scholarly journals Proxy Wars: Implications of Great-Power Rivalry for the Onset and Duration of Civil War

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Indra de Soysa
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Multilevel Models ◽  
Contentious Politics ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Time Inconsistency ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Primary Focus ◽  
The Cold War

Theories of civil war focus largely on factors internal to countries, generally ignoring the systemic effects of superpower rivalry during the Cold War, or great power politics associated with regional rivalries and ambitions. The question of the importance of proxiness of civil wars potentially challenges notions of commitment and time-inconsistency problems associated with explanations of why rational agents fail to find less costly bargains compared with fighting costly wars. Great powers often influence the politics of lesser powers by supporting sides in contentious politics as a means to achieve foreign policy objectives relatively cheaply. Models of civil war that focus exclusively on in-country ills, thus, would have very limited predictive power. It is argued here that great powers influence the politics of other nations without bearing the costs of direct involvement by supplying the logistics that allow the feasibility of rebellions. Examining these issues is all the more critical today because the multipolar world emerging out of the Cold War era promises to generate proxy struggles in many strategic places. While the study of civil war moves in the direction of disaggregating in order to understand micro processes associated with rebellion, it might be prudent to examine the interplay of factors between the micro and macro processes in multilevel models because the feasibility of fighting over not fighting is likely to be decided at higher rather than lower levels of aggregation. How to cauterize great-power machinations in civil war must in turn become a primary focus of international institutions, such as the United Nations, for strengthening instruments that would curtail external influences that propagate civil wars.

scholarly journals Cultural Trauma of the Civil War of 1918 Staged and Commemorated in Finland

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 102-131
Author(s):  
Pentti Paavolainen
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Cultural Trauma ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Cold War

The Centennial of one of the cruelest of European civil wars fought in Finland between the Reds and the Whites from January to May 1918 has evoked a spectrum of theatre productions illustrating variations of styles and approaches on the events. The turn in the treatment of this cultural trauma occurred with the interpretations and narrative perspectives that were fixed in the 1960s, when an understanding for the defeated Red side was expressed in historiography, literature and theatre. Since that, the last six decades the Finnish theatre and public discourse on the Civil War have been dominated by the Red narrative as the memory of the 1918 Civil War provided an important part in the new identity politics for the 1969 generation. Since the 1980’s the topic was mostly put aside so that before the 2018 revivals of the Civil War topic, the productions seem to have been reactions by the artists confronting the developments at the end of the Cold War. Some theatrical events can even be tied to the cultural trauma of the 1969 left evoked by the collapse of the socialist block. The Centennial productions repeated the Red narrative but they also provided more balanced interpretationson the tragic events.

Modern Cambodia Since 1863

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Tully
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Mass Murder ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Democratic Institutions ◽  
Sovereign State ◽  
Territorial Integrity ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Cold War

Modern Cambodian history begins with the creation of the French Protectorate in 1863. Until the 15th century, Cambodia was a regional great power, but by the late 18th it faced extinction as a sovereign state. Although the Protectorate ensured the country’s territorial integrity, French ideas of governance and philosophy collided with Cambodia’s ancient traditions. By 1897, the French had prevailed: Cambodia had escaped its predatory neighbors, Siam and Vietnam, but had lost its internal and external sovereignty. After independence in 1953, Cambodia sat on the fault lines of the Cold War. Precariously neutral until 1970, it fell into a new dark age of civil war, foreign invasions, saturation bombing, and mass murder. Liberated from the horrors of Pol Pot’s Democratic Kampuchea (DK) by the Vietnamese in late 1978, the regime the invaders installed suffered a period of international ostracism that lasted until the end of the Cold War in 1991–1992. Cambodia is at peace today, but hopes that it would develop as a free, democratic, and more equal society have proved illusory. Cambodia is one of Asia’s poorest states; a kleptocracy ruled by the durable autocrat Hun Sen via a façade of democratic institutions. The economy, according to Sebastian Strangio, “is controlled by … [a] new quasi-palace elite: a sprawling network of CPP politicians, military brass, and business families arranged in vertical khsae, or ‘strings,’ of patronage emanating from Hun Sen and his close associates.”

scholarly journals To Arm or to Ally? The Patron's Dilemma and the Strategic Logic of Arms Transfers and Alliances

2016 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 90-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keren Yarhi-Milo ◽  
Alexander Lanoszka ◽  
Zack Cooper
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Arms Transfers ◽  
Two Factors ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Common Security ◽  
Strategic Logic

How do great powers decide whether to provide arms to or form alliances with client states? This “patron's dilemma” revolves around a decision about how to best provide security to clients without becoming entrapped in unwanted conflicts. Strong commitments worsen the risk of entrapment, whereas weak commitments intensify fears of abandonment. This traditional alliance dilemma can be addressed through the provision of arms and alliances. Great power patrons primarily make such decisions on the basis of two factors: first, the extent to which the patron believes it and its client have common security interests; and second, whether the patron believes that its client has sufficient military capabilities to deter its main adversary without the patron's assistance. Patrons assess the degree of shared threat and the local balances of capabilities in determining whether to support their clients with arms, alliances, or both. As demonstrated in the U.S. provision of security goods to Taiwan and Israel during the Cold War, this strategic logic explains how great powers manage the patron's dilemma.

