The New Law of War: Legitimizing Hi–Tech and Infrastructural Violence

This article examines how humanitarian laws of war have been recast in light of a new generation of hi–tech weapons and innovations in strategic theory. Far from falling into disuse, humanitarian law is invoked more frequently than ever to confer legitimacy on military action. New legal interpretations, diminished ad bellum rules, and an expansive view of military necessity are coalescing in a regime of legal warfare that licenses hi–tech states to launch wars as long as their conduct is deemed just. The ascendance of technical legalism has undercut customary restraints on the use of armed force and has opened a legal chasm between technological haves and have–nots. Most striking is the use of legal language to justify the erosion of distinctions between soldiers and civilians and to legitimize collateral damage. Hi–tech warfare has dramatically curbed immediate civilian casualties, yet the law sanctions infrastructural campaigns that harm long–term public health and human rights in ways that are now clear.     

Is the Sum Greater than the Parts? The Terms of Civil War Peace Agreements and the Commitment Problem Revisited

The dominant theoretical approaches to civil war negotiations in the field of political science have sought to explain both the scarcity and high failure rates of negotiated agreements in civil conflicts. This historical pattern, however, has fundamentally changed in the last two decades as changes in international norms and laws, as well as the increased prevalence and competence of peacebuilding professionals, now require conflict actors to have a greater commitment toward negotiations and the enforcement of agreements. While actors in interstate wars seek to avoid accountability, civil war actors seem to embrace the opportunities that these new dynamics create to achieve broad‐based reforms across numerous areas of policy and government. The result, we suggest, is that stakeholders evaluate agreements based on their potential to accomplish an array of sociopolitical objectives. In addition, for strategic and practical reasons, they perceive that those agreements that include more reforms across multiple policy sectors will have the greatest potential. Our examination of nearly two hundred agreements found evidence that the peacemaking potential of a negotiated agreement between civil war adversaries is greatly enhanced when reforms are pursued across many different policy domains. Conversely, our analysis suggests that the greater the number of policy areas left untouched by a peace agreement, the more likely the stakeholders will be to follow that agreement with additional negotiations to enhance that agreement, or, alternatively, the more likely that violence will resume.     

Resource Curse in Reverse: How Civil Wars Influence Natural Resource Production

Conflict scholars have argued that natural resources, such as oil, diamonds, and gemstones, may increase the chances for civil wars because rebels can sustain their organizations by looting resources and because certain types of resources, such as oil, create weaker state governments that are less capable of putting down insurgencies. Natural resources like oil also raise the value of capturing the state through war. However, empirical studies typically treat natural resources as exogenous variables, failing to consider the possibility that war alters the production levels of various natural resources. This endogenous relationship may help to explain the inconsistent empirical results linking natural resources and civil war onset. This article examines the two-way relationship between natural resources and civil war, focusing on oil, diamonds, and fisheries. The empirical findings suggest that most of the relationships run in the direction from war to resources, with no significant effects of resources on the onset of civil war. States with civil wars experience lower oil and diamond production, while marine fisheries production recovers in civil war–torn states.     

War and Democratization: Lessons from the Portuguese Experience

The literature on democracy suggests that new democracies should have difficulty emerging during war or in the aftermath of armed struggle, yet Portugal's current democracy emerged simultaneously with the end of the nation's unsuccessful war in Africa. This article addresses the reasons and argues that democracy triumphed not simply in spite of the war but also, in part, because of it. The costs and geography of the war itself, the capacity and rootedness of the state that waged the war, the political culture of the regime's military officers, and the war-related timing of Portugal's first elections all helped prevent the emergence of an anti-democratic coalition and contributed to ensuring a successful transition to democracy. The article ends with three ideas that merit closer examination: that different sorts of wars leave different legacies for democracy; that wars that leave state bureaucracies intact or stronger are more likely to be followed by lasting democracy than those which do not; and, finally, that the ideologies of military elites are pivotal to the outcome of post-war democratic transitions.     

