Politics & Governance / International Politics / War & Conflict

Are U.S. Military Interventions Contagious? A Shocking Math Truth

The Pentagon has long assumed military interventions are random, isolated events, like earthquakes. But a groundbreaking RAND Corporation study by Jennifer Kavanagh reveals a terrifying truth: interventions are mathematically contagious. Using 66 cases from 1949 to 2010, the data shows that each deployment increases the probability of the next by 20% to 50%. This video unpacks the 'temporal dependence' effect, how the Cold War suppressed it, and why post-1989 single-polarity unleashed a self-replicating cycle. Discover the four mechanisms driving this contagion—spillover, inertia, strategic synergy, and credibility traps—and why the Pentagon's planning models are dangerously flawed. This is the math behind imperial overstretch.