Diplomatic Intervention and the Effects of Third-Party State Power on Intrastate War Outcome

This paper seeks to examine the role third-party states may play as diplomatic intervenors in intrastate wars. Because diplomatic interventions seek settlement outcomes over military victory, understanding the efficacy of these interventions may provide support for their usage over non-diplomatic options. I hypothesize that third-party state power, in the form of military, economic, and political capabilities, will impact the likelihood of diplomatic intervention outcome; more powerful third-party states will have a greater likelihood of producing preferred outcomes. I use 12 multinomial regression models to examine this relationship. I find that economic capabilities are the only factor of state power that produce a significant relationship with partial settlement only. Assessing this relationship, I suggest states with higher levels of economic production and consumption may have positive, yet also limited, impacts as diplomatic intervenors in intrastate war.

Intrastate Warfare

On October 15th, 2020, the Canadian Association for Security and Intelligence Studies (CASIS) Vancouver hosted its sixth Digital Roundtable event of the year, Intrastate Warfare. The presentation was conducted by guest speaker Dr. Arjun Chowdhury, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of British Columbia. Dr. Chowdhury’s presentation delivered a historical overview of types of conflicts, and a brief analysis on the patterns of conflicts and whether they have changed over a period of approximately 200 years, with a particular focus on the last 50 years. He described two types of war, interstate and intrastate, mentioning trends in intrastate war and the contrast to interstate war, as well as the consequences to life expectancy and infrastructure in the regions affected by intrastate wars. Subsequently, Dr. Chowdhury answered questions submitted by the attendees, which elaborated on the concepts of interstate and intrastate wars, using current examples such as, COVID-19, right-wing extremism, cybercrimes, and foreign aid. APA Citation CASIS Vancouver. (2020). Intrastate warfare. The Journal of Intelligence, Conflict, and Warfare, 3(2), 66-71. https://journals.lib.sfu.ca/index.php/jicw/article/view/2411/1814.

Ethnic and Gender Hierarchies in the Crucible of War

Recent scholarship shows war can catalyze reforms related to gender power imbalances, but what about reforms related to ethnic inequalities? While war can disrupt the political, social and economic institutions at the root of ethnic hierarchy—just as it can shake up the institutions at the root of gender hierarchy—war is also prone to have either a reinforcing effect or a pendulum effect. Our project uses data from the Varieties of Democracy project to examine specific manifestations of changes in gender and ethnic civil-liberty equality (1900–2015). Interstate war, but not intrastate war, tends to be followed by gains in ethnic civil-liberty equality, and intrastate war tends to be followed by long-term gains in gender civil-liberty equality. Wars with government losses are prone to lead to improvements in civil-liberty equality along both dimensions. In considering overlapping gender and ethnic hierarchies, we find that when wars open up space for gains in gender equality, they also facilitate gains in equality for excluded ethnic groups.

Military Technology and Human Loss in Intrastate Conflict: The Conditional Impact of Arms Imports

Although often conjectured, there is a lack of empirical evidence whether international inflows of military technology render intrastate conflicts more violent. We address this question and argue that expansions in governments’ ability to fight aggravate the lethality of intrastate war. However, we expect this effect to be conditioned by rebels’ military endowments and their choice of tactics. Where rebels are weak, they avoid open combat, and additional governmental arms imports have no effect on the number of casualties. In contrast, governmental arms imports cause human losses to multiply when rebels have achieved military parity or superiority and, as a consequence, use conventional combat tactics. This hypothesis is tested on the number of battle-related deaths in intrastate conflict, 1989 to 2011, using, for the first time, data on governmental imports of both major conventional weapons and small arms. Results support our propositions and are robust to instrumenting for imports of both types of weapons.

Urban Concentration and Civil War

The explosion of cities and megacities has increased scholars’ and policy markers’ attention to the effects such changes might have on conflict: increasingly, urban environments may alter the nature of warfare but not necessarily the incidence of intrastate war. We argue that high levels of urban concentration—the concentration of populations in one or relatively few urban centers—increases both the likelihood of civil wars and their intensity. Urban concentration limits the ability of the state to project power across space, exacerbating grievances in rural areas, easing rebel control of territory, and enhancing their military strength. At the same time, cities become high-value loci of contestation even as urban warfare constrains conventional state military strength. The result is more symmetrical fighting producing more battle deaths. Cross-national regressions show that urban concentration exerts a crucial effect on the likelihood, nature, and intensity of intrastate warfare.

Strengthening States’ and the International Community’s Responsibility to Protect Civilians: Revisiting the Prosecution of War Crimes Committed in Africa by the International Criminal Court (ICC)

The silhouette of International Criminal Justice (ICJ) is fast changing across the globe. The change and transformation are connected to the criminalization of war, which has complicated the attraction of and engagement in the war for war-mongers. At least, the last few years had seen remarkable prosecution of war criminals in Africa. This is related to a relatively new thinking that informed the establishment of International Criminal Court (ICC) and global re-enforcement of war crime-related charges. Since the genocide in Rwanda, the establishment of the ICC has led to the prosecution of warlords. Also, the ICC has issued thirteen public warrants of arrest on war charges to actors and perpetrators in more than four African states. The case of President of Sudan, whose warrant of arrest had been issued regarding the crisis in Darfur, demonstrated that African leaders and war-mongers would be held responsible for their actions and atrocities they have committed. The lesson from the ICC is clear, war-mongers would be made to pay for their criminality. This article intends to examine the actions of the ICC on intra-state civil war crimes in Africa and assess whether ICC can act as deterrence on for intrastate war mongers in Africa.

The Effects of Intrastate War and Reintegration on Liberian Child Soldiers: Part II

The main focus of this article is on the effects of intrastate war and the reintegration of Liberian child soldiers into their families and former communities. In this context, legal frameworks for the protection of children, types of recruitment (forced, persuasive, and “voluntary”), reasons for recruitment, and the need for personal protection are dealt with. Also discussed are disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration processes, roles of communities, provision of psycho-social support and care to reintegrated child soldiers, the physical, social and emotional effects they experience, their reintegration into communities, social networks, the disengagement of children from former commanders, and the skills training options provided to these children. In this empirical, qualitative study, primary data was obtained from focus group discussions and semi-structured interviews, and secondary data was obtained from documentary sources. Some of the primary data substantiated the secondary data, confirming the finding that war caused profound damage and heartache but that it also helped children to become resilient. The study found that the brutal effects of war, culminating in the reintegration of child soldiers into communities, manifested themselves over many years.