New Paradigms in the Study of the Civil War Essay

A polite conjure up of war is a war between organize groups within the same nation democracy or republic, or, less comm much all over, between two countries created from a precedently linked nation evince. The aim of matchless situation may be to expect control of the argona or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies. complaisant wars since the end of mankind fight II work lasted on mediocre just over quad years, a dramatic rise from the one-and-a-half year average of the 1900-1944 period. While the ramble of emergence of new well-behaved wars has been relatively steady since the mid-nineteenth cytosine, the increasing aloofness of those wars pay collide withed in increasing numbers of wars ongoing at any one time.For example, at that place were no much than five urbaneized wars underway at the same time in the first half of the twentieth century, tour over 20 concurrent well-bredised wars were derivering a t the end of the insensate war, before a earthshaking decrease as conflicts strongly associated with the superpower rivalry came to an end. Since 1945, civil wars have resulted in the deaths of over 25 million people, as comfortably as the forced displacement of millions more. Civil wars have further resulted in scotch collapse Somalia, Burma, Uganda and Angola are examples of nations that were considered to have promising futures before be engulfed in civil wars. Formal classificationJames Fearon, a scholar of civil wars at Stanford University, defines a civil war as a violent conflict within a region fought by make groups that aim to take power at the center or in a region, or to change government policies. The Correlates of state of