scholarly journals International System and Technologies of Rebellion: How the End of the Cold War Shaped Internal Conflict

2010 ◽  
Vol 104 (3) ◽  
pp. 415-429 ◽  
Author(s):  
STATHIS N. KALYVAS ◽  
LAIA BALCELLS
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Structural Characteristics ◽  
International System ◽  
The Other ◽  
Internal Conflict ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One ◽  
The Cold War

Because they are chiefly domestic conflicts, civil wars have been studied primarily from a perspective stressing domestic factors. We ask, instead, whether (and how) the international system shapes civil wars; we find that it does shape the way in which they are fought—their “technology of rebellion.” After disaggregating civil wars into irregular wars (or insurgencies), conventional wars, and symmetric nonconventional wars, we report a striking decline of irregular wars following the end of the Cold War, a remarkable transformation of internal conflict. Our analysis brings the international system back into the study of internal conflict. It specifies the connection between system polarity and the Cold War on the one hand and domestic warfare on the other hand. It also demonstrates that irregular war is not the paradigmatic mode of civil war as widely believed, but rather is closely associated with the structural characteristics of the Cold War.

scholarly journals Globalization, deglobalization and Great Power politics

2021 ◽  
Vol 97 (5) ◽  
pp. 1317-1333
Author(s):  
Norrin M Ripsman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
The Us ◽  
Security Relations ◽  
Great Power Politics ◽  
The Cold War

Abstract Commercial liberalism would suggest that whereas globalization was conducive to great power cooperation—or at least moderated competition—deglobalization is likely to ignite greater competition amongst the Great Powers. In reality, however, the picture is much more complex. To begin with, the intense globalization of the 1990s and 2000s is not responsible for moderating Great Power tensions; instead, it is itself a product of the security situation resulting from the end of the Cold War. Furthermore, while globalization did serve to reinforce cooperation between the United States and rising challengers, such as China, which sought to harness the economic gains of globalization to accelerate their rise, it also created or intensified fault-lines that have led to heightening tensions between the Great Powers. Finally, while we are currently witnessing increasing tensions between the US and both China and Russia, deglobalization does not appear to be the primary cause. Thus, geoeconomic conditions do not drive security relations; instead, the geoeconomic environment, which is itself influenced by Great Power politics, is better understood as a medium of Great Power competition, which may affect the character of Great Power competition and its intensity, but does not determine it.

Jihadi Rebels in Civil War

Daedalus ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 147 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stathis N. Kalyvas
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Rebel Groups ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Current Species

In this essay, I decouple violent jihadism from both religion and terrorism and propose an alternative, nonexclusive understanding of jihadi groups as rebel groups engaged in civil wars. Arguing that jihadi groups can be profitably approached as the current species of revolutionary insurgents, I offer a comparison with an older species, the Marxist rebels of the Cold War. I point to a few significant similarities and differences between these two types of revolutionary rebels and draw some key implications, stressing the great challenges facing jihadi rebels in civil wars.

Liberal Peacebuilding in Sierra Leone: A Critical Exploration

2018 ◽  
Vol 53 (8) ◽  
pp. 1158-1172
Author(s):  
Idrissa Tamba Bindi ◽  
Ozgur Tufekci
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Third Party Intervention ◽  
Critical Exploration ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Liberal Peacebuilding

There is increasing awareness and international support for rebuilding states that have gone through conflict. Third-party interventions in bringing peace to countries that have emerged from civil wars have been channeled through a fundamental concept known as liberal peacebuilding. Liberal peacebuilding, even though it faces much criticism, has been a prominent strategy for third-party intervention in post-war countries since the end of the Cold War. This paper deals with the liberal peacebuilding process in Sierra Leone, after its decade-long brutal civil war. The focus lies on Dr Roland Paris’ institutionalization before liberalization (IBL) peacebuilding strategy, its strengths and shortcomings, and its contributions to sustaining peace in Sierra Leone since the end of the war in 2002. Arguing that the IBL strategy has helped to maintain peace in Sierra Leone after ten years of civil war, the paper analyzes how peacebuilding has been implemented in post-war Sierra Leone under the six different pillars of the IBL strategy.

Seeking support beyond alliance? Rethinking great power partner politics after the Cold War

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lu Ding ◽  
Xuefeng Sun
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
The Self ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
Self Help ◽  
Two Factors ◽  
Great Power Politics ◽  
The Cold War

Abstract Since the end of the Cold War, establishing partnerships has been part and parcel of the grand strategy of great powers. The partners that great powers seek fall under the two categories of security partners and political-economic partners. Statistics show a significant variation in the proportions of great powers’ security partners. The authors argue that such variation is mainly determined by two factors, namely, great powers’ strategic threats, and their ways of maintaining national security [self-help or security-dependent (on the United States)]. Specifically, both the security-dependent great powers that are under China’s strategic threat and the self-help great powers that are under the US’s strategic threat have a higher proportion of security partners than the security-dependent great powers that are not under China’s strategic threat and the self-help great powers that are under China’s strategic threat. These findings will help to refine the current theories of great power politics.

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