Policy Failure and Petroleum Predation: The Economics of Civil War Debate Viewed ‘From the War-Zone’

2005 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 152-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenny Pearce
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Policy Failure ◽  
War Zone ◽  
The Social ◽  
Civil War Literature ◽  
Collective Action Problems ◽  
Statistical Approaches

AbstractThe analysis of armed conflict in the post Cold War era has been profoundly influenced by neoclassical economists. Statistical approaches have generated important propositions, but there is a danger when these feed into policy prescriptions. This paper first compares the economics of civil war literature with the social movement literature which has also tried to explain collective action problems. It argues that the latter has a much more sophisticated set of conceptual tools, enriched by empirical study. The paper then uses the case of multipolar militarization in oil-rich Casanare, Colombia, to demonstrate complexity and contingency in civil war trajectories. State policy failure and civil actors can be an important source of explanation alongside the economic agendas of armed actors.

scholarly journals Civil War from a Transnational Perspective

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristian Skrede Gleditsch
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
International System ◽  
Civil Conflict ◽  
Armed Conflicts ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Dominant Form ◽  
Post Cold War

Civil war is the dominant form of armed conflict in the contemporary international system, and most severe lethal armed conflicts in the post-Cold War era have been civil/intrastate rather than interstate. Still, it would be misleading to see these conflicts as purely domestic, as many contemporary civil wars such as Syria display clear transnational characteristics, including inspirations from events in other countries, links to actors in other countries, as well as international interventions. Moreover, civil wars often have important implications for other states, including security concerns and economic impacts. There is a need to focus on the growth and core findings in the literature on transnational dimensions of civil war, in particular on how factors outside a particular state can influence the risk of conflict within states as well as some of the central consequences of domestic conflict for other states or relations between states. This line of research has helped expand our understanding of both civil conflict and interstate war, and that a comparative focus on varieties conflict and attention to the possible transnational dimensions of civil war deserve a prominent role in future research.

Reflections on Lawrence Freedman’s ‘Deterrence’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick M. Morgan
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Social Cohesion ◽  
Social Relationship ◽  
International Security ◽  
First Century ◽  
Social Aspects ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Social Strategy ◽  
The Social ◽  
The One

This chapter focuses on the social aspects of strategy, arguing for the importance of relationships in strategy and, in particular, in understanding of deterrence. Deterrence, in its essence, is predicated upon a social relationship – the one deterring and the one to be deterred. Alliance and cooperation are important in generating the means for actively managing international security. Following Freedman’s work on deterrence in the post-Cold War context, ever greater interaction and interdependence might instill a stronger sense of international community, in which more traditional and ‘relatively primitive’ notions of deterrence can be developed. However, this strategic aspiration relies on international, especially transatlantic, social cohesion, a property that weakened in the twenty-first century, triggering new threats from new kinds of opponent. The need for a sophisticated and social strategy for managing international security is made all the more necessary.

Reconsidering American Civil-Military Relations

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
New Technology ◽  
The United States ◽  
Grey Zone ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Asymmetric Warfare ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
Military Relations ◽  
Civilian Leadership

This book explores contemporary civil-military relations in the United States. Much of the canonical literature on civil-military relations was either written during or references the Cold War, while other major research focuses on the post-Cold War era, or the first decade of the twenty-first century. A great deal has changed since then. This book considers the implications for civil-military relations of many of these changes. Specifically, it focuses on factors such as breakdowns in democratic and civil-military norms and conventions; intensifying partisanship and deepening political divisions in American society; as well as new technology and the evolving character of armed conflict. Chapters are organized around the principal actors in civil-military relations, and the book includes sections on the military, civilian leadership, and the public. It explores the roles and obligations of each. The book also examines how changes in contemporary armed conflict influence civil-military relations. Chapters in this section examine the cyber domain, grey zone operations, asymmetric warfare and emerging technology. The book thus brings the study of civil-military relations into the contemporary era, in which new geopolitical realities and the changing character of armed conflict combine with domestic political tensions to test, if not potentially redefine, those relations.

Keeping the Peace in Africa: Why “African” Solutions Are Not Enough

2008 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 309-329 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul D. Williams
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Conflict Management ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Peace Operations ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
General Terms ◽  
Conflict In Africa ◽  
Constituent Elements

Since the early 1990s, a variety of African and Western governments alike have often suggested that finding “African solutions to African problems” represents the best approach to keeping the peace in Africa. Not only does the empirical evidence from post-Cold War Africa suggest that there are some fundamental problems with this approach, it also rests upon some problematic normative commitments. Specifically in relation to the problem of armed conflict, the “African solutions” logic would have at least three negative consequences: it would undermine the UN; it would provide a convenient excuse for powerful Western states that wished to avoid sending their own soldiers to peace operations in Africa; and it would help African autocrats fend off international, especially Western, criticism of their policies. After providing an overview of the constituent elements of the “African solutions” approach, this article sets out in general terms the central problems with it before turning to a specific illustration of how these problems affected the international responses to the ongoing war in Darfur, Sudan. Instead of searching for “African solutions”, policymakers should focus on developing effective solutions for the complex challenges raised by the issue of armed conflict in Africa. To this end, Western states in general and the P-3 in particular should give greater support to conflict management activities undertaken by the United Nations, develop clearer guidelines for how these should relate to regional initiatives, and facilitate the efforts of civic associations to build the foundations for stable peace in the continent's war zones.

