Explaining Arctic peace: a human heritage perspective

The Arctic is on fire. Warmed by the world’s soaring greenhouse gases, its ice cap is melting, and it is heating twice as fast as the rest of the planet, deepening the earth’s climate crisis. As its ice thaws, buried resources, trade routes, and new tourist opportunities are suddenly accessible. The borders of the earth’s two largest nuclear rivals, the US and Russia are less than 3 miles apart in the Arctic region and their hostility is growing. Seeking new trade routes and investment opportunities and rapidly rising above its rank as the earth’s third most powerful country, China, has declared itself a ‘near Arctic state’ and is exercising a voice in Arctic affairs. Russia and Arctic NATO members have expanded their military presence in the far North. Despite potential tensions and rapidly melting ice, there is no effective overarching governing regime in the region that can mitigate the climate crisis or manage conflicts were they to arise. Nonetheless, the Arctic remains free of interstate violence. The explanation for the absence of violent conflict cannot be found in traditional International Relations (IR) Theories. Looking below the radar of IR theory and expanding the Human Heritage approach, I show that the region contains a web of overlapping local, regional, national, and pan-Arctic institutions and agreements, built on both traditional and Western knowledge and often steered by indigenous knowledge holders in Arctic governance. This informal web of governing regimes manages Arctic resources to protect human heritage and guard human security. In doing so, it creates a cooperative environment which guides dispute settlement among Arctic states. It is the power of these networks, their normative commitments, and the knowledge that informs them that help to explain the absence of violent interstate conflict in the region.

Regime Uncertainty and Interstate Conflict

Regime type is an important variable in international relations. Numerous scholars have theorized its effects on actors’ crisis behavior and outcomes. Despite regime type's importance, the literature has not focused on the role its uncertainty might play in interstate politics. This is in stark contrast to the scholarly attention given to uncertainty about other similarly important variables like actor capabilities, intentions, or fighting costs. In this paper, we aim to address this gap in the literature by providing a theory of regime uncertainty's effects on conflict and developing a novel measure of uncertainty about regime type in interstate relations to test our hypotheses. We find that regime uncertainty breeds caution rather than conflict: higher uncertainty about the opponent's regime type makes conflict initiation and escalation less likely in disputes, and dyads with more uncertainty are less likely to experience conflict onset.

International Competition and Cooperation in the New Eastern Mediterranean

In the 21st century and particularly during the 2010s, the Eastern Mediterranean acquired unprecedented attention and significance as a distinct geopolitical space with new international and security dynamics. This “new” Eastern Mediterranean geopolitical order was largely “constructed” by global and regional power shifts as well as local developments, such as the trajectory of Turkish foreign policy and the discovery of offshore hydrocarbon reserves. The result was a change in the region’s patterns of interstate conflict and cooperation. On the one hand, countries such as Cyprus, Egypt, Greece, and Israel became part of an emerging network of cooperation and security architecture. On the other hand, owing to its problematic relations with these states, Turkey remained an outsider wanting to “deconstruct” this new state of affairs and change it to its own benefit. As such, the new Eastern Mediterranean was ushered in during a period of geopolitical polarization that is more conducive to crisis rather than peace and stability and often transcends its boundaries.

Getting Time Right: Using Cox Models and Probabilities to Interpret Binary Panel Data

Logit and probit (L/P) models are a mainstay of binary time-series cross-sectional (BTSCS) analyses. Researchers include cubic splines or time polynomials to acknowledge the temporal element inherent in these data. However, L/P models cannot easily accommodate three other aspects of the data’s temporality: whether covariate effects are conditional on time, whether the process of interest is causally complex, and whether our functional form assumption regarding time’s effect is correct. Failing to account for any of these issues amounts to misspecification bias, threatening our inferences’ validity. We argue scholars should consider using Cox duration models when analyzing BTSCS data, as they create fewer opportunities for such misspecification bias, while also having the ability to assess the same hypotheses as L/P. We use Monte Carlo simulations to bring new evidence to light showing Cox models perform just as well—and sometimes better—than logit models in a basic BTSCS setting, and perform considerably better in more complex BTSCS situations. In addition, we highlight a new interpretation technique for Cox models—transition probabilities—to make Cox model results more readily interpretable. We use an application from interstate conflict to demonstrate our points.

Food Security as Correlate of Interstate Conflict: A Case Study of the State of Qatar

The literature indicates that conflict can result in food insecurity due to economic or political crisis. However, few studies have investigated the effects that nonviolent interstate conflict has on food security in the Middle East. Evidence from this study, based in Qatar, indicates that conflict can result in food insecurity due to economic or political crisis. This research critically examines the lingering political and economic blockade of the State of Qatar and the extent to which this blockade has impacted food security of residents. The study employed a sequential mixed methods approach to gain better insight into the nature of food security in Qatar. A focused qualitative review of the relevant literature was followed by a quantitative analysis which revealed that there was no significant effect of interstate conflict on food security, while the economic and political blockade correlated significantly with food security. Three groups were sampled, including government officials, regulatory agencies, and food suppliers.

Mutual Interventions in Africa

Global datasets on interstate armed conflict suggest that African states clash with each other rarely and only for short periods. This research note shows that existing datasets paint a misleading picture. In fact, African states fight each other more often and for longer than is commonly thought, but they do so by mutually intervening in each other's intrastate conflicts. Instead of relying solely on their own armed forces, they support their rival's armed opposition groups. Such mutual interventions—most prevalent in Africa but also evident in other regions—thus span the boundaries of interstate and intrastate conflict. As a result, they have been largely overlooked by conflict scholars. Our note conceptualizes mutual intervention as a distinct form of interstate conflict, comparing and contrasting it with concepts like proxy war, competitive intervention, and international rivalry. The note then presents the first systematic survey of mutual interventions across the African continent. We identify twenty-three cases between 1960 and 2010 and demonstrate that they typically ended independently of their associated intrastate conflicts. We conclude with a research agenda that involves studying the onset, duration, termination, and consequences of mutual interventions, including collecting data on mutual interventions outside Africa to explore cross-regional differences.

Diversionary Politics and Territorial Disputes: Evidence from Turkish Airspace Incursions

Diversionary theories of interstate conflict suggest that domestic problems push leaders to initiate hostilities against foreign foes in order to garner support. However, the empirical support for this proposition is mixed as critics point out that leaders should not start conflicts that can be extremely costly for them, potentially even removing them from office. We propose that while leaders may not initiate new conflicts, they do tap into existing territorial disputes when facing internal disapproval. That is, they engage in material acts of foreign policy showing domestic audiences that they defend or emphasize their country's claim while being unlikely to result in full-scale armed confrontations. To test this claim, we use monthly data, covering the period 2013–2020, on leader approval and incursions into contested airspace from Turkey's long-standing territorial dispute with Greece. Results from time-series models offer support for our expectation.

Hydropolitics versus Human Security: Implications of South Africa's Appropriation of Lesotho's Highlands Water

The Lesotho Highlands Water Project, which exports water to South Africa, has enhanced the unequal structural relationship that exists between both states. Lesotho, one of the few countries in the world that exports water, has transformed from one of the largest sources of labor for South Africa to a water reservoir for South Africa. Though the project provides mutual strategic economic and political benefits to both riparian states, its construction has negatively affected environmental and human security in Lesotho. Due to hydropolitics, environmental threats in Lesotho caused by the project's construction are overlooked. These threats, which have devastating effects on resettled communities and the country's ecosystem, also constitute a threat to domestic and international security. The desire to prevent interstate conflict and maintain cooperation between the two riparian states further enhances the lopsided interstate relationship.