Although multinational military exercises have become a common foreign policy tool over the last three decades, our understanding of their purpose and variation is limited. Why do major powers conduct multinational exercises, especially with non-allies, and why did exercises increase after the end of the Cold War? I argue that a rise in strategic uncertainty—when adversaries and allies become less obvious—led major powers to increase their use of “shaping” exercises: training events designed not to threaten or prepare to use force, but to change the characteristics of or relationship between militaries. Textual sentiment analysis and regressions of over a thousand multinational exercises from 1980 to 2016 reveal that major powers reacted to an increase in strategic uncertainty by using these types of exercises to manage ambiguous threats and partners. This study highlights why and how major powers implement diverse tools of military statecraft—that is, the use of military organizations to achieve foreign policy goals—to reduce the threat of violent non-state actors and undermine one another in a competitive international system.

中文翻译：

---

军事治国之道和多国演习在世界政治中的运用

尽管多国军事演习在过去 30 年中已成为一种常见的外交政策工具，但我们对其目的和变化的理解有限。大国为何要进行多国演习，尤其是与非盟国进行多国演习，冷战结束后演习为何增多？我认为，战略不确定性的增加——当对手和盟友变得不那么明显时——导致大国增加使用“塑造”演习：训练活动的目的不是威胁或准备使用武力，而是改变双方的特征或关系军队之间。从 1980 年到 2016 年，对 1000 多次多国演习的文本情感分析和回归表明，主要大国通过使用这些类型的演习来管理模棱两可的威胁和合作伙伴来应对战略不确定性的增加。本研究强调了大国为何以及如何实施各种军事治国手段——即利用军事组织来实现外交政策目标——以减少暴力非国家行为者的威胁并在竞争激烈的国际体系中相互破坏。