Neoconservatism Prefigured: The Social Democratic League of America and the Anticommunists of the Anglo-American Right, 1917–21

2006 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 327-345 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARKKU RUOTSILA
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
The Social ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The Cold War

Far from being limited to conspiracist McCarthyism, American anticommunism always spanned the entire ideological spectrum. Recognizing this, in his classic studies of the initial Western reception of Bolshevism, Arno J. Mayer divided early anticommunists into mutually antagonistic “parties of order” and “parties of movement” and claimed that these two fought each other almost as much as they combatted the Bolsheviks themselves. Mayer's conceptualization spoke to a profoundly important dimension in Western anticommunism, both before and during the Cold War, in that it exposed a sort of civil war between Western liberals, conservatives and socialists in which each of these groups tended to define their ideological rivals as the allies, unconscious tools or prototypes of Soviet Bolshevism.

scholarly journals Consuming Ethnicity: Loss, Commodities, and Space in Macedonia

Slavic Review ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 69 (4) ◽  
pp. 859-881 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rozita Dimova
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Free Market ◽  
The Political ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Class Mobility ◽  
Complex Interactions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Changing Patterns ◽  
Multiple Actors

In this article, Rozita Dimova examines the rearticulation of class and ethnicity and how class distinctions produced by a free market and neoliberal economy in Macedonia have affected the interaction of Albanians and Macedonians in postsocialist Macedonia. Dimova highlights the ethnic dimensions of changing patterns of consumption by exploring the class mobility of one ethnic group (Albanians) and thus combines class, commodities, and consumption with notions of ethnicity. The process of articulating ethnicity and class is induced by the larger neoliberal context of the post-Cold War world in which the political economy of the "free" market and privatization inform local subjectivities. The domain of consumption, therefore, offers a place from which we can understand the complex interactions of multiple actors in Macedonia and see the various economic, performative, and symbolic significance of consumption in which the social mobility of the nouveaux riches Albanians has contributed to the loss of class privileges experienced by many ethnic Macedonians.

International Legal Aspects of Protecting Civilians and Their Property in the Future Cyber Conflict

2016 ◽  
pp. 423-449
Author(s):  
Metodi Hadji-Janev
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Law ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Legal Aspects ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Basic Principles ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Law Of Armed Conflict ◽  
The Future ◽  
Cyber Conflict

The post-Cold War reality has brought many changes that challenge political leaders, planners and operators. Using cyberspace to accomplish their political objectives, non-state actors and states have opened serious legal debates over the applicability of the international law of armed conflict principles in cyberspace. In this context, the article explores how the basic principles of International law of armed conflict will apply to the protection of the civilian population from the future cyber conflict. To accomplish this article addresses the ius ad bellum and the ius in bello aspects of cyber conflict.

Transformative occupation and the unilateralist impulse

2012 ◽  
Vol 94 (885) ◽  
pp. 237-266 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory H. Fox
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Cold War ◽  
International Law ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Critical Function ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Human Rights Treaties

AbstractThe 2003 occupation of Iraq ignited an important debate among scholars over the merits of transformative occupation. An occupier has traditionally been precluded from making substantial changes in the legal or political infrastructure of the state it controls. But the Iraq experience led some to claim that this ‘conservationist principle’ had been largely ignored in practice. Moreover, transformation was said to accord with a variety of important trends in contemporary international law, including the rebuilding of post-conflict states along liberal democratic lines, the extra-territorial application of human rights treaty obligations, and the decline of abstract conceptions of territorial sovereignty. This article argues that these claims are substantially overstated. The practice of Occupying Powers does not support the view that liberal democratic transformations are widespread. Human rights treaties have never been held to require states parties to legislate in the territories of other states. More importantly, the conservationist principle serves the critical function of limiting occupiers' unilateral appropriation of the subordinate state's legislative powers. Post-conflict transformation has indeed been a common feature of post-Cold War legal order, but it has been accomplished collectively, most often via Chapter VII of the UN Charter. To grant occupiers authority to reverse this trend by disclaiming any need for collective approval of ‘reforms’ in occupied states would be to validate an anachronistic unilateralism. It would run contrary to the multilateralization of all aspects of armed conflict, evident in areas well beyond post-conflict reconstruction.

The analysis of protracted social conflict: a tribute to Edward Azar

2005 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oliver Ramsbotham
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Social Conflict ◽  
Conflict Analysis ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Third ◽  
Protracted Social Conflict ◽  
Strategic Studies

The aim of this article is to draw attention to the work of a conflict analyst whose theory of ‘protracted social conflict’ – developed in a sustained series of publications over a twenty-year period from the early-1970s – has been neglected in mainstream international relations, strategic studies and security studies circles. The first section offers a conceptual context for assessing the originality and significance of Azar's approach. The second section outlines his theory of protracted social conflict. The third section evaluates his theory in the light of developments in conflict analysis in the 13 years since his death. The conclusion is that Azar's work does not merit such neglect and that it still offers useful pointers for an understanding of the sources of major armed conflict in the turbulent and contested arena of post-Cold War politics.

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