NC West Virginia News

West Virginia University research is enhancing national security by providing policymakers, military institutions, think tanks, academics, and journalists with comprehensive and current information on international conflicts. A $555,647 grant from the National Science Foundation supports a three-year expansion of the Correlates of War Project’s Militarized Interstate Dispute Data, led by Vito D’Orazio, associate professor of political science and data sciences at the WVU Eberly College of Arts and Sciences.

In a militarized interstate dispute (MID), one country or nation-state directs the threat, display, or use of armed force toward another state. These interactions involve the military but do not escalate to war. For instance, in December 1994, an American helicopter was shot down by North Korea as part of a larger dispute involving North Korea, South Korea, and the United States in the 1990s.

“Insight into militarized disputes between states is critical given the reemergence of long-term strategic competition between the U.S. and other global powers,” D’Orazio said. “Data on these events allow interested parties to analyze when low-hostility incidents are likely to escalate to higher levels of hostility or be managed short of that point.”

The Correlates of War Project began compiling data on these disputes in the 1980s; its fifth edition was released in 2020. The dataset currently includes all MIDs worldwide from 1816 to 2014. The sixth update will add data spanning 2014-2024 and introduce MID Live, an early detection mechanism for interstate hostilities using near real-time incident detection publicized via @mids_proj on X.

According to D’Orazio, early release information about potential militarized disputes can improve conflict forecasting models even when not fully vetted. “Our work reveals evolving patterns of conflict and competition between states as well as opportunities for cooperation,” he said.

Before MID data collection began in the 1980s, researchers had limited data on militarized disputes that did not escalate to war. Since then, MID data have been used to study various issues including natural resource competition, territorial disputes, arms races, crisis escalation, nuclear weapons proliferation among others.

“One way MID data have been used is to study ‘the democratic peace’ theory,” D’Orazio noted. This theory suggests that democratic countries do not go to war against each other—a concept supported by U.S. presidents like Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

The dataset categorizes disputes with details about participants, dates, fatalities and military actions involved while indicating outcomes such as wins or yields by either side or stalemates.

Researchers will collaborate with students from England's Arizona State University and West Virginia University as well as U.S Air Force cadets in Colorado who will help identify militarized disputes from international news sources documenting them according to dates fatalities types action motivations involved

At WVU PhD students are already participating in this project which offers research opportunities undergraduates

“Because of students’ cadets participation this project members next generation scholars Air Force leaders become deeply familiar intricacies interstate hostilities” D’Orazio concluded

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