessons from Eastern Europe (2001), Understanding Ethnic Violence: Fear, Hatred, Resentment in Twentieth Century Eastern Europe (2002), and Western Intervention in the Balkans: The Strategic Use of Emotion in Conflict (2011). He teaches courses on military intervention, civil-military relations, politics and conflict in the Balkans and the Middle East, and emotions and politics.

• Section One: FrameworkChapter One: Death, Dominance, and State-Building: The US in Iraq and the Future of American InterventionChapter Two: Analytical Framework I: Roles and StrategyChapter Three: Analytical Framework II: Mechanisms and StrategyChapter Four: US Counterinsurgency Strategy and Practice Section Two: The Iraq Conflict 2003-2011Preview to Section II Chapter Five: Violence, State-Building, and the Sunni-Shia CleavageChapter Six: Ghazaliyah: Sunni Mobilization, Sectarian War, US Success and FailureChapter Seven: Sadr City, the Mahdi Army, and the Sectarian Cleansing of BaghdadChapter Eight: Mansour: The Failure to Mobilize ModeratesChapter Nine: The Failure to Establish Local SecurityChapter Ten: Captain Wright Goes to Baghdad (co-written with Timothy Wright)Chapter Eleven: Anbar, 2003-2011: The Generation of a Community Mobilization Strategy (co-written with Jon Lindsay)Chapter Twelve: The Battle of Sadr City, 2008: Innovations in Urban Counterinsurgency Chapter Thirteen: The Surge: A ReconsiderationChapter Fourteen: Iraqi Kurdistan: Dual Cleavages and their Effect on War and State-Building Section Three: Iraq 2011-2020Preview to Section IIIChapter Fifteen: Hawija: Explaining Sunni ResurgenceChapter Sixteen: The Third Iraq War Chapter Seventeen: Hybrid Actors: The Emergence and Persistence of the Popular Mobilization ForcesChapter Eighteen: How Minorities Make Their Way in Post-ISIS Iraq: The Case of Christian Militias in the Nineveh Plain (co-written with Matt Cancian)Chapter Nineteen: The Kurdistan Regional Governate Revisited: Death, War, Machinations, and Little ChangeChapter Twenty: The Decline of Dominance Politics? Emotions and Institutions in Iraq Ten Years After the 2011 US Withdrawal Section Four: The Future of American Military InterventionPreview to Section IV Chapter Twenty-One: Findings and LessonsChapter Twenty-Two: Constraints on Learning: The Influence of the Changing International System and US Domestic PoliticsChapter Twenty-Three: The Future of American Military Intervention Appendices:Appendix A: Application of Framework to Classic Theories of Insurgency and CounterinsurgencyAppendix B: An Application of the Framework to Review Recent Social Science Literature BibliographyNotesIndex

In Death, Dominance, and State-Building, Roger Petersen displays his signature combination of intellectual creativity with careful attention to on-the ground dynamics. Petersen embeds a study of nuanced variation across time and space within a fascinating macro-level account of the politics of group competition in Iraq. This book is required reading for anyone interested in civil war, US foreign policy, or the politics of violent state-building.