ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the role of bias in two episodes: North Atlantic Treaty Organization intervention in Kosovo, and India's intervention in Sri Lanka. These case studies are used to examine the preliminary hypotheses that have been developed in a formal model. The chapter describes a review of the literature on bias, followed by a heuristic description of the formal model of bias. A loss of impartiality and an increase in bias are often associated with more forceful and potentially risky and costly undertakings. It is useful to know when forceful interventions are more likely to succeed by clearly specifying the conditions under which a biased intervention is likely to either inhibit violence or act as a catalyst to it. In both the Sri Lankan and Kosovo cases, there also appeared to be an important "rally around the flag" effect that animated the targeted combatants.