Dismantling the Oil Wars Myth

This article argues that, contrary to the assumptions of international relations scholars, policymakers, and the general public, states do not engage in oil wars. A twofold strategy is employed to support this assertion. First, the article scrutinizes the logical underpinnings of oil war claims, arguing that proponents have underestimated the obstacles to seizing and exploiting foreign resources and, consequently, exaggerated the likelihood of oil wars. Second, the article examines four conflicts that are commonly identified as international oil wars: Japan's attack on the Dutch East Indies in World War II, Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, the Iran--Iraq War, and the Chaco War between Bolivia and Paraguay. It finds that the desire to control additional oil resources was not the fundamental cause of aggression in any of these conflicts. In the latter two cases, aggression was unconnected to oil interests. In the former, states fought for their survival, not for an oil prize.     

世界政治“平靖进程”的技术变迁支撑

二战后,世界政治经历了"平靖进程",具体体现为:"大国罕有战事""国家罕有消亡"。本文融合国际政治经济学与国际安全研究,展示二战后的技术变迁改变了大国的"意愿"与"能力",支撑了世界政治新变化。在马尔萨斯时代,由于技术水平低下,生存物资稀缺,生存保障匮乏,人类面临持续的安全难题。二战后,技术发展影响了当代大国的"意愿"与"能力",让世界政治呈现新变化。技术变迁给大国提供了更为丰富的选择,让大国使用武力征服的意愿降低;同时,随着技术变迁,尤其是在"核革命"后,大国确保自身安全的能力更强,使得"大国罕有战事"。得益于技术变迁,大国利益半径扩大,即便距离遥远地域的变化也与自身息息相关,大国保障遥远海外利益的意愿提升;同时,技术变迁扩大了大国的权力投射,让世界各国,尤其是大国保障体系稳定的能力更强,致使"国家罕见消亡"。随着技术变迁,世界政治已呈现出很多与传统智慧不同的方面,孕育国际交往的新理念。     

Wars of Succession

I analyze a model of bargaining, war, and endogenous leadership turnover in which (1) leader attributes affect war outcomes and (2) war can insulate settlements from renegotiation. Shifts in bargaining power caused by leadership turnover are endogenous and discontinuous, but sufficiently decisive war outcomes can solve the associated commitment problem. In contrast to other models where the shadow cast by a hawkish successor encourages moderation toward a dovish incumbent, the foreign state attacks instead—despite a dovish incumbent’s known preference for peace—using war to lock in a settlement that would otherwise be lost to future leadership turnover. I discuss the theory’s implications for widening the empirical scope of the commitment problem explanation for war to limited wars over relatively lower stakes and for integrating the politics of leadership turnover with the study of strategic rivalries.     

The Geography of Insurgent Organization and its Consequences for Civil Wars: Evidence from Liberia and Sierra Leone

This article investigates the determinants of armed group organization and the downstream effects of organization on civil wars. It demonstrates that the interaction between geographical and technological factors influences the types of hierarchical organizations that armed groups develop. It then argues that variations in the types of hierarchies developed by armed groups have important consequences for principal-agent relations, which in turn affect groups' overall level of military effectiveness. Using evidence from field research conducted in Liberia and Sierra Leone, the model's plausibility is examined in comparative case studies of four armed groups that fought in those countries from 1989–2003.     

The Location and Purpose of Wars Around the World: A New Global Dataset, 1816–2001

A critical question in the quantitative study of war is how to choose appropriate units of analysis. While most studies link wars to the sovereign states that fight them, several authors have recently offered alternative perspectives, focusing on the the properties of rebel organizations and armies or tracking events in fine-grained geographic spaces. We contribute to these developments by introducing a new dataset of wars fought from 1816–2001 on fixed territorial units of observation that conform to the grid of states in 2001. Compared to standard datasets, we expand the geographic purview to include states not recognized by the international system. We provide location codes that identify the territories on which conflicts are fought, which is especially important for the analysis of imperial wars and colonial rebellions. We also introduce a new typology of wars based upon the aims of warring parties rather than their status in the state system. This dataset is uniquely suited to explore new questions that cannot be addressed with other datasets. To illustrate, we test an institutionalist theory of war and show empirically that the types of wars fought in a territory depend on whether it is governed as a modern nation-state, an imperial dependency, or the center of an empire.     

Alliance Institutionalization and Alliance Performance

The appeal of differentiating between small and big wars is limited if the question is restricted to the utility of inductive indicators of war size in isolating some phenomenon of interest. However, there is considerable theoretical justification for treating systemic wars as a special war category. Historical‐structural emphases on geopolitical and macrostructural dynamics have led to the development of contextually specific theories that do not lend themselves readily to the explanation of all interstate wars. Examination of the cyclical fluctuations in the concentration of sea power and land power over the past 500 years help illustrate this general point. Thus, to the extent that systemic wars require a different type of explanation than do non‐systemic wars, the appropriate specification of the dependent war variable is an inescapable necessity.     

