scholarly journals The Origins of Transnational Alliances: Rulers, Rebels, and Political Survival in the Congo Wars

2016 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henning Tamm
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
External Support ◽  
Political Survival ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Rebel Groups ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Made In

Despite their catastrophic proportions, the Congo Wars have received little attention from international relations scholars. At the heart of these conflicts were alliances between rebel groups and neighboring rulers. What are the origins of such transnational alliances, which have been a major feature of nearly all civil wars in post–Cold War Africa? Recent scholarship on external support for rebel groups does not offer a clear answer, either providing long lists of the goals that state sponsors may have or avoiding the question of motives altogether. A focus on political survival reveals that African rulers form alliances with rebels in nearby states to reduce the threats of rebellions and military coups that the rulers themselves face at home. Transnational alliances serve either to weaken a ruler's domestic enemies by undermining their foreign sponsors or to ensure the continued allegiance of key domestic supporters by providing them with opportunities for enrichment. Case studies of the alliance decisions made in the two Congo Wars by the rulers of Angola, Rwanda, Sudan, Uganda, and Zimbabwe show that their struggles for political survival account for why they sided either with their Congolese counterparts or with Congolese rebels.

A Research Agenda for the Study of Peaceful Change in World Politics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deborah Welch Larson ◽  
T.V. Paul ◽  
Harold A. Trinkunas ◽  
Anders Wivel ◽  
Ralf Emmers
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
World Order ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Mechanisms Of Change ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Conceptual Clarity ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Made In

This concluding chapter offers a summary and evaluation of the key ideas contained in the chapters of this Handbook. The chapter discusses peaceful change in terms of conceptual clarity; historical evolution of scholarship in the area, especially the interwar, Cold War, and post–Cold War era efforts at analyzing the concepts; and the policy innovations in this realm. This is followed by an evaluation of the key umbrella theories of international relations—realism, liberalism, and constructivism—and how they approach peaceful change. Some important sources and mechanisms of change are analyzed. This is followed by discussion of the policy contributions of selected great and rising powers toward peaceful change. The chapter then offers a summary of contributions and progress that various regions have made in the area of peaceful change. It concludes with some ideas for future research while highlighting the significance of the subject matter for international relations and the world order.

Constructing Identity in “Glocal” Politics

1998 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 81-106
Author(s):  
M. A. Muqtedar Khan
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Socioeconomic Conditions ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Important Concept ◽  
Construction Of Identity ◽  
The World ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship

This paper seeks to understand the impact of current global politicaland socioeconomic conditions on the construction of identity. I advancean argument based on a two-step logic. First, I challenge the characterizationof current socioeconomic conditions as one of globalization bymarshaling arguments and evidence that strongly suggest that along withglobalization, there are simultaneous processes of localization proliferatingin the world today. I contend that current conditions are indicative ofthings far exceeding the scope of globalization and that they can bedescribed more accurately as ccglocalization.~H’2a ving established thisclaim, I show how the processes of glocalization affect the constructionof Muslim identity.Why do I explore the relationship between glocalization and identityconstruction? Because it is significant. Those conversant with current theoreticaldebates within the discipline of international relations’ are awarethat identity has emerged as a significant explanatory construct in internationalrelations theory in the post-Cold War era.4 In this article, I discussthe emergence of identity as an important concept in world politics.The contemporary field of international relations is defined by threephilosophically distinct research programs? rationalists: constructivists,’and interpretivists.’ The moot issue is essentially a search for the mostimportant variable that can help explain or understand the behavior ofinternational actors and subsequently explain the nature of world politicsin order to minimize war and maximize peace.Rationalists contend that actors are basically rational actors who seekthe maximization of their interests, interests being understood primarilyin material terms and often calculated by utility functions maximizinggiven preferences? Interpretivists include postmodernists, critical theorists,and feminists, all of whom argue that basically the extant worldpolitical praxis or discourses “constitute” international agents and therebydetermine their actions, even as they reproduce world politics by ...

‘Realism as an Unsentimental Intellectual Temper’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mats Berdal
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Armed Force ◽  
Military Force ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Cold War Era ◽  
Theoretical Construction

The post-Cold War era witnessed a growing tendency to justify the use and the threat of use of military force in international relations on humanitarian grounds. Freedman’s writing on the use of armed force in pursuit of humanitarian goals and his contribution to the field are explored in this chapter. He rejects the traditional dichotomies in International Relations scholarship between Realism and Idealism. Freedman’s work on ‘New Interventionism’, with the Chicago Speech contribution at its core, suggests that it is unhelpful to delineate sharply different existing schools of thought, or paradigms. Freedman draws a distinction between ‘realism as an unsentimental temper’ and realism as a ‘theoretical construction.’ Liberal values are important for Freedman and their universality is to be asserted, but that does not mean being naively oblivious to dangers and difficulties inherent in seeking to promote them as standards against which Western governments should be judged.

Civil Wars & the Post–Cold War International Order

Daedalus ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 146 (4) ◽  
pp. 33-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce D. Jones ◽  
Stephen John Stedman
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Alternative Assessment ◽  
Previous History ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Order ◽  
Failed States ◽  
Global Crisis ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
And Migration

By the standards of prosperity and peace, the post–Cold War international order has been an unparalleled success. Over the last thirty years, there has been more creation of wealth and a greater reduction of poverty, disease, and food insecurity than in all of previous history. During the same period, the numbers and lethality of wars have decreased. These facts have not deterred an alternative assessment that civil violence, terrorism, failed states, and numbers of refugees are at unprecedentedly high levels. But there is no global crisis of failed states and endemic civil war, no global crisis of refugees and migration, and no global crisis of disorder. Instead, what we have seen is a particular historical crisis unfold in the greater Middle East, which has collapsed order within that region and has fed the biggest threat to international order: populism in the United States and Europe.

The Study of Peaceful Change in World Politics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
T.V. Paul
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
Agents Of Change ◽  
Different Dimensions

This introductory chapter offers an overview of the core themes addressed in The Oxford Handbook of Peaceful Change in International Relations. It begins with a discussion of the neglect of peaceful change and the overemphasis on war as the source of change in the discipline of international relations. Definitions of peaceful change in their different dimensions, in particular the maximalist and minimalist varieties, are offered. Systemic, regional, and domestic level changes are explored. This is followed by a discussion of the study and understanding of peaceful change during the interwar, Cold War, and post–Cold War eras. The chapter offers a brief summary of different theoretical perspectives in IR—realism, liberalism, constructivism, and critical as well as eclectic approaches—and how they explore peaceful change, its key mechanisms, and its feasibility. The chapter considers the role of great powers and key regional states as agents of change. The economic, social, ideational, ecological, and technological sources of change are also briefly discussed.

Conclusion

After Lavinia ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Watkins
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
First Century ◽  
European Countries ◽  
The West ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Northern European ◽  
Global Peace ◽  
Legal Rationality

This concluding chapter reflects on marriage in the contemporary West, noting that it has become an affective arrangement. In Britain and the northern European countries that still retain a constitutional form of monarchy, twenty-first-century royalty now prefer their own subjects as marriage partners, even if it means marrying a commoner like Kate Middleton. To the extent that these marriages to indigenous commoners have any bearing on foreign policy, they reaffirm the nationalist sentiments of the post-Westphalian state. The chapter argues that, despite all the legal rationality, global peace remains as elusive now as it was when Europeans tried to settle their quarrels through interdynastic marriage. It suggests that the opposition between the West and its post-Cold War enemies has brought the matter of gender and the place of women once more to the center of international relations.

Enlarging Yugoslavia: Tito's Quest for Expansion, 1945–1948

2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 284-310 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Niebuhr
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Balkan Peninsula ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
World War ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Second World ◽  
Over Time

When Yugoslav strongman Josip Broz Tito secured power at the end of the Second World War, he had envisioned for himself a new Yugoslavia that would serve as the center of power for the Balkan Peninsula. First, he worked to ensure a Yugoslav presence in the Trieste region of Italy and southern Austria as a way to gain territory inhabited by Slovenes and Croats; meanwhile, his other foreign policy escapades sought to make Yugoslavia into a major European power. To that end, Yugoslav agents quickly worked to synchronize the Albanian socio-economic and political systems through their support of Albanian Partisans and only grew emboldened over time. As allies who proved themselves in the fight against fascism, Yugoslav policymakers felt able to act with impunity throughout the early post-Cold War period. The goal of this article is to highlight this early foreign policy by focusing on three case studies – Trieste, Carinthia, and Albania – as part of an effort to reinforce the established argument over Tito's quest for power in the early Cold War period.

Back to the Future, Part II: International Relations Theory and Post-Cold War Europe

1990 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 191 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stanley Hoffmann ◽  
Robert O. Keohane ◽  
John J. Mearsheimer
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Future

Central African Republic: Coups, Mutinies, and Civil War

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Stapleton
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Central African Republic ◽  
Transition To Democracy ◽  
Military Officers ◽  
Political Liberalization ◽  
Fragile State ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The 1960S

Since independence from France in 1960, the Central African Republic (CAR) has experienced numerous military coups both successful and unsuccessful, mutinies by disgruntled soldiers and civil wars that have had terrible impacts on civilians. Three career military officers took power by force and led the country for a total of 36 years: Bokassa (1965–1979), Kolingba (1981–1993), and Bozize (2003–2013). From the 1960s to 1990s, both military and civilian rulers politicized, regionalized, and weakened the CAR military by packing it with supporters from their home areas and ethnic groups, and establishing alternative security structures and bringing in foreign troops to secure their regimes. In this period, the CAR military became a Praetorian force obsessed with the country’s internal political power struggles. In the 1990s, in the context of the post-Cold War political liberalization of Africa, the CAR’s transition to democracy was undermined by a succession of army mutinies over lack of pay and other grievances that fatally weakened an already fragile state. A series of civil wars in the 2000s and 2010s resulted in the near dissolution of the CAR military and the partition of the country into a network of fiefdoms dominated by antagonistic local armed factions separated from each other by beleaguered UN peacekeepers.

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