Wars of Law

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tanisha M. Fazal
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Peace Treaty ◽  
Laws Of War ◽  
Independent State ◽  
Interstate War ◽  
Rebel Groups ◽  
Step Over ◽  
Peace Treaties

This book assesses the unintended consequences of the proliferation of the laws of war. In 1856 there was one codified law of war. In 2018, there are over 70 such laws, and they place increasing constraints on belligerents. This increase has generated significant consequences for the commencement, conduct, and conclusion of both interstate and civil wars. States fighting interstate wars today prefer not to step over any bright lines where the laws of war would apply unequivocally. Thus, these states have stopped declaring war and concluding peace treaties. Rebel groups – particularly, secessionists that seek their own independent state – by contrast, have increasingly engaged with the laws of war. Secessionists are relatively unlikely to target civilians, and there is an increasing rate of peace treaty usage in civil wars that contrasts with the decline in interstate war. This research is based on two new major original datasets as well as a series of case studies, and is particularly unusual in combining analysis of interstate and civil wars.

International Recognition, Compliance Costs, and the Formalities of War

Wars of Law ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 38-71
Author(s):  
Tanisha M. Fazal
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
International Community ◽  
Laws Of War ◽  
War And Peace ◽  
Compliance Costs ◽  
Interstate War ◽  
Rebel Groups ◽  
International Recognition ◽  
Peace Treaties

This chapter develops the main arguments of the book, focusing on how belligerents in interstate and civil war have reacted to the development of the laws of war detailed in Chapter 2. States involved in interstate war are perversely incentivized to evade the laws of war as these laws have proliferated. Thus, they are decreasingly likely to engage the formalities of war, specifically declarations of war and peace treaties. Secessionist rebel groups fighting civil wars aim to please the international community, and therefore are decreasingly likely to declare independence formally, generally likely to avoid targeting civilians, and increasingly likely to conclude peace treaties.

Declaring War and Peace

Wars of Law ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Tanisha M. Fazal
Keyword(s):  
Civil Wars ◽  
Laws Of War ◽  
War And Peace ◽  
The Past ◽  
Rebel Groups ◽  
Peace Treaties

This chapter introduces the argument of the book: that the proliferation of the laws of war over the past 150 years has incentivized states to evade the laws of war, and secessionist rebel groups to engage with the laws of war. This argument will be developed via investigation of four main questions: (1) why have states stopped declaring war in their wars with each other?; (2) why have states stopped concluding peace treaties in their wars with each other?; (3) why have secessionist groups stopped declaring independence formally?; and, (4) why is there an increase in peace treaties concluding civil wars?

Rebellion, War Aims & the Laws of War

Daedalus ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 146 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tanisha M. Fazal
Keyword(s):  
Civil Wars ◽  
International Community ◽  
International Humanitarian Law ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
Laws Of War ◽  
Nonstate Actors ◽  
Independent State ◽  
Rebel Groups ◽  
War Aims

Most wars today are civil wars, but we have little understanding of the conditions under which rebel groups might comply with the laws of war. i ask three questions in this essay: What do the laws of war require of rebels, or armed nonstate actors (ansas)? To what extent are rebels aware of the laws of war? Under what conditions do rebel groups comply with international humanitarian law? i argue that the war aims of rebel groups are key to understanding their relationship with the laws of war. In particular, secessionist rebel groups – those that seek a new, independent state – are especially likely to comply with the laws of war as a means to signal their capacity and willingness to be good citizens of the international community to which they seek admission.

Foreign policy during intrastate and extrastate conflict : patterns of support, retaliation, and opportunism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Colton P. Heffington
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Conflict ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
University Of Missouri ◽  
Interstate War ◽  
Rebel Groups ◽  
Discernible Effect ◽  
State Sponsorship ◽  
The University ◽  
Previous Scholarship

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] This project examines how states and international organizations (IOs) interact with rebel groups involved in civil conflict to achieve their own goals. I argue that rebel groups in other states are an increasingly important component of interstate war and that states strategically support rebels in other states to weaken their rivals while avoiding retaliation. Previous research on state sponsorship of rebels in other states has viewed state-sponsored rebels as substitutes for their sponsors' militaries. My research shows that externally-sponsored rebels are sometimes substitutes for foreign armies, but often serve as supplemental forces who fight alongside external invaders during interstate war. This approach to understanding state-rebel relationships challenges previous scholarship and provides a new pathway to understanding the function of these relationships and the process by which they take shape. In addition, this paper examines the potentially unintended consequences of cutting off external supplies to conflicting parties involved in a civil war. By examining how arms embargoes affect the fighting capacity of rebels and governments, I show that UN and EU arms embargoes tend to disproportionately damage the capacity of rebels to fight and win battles during civil war while having no discernible effect on the government's capacity to fight. Altogether, this research implies that state and IO interactions with rebel are increasingly important to our understanding of international relations. States and IOs will continue to leverage these interactions to achieve their own goals, and it is important that we continue empirical analyses of these relationships.