Bringing the Insurgents Back In: Early Wars in British India

What role do weaker actors play in determining the outcomes of irregular wars? The literature on counterinsurgency outcomes has tended to explain weak-side victory either as a result of informational asymmetries caused by constraints on counterinsurgent forces, or as a result of suboptimal strategic choices by the state. We suggest that this underplays the role of insurgents themselves; we attempt to “bring the insurgents back in,” giving variation in insurgent polity a role in explaining their own victories and defeats. In order to do so, we focus inductively on a relatively novel pool of cases: Great Britain's wars in India from the mid-eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries. Doing so allows us to hold the counterinsurgent side constant while evaluating variance among the insurgents themselves. We find that variance on the insurgent side is indeed significant in determining outcomes, and suggest possible reasons why this occurs.     

Killing Time: The World Politics of Civil War Duration, 1820–1992

Policymakers often trumpet the potential for third parties to stop the killing associated with civil wars, yet third parties as strategic actors also have incentives to encourage longer civil wars. We argue that in order to assess the influence of third parties on civil war duration, it is necessary to consider the interdependent nature of third party interventions as they are distributed across the set of civil war combatants. We also argue that it is important to consider the geopolitical context in which civil wars occur, rather than focusing solely on characteristics internal to these conflicts. To test our hypotheses about the impact of third parties and geopolitical factors on civil war duration, we rely on event history analysis and a sample of 152 civil wars for the period 1820–1992. We find empirical support for the idea that extremely long civil wars correspond to the equitable distribution of third party interventions—stalemates prolong wars. The analysis also indicates that separatist civil wars and ongoing civil wars in states proximate to the civil war state result in civil wars of longer duration. Finally, we find that when third parties raise the stakes of the conflict by engaging in the use of militarized force against the civil war state, the duration of these conflicts is reduced. In general, our analysis underscores the importance of modeling the interdependent and dynamic aspects of third party intervention as well as the world politics of civil wars when forecasting their duration and formulating policy.     

Terrorism and External Audiences: Influencing Foreign Intervention Into Civil Wars

This article evaluates the effects of terrorism on interventions into civil wars. Considering civil wars from 1970–1999, this study analyzes how the use of terrorism as a tactic affects external interventions on behalf of opposition groups, interventions on behalf of governments, and diplomatic interventions. While some authors would suggest that groups might utilize terrorism as a tactic to gain external support, this study finds little evidence that groups are actually successful in gaining such support. In fact, terrorism that targets civilians appears to actually decrease the likelihood of military interventions on behalf of opposition groups. Furthermore, in civil wars with high numbers of terrorist attacks there is a greater likelihood of economic intervention on behalf of governments, further weakening the potential benefit for groups in utilizing terrorism as a tactic. While this is certainly a welcome finding, a consideration of five case studies of suicide terrorism (Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Iraq, India, and Turkey) provides evidence that the use of suicide terrorism within civil wars may have decreased the likelihood of external interventions on behalf of the government and of diplomatic interventions. These results are more troubling and suggest potentially grave consequences for mediating many of these conflicts.     

Where Hobbes Meets Hobson: Core Conflict and Colonialism, 1495–1985

This study explores the connections between the Long Wave and the Leadership Cycle by examining their possible effect on long-term patterns in major power war and colonial expansion. Building directly upon the Leadership Cycle work of Modelski and Thompson, Goldstein's Long Wave analysis, and the Modern World System School, a new analytical framework is developed. This framework treats the Leadership Cycle and Long Wave as separate, though interconnected processes, and permits derivation of empirically testable hypotheses concerning the effects of the Leadership Cycle and Long Wave on armed conflict in the system, and on the timing of colonial expansion by major powers into the periphery. This "phase-pair" framework also allows assessment of the effect of each systemic process while controlling for the effect of the other. The results of our analysis suggest that the Long Wave and Leadership Cycle not only are associated with the most severe or systemic wars, but may affect conflict more broadly within the system. We also find strong identifiable effects of these processes on colonization. Finally, all results taken together indicate the Long Wave and Leadership Cycle should be treated as distinct, though interrelated processes.     

