Occupational Hazards: Why Military Occupations Succeed or Fail.

The article examines twenty-four military occupations to study the critical role of commonly perceived external threat in determining occupation success. Occupation success is largely influenced by structural factors that occupying powers cannot easily manipulate. To the extent they can, great powers must therefore carefully choose places to occupy where the threat environment is conducive to occupation success. Occupying powers can increase their chances of success both by pursuing a wartime strategy that creates an environment welcoming to occupation and by employing strategies, such as contingent withdrawal, that make their pledges to create an independent, indigenous government more credible.