The Proliferation and Codification of the Laws of War

Wars of Law ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 11-37
Author(s):  
Tanisha M. Fazal
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Laws Of War ◽  
Interstate War ◽  
The Past ◽  
Rebel Groups ◽  
Geneva Conventions ◽  
Legal Standing ◽  
History Of

This chapter makes three arguments in presenting a history of the development of the laws of war governing belligerent conduct. First, the laws of war have increased dramatically in number over the past 150 years. Second, military participation in international humanitarian lawmaking has similarly decreased dramatically. And third, the laws of war were designed by states and meant to govern interstate war; rebel groups in civil war are typically only mentioned with the purpose of denying them international legal standing. The analysis in this chapter is based on original content analysis of the commentaries to the 1949 Geneva Conventions and the 1977 Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions.

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.

Peace Treaties in Civil War

Wars of Law ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 217-242
Author(s):  
Tanisha M. Fazal
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
International Community ◽  
Main Argument ◽  
Rebel Groups ◽  
Do So ◽  
Peace Treaties

This chapter asks: why has the use of peace treaties to conclude civil wars increased in recent years? The main argument of the chapter is that the international community – which often provides critical support to both states and rebels fighting civil wars – has developed a taste for peace treaties. Rebel groups are likely to be willing to sign peace treaties because having a seat at the table accords them some legitimacy. States, while less interested in concluding peace treaties in civil wars, do so under pressure from the international community. But peace treaties are not always an inherent good in that they are not always associated with peace.

Peace Treaties in Interstate War

Wars of Law ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 131-160
Author(s):  
Tanisha M. Fazal
Keyword(s):  
Main Argument ◽  
Laws Of War ◽  
War And Peace ◽  
Interstate War ◽  
Highly Correlated ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Peace Treaties

This chapter investigates the declining use of peace treaties to conclude interstate war. The main argument of the chapter is that states have reacted to the proliferation of the laws of war by evading the formalities of war, including the use of peace treaties to end wars. The chapter’s findings support this argument, as well as extensions including the hypothesis that states that violate the laws of war during conflict are especially unlikely to conclude peace treaties. The chapter ends with a discussion of the relationship between declarations of war and peace treaties in interstate war, and finds that the use of these two formalities is highly correlated.

The Demise of Peace Treaties in Interstate War

2013 ◽  
Vol 67 (4) ◽  
pp. 695-724 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tanisha M. Fazal
Keyword(s):  
At Risk ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Original Data ◽  
Peace Treaty ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Law Of War ◽  
Interstate War ◽  
The Law ◽  
Peace Treaties

AbstractThe conclusion of peace treaties following war was a norm of international politics for millennia. Since approximately 1950, however, the rate at which interstate wars have ended with a formal peace treaty has declined dramatically. I argue that the costs of concluding peace treaties have risen with the development of the modern canon of the law of war. Using an original data set, I find that states today prefer to avoid admitting to a state of war and risk placing their leaders and soldiers at risk of punishment for any violations of the law of war.

The Progresses, Processions, and Royal Entries of King Charles I, 1625-1642

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Siobhan Keenan
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
Archival Research ◽  
Public Display ◽  
Modern Culture ◽  
Charles I ◽  
King Charles I

The Progresses, Processions, and Royal Entries of King Charles I, 1625–1642 is the first book-length study of the history, and the political and cultural significance, of the progresses, public processions, and royal entries of Charles I. As well as offering a much fuller account of the king’s progresses and progress entertainments than currently exists, this study throws new light on one of the most vexed topics in early Stuart historiography—the question of Charles I’s accessibility to his subjects and their concerns, and the part that this may, or may not, have played in the conflicts which culminated in the English civil wars and Charles’s overthrow. Drawing on extensive archival research, the book opens with an introduction to the early modern culture of royal progresses and public ceremonial as inherited and practised by Charles I. Part I explores the question of the king’s accessibility and engagement with his subjects further through case studies of Charles’s ‘great’ progresses in 1633, 1634, and 1636. Part II turns attention to royal public ceremonial culture in Caroline London, focusing on Charles’s royal entry on 25 November 1641. More widely travelled than his ancestors, Progresses reveals a monarch who was only too well aware of the value of public ceremonial and who did not eschew it, even if he was not always willing to engage in ceremonial dialogue with his people or able to deploy the power of public display to curry support for his policies as successfully as his Tudor and Stuart predecessors.

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