The Role of Intra-Religious Conflicts in Intrastate Wars

Many civil wars are fought between members of different religious communities. It seems plausible to focus on these communities’ interrelations to identify the causal factors responsible for the escalating effects that religion can have in such conflicts. A closer look, however, reveals that processes within religious communities can be crucial in influencing the role religions play in intrastate wars. Within single communities, factions of religious elites compete for material and dogmatic supremacy. Such intra-religious conflicts can motivate religious elites to search for support from political allies to prevail over their religious rivals. In return, they legitimize their political patrons’ claims for political power and their violent campaigns against members of other religious communities. Thus, intra-religious conflicts can effectively contribute to the religious escalation of intrastate wars between different religious communities. This argument is exemplified with reference to conflicts in Thailand, The Philippines, and Iraq.     

Toward a Theory of Weakness Politics: Does Weakness Rule the World?

This article argues that the debate on “new wars” and “post-Westphalian” wars and conflicts misses a crucial dimension, that of the importance of weakness in the relations between states as well as between states and non-state entities. Most analyses of war examine power relationships between states as if power were an essential determinant of success or failure in war. Recent wars, however, show that weakness can in fact become a strength, that inequality is not so much a problem as an advantage. The author suggests the need to rename and re-problematise “new wars” as “new international conflicts” (NICs), for otherwise we miss the fundamental reasons why “powers” are often defeated, or at least held at bay by the “weakness” of their adversaries. Suggestions will also be made about how to potentially resolve such unequal conflicts and wars.     

Incentives for Talking: Accepting Mediation in International and Civil Wars

This paper examines the conditions under which warring parties will accept an outside party's offer to mediate. Specifically, we explore variation in the incentives for accepting third-party offers in interstate conflicts as compared to civil wars. We argue that since mediation in civil wars transfers legitimacy to the non-state actor and can generate a precedent of exceptions to the norm of sovereignty, the political cost associated with accepting international mediation will be substantially higher in civil wars compared to international conflicts. States should therefore only accept mediation in the most serious disputes, or when the costs of legitimizing an opponent are outweighed by the benefits of conflict resolution. Building on this theoretical reasoning, the paper analyzes the implications of differences in incentive structures between inter- and intrastate conflicts for offer and acceptance of mediation. We find an empirical discrepancy between interstate and civil wars in regard to demand-side (acceptance) of mediation, and to a somewhat lesser extent the supply-side (offer) of international mediation. In line with our argument, we find that the historical ties between the potential intermediary and at least one of the disputants play different roles in regard to acceptance of mediation in interstate compared to civil wars. This is important to take into consideration in the emerging debate on mediation bias.     

The Short‐Term Effects of Mediation on Low‐Intensity Civil Wars

International diplomacy, to the extent it is effective, should not only prevent escalation of low‐intensity conflict, but should also facilitate de‐escalation. This article focuses on the short‐term effects of managing low‐intensity civil wars through third‐party mediation. Specifically, we compare the efficacy of third party‐mediated direct (face‐to‐face) and indirect talks in low‐intensity civil wars from 1993 to 2004 using the Managing Intrastate Low‐Intensity Conflict data set. We argue that a focus on short‐term success is valid because of the relationship among mediation, short‐term success, humanitarian aid access, and peacebuilding. We also assess the roles of mediator identity, mediation strategy (behavior focus versus incompatibility focus), peace agreements, war type, per capita gross domestic product, level of democracy, and conflict duration. Our overarching finding is that direct forms of mediation in which all parties meet face to face were the most likely to yield short‐term success in the sample of civil wars that we analyzed.     

The Limits of Peace: Third Parties in Civil Wars in Southeast Asia, 1993–2004

At of the end of 2005, Asia had the highest number of active civil war dyads. The number of active dyads in other regions was either low or declining. Africa, in particular, experienced a sharp drop in the number of active dyads from 2001 to 2005. Civil wars in Asia also last longer than wars in other regions. With a high number of warring dyads fighting in long wars, the expectation would be that the region would be the focus of third-party conflict management, but this is not the case. In this article, we use an original data set to take a closer look at this gap in expectations by focusing on third-party efforts in Southeast Asia between 1993 and 2004. Bilateral talks were the most common form of third-party engagement, but mediation has been the most likely form to lead to agreements between warring parties. We conclude the article with a discussion of the policy implications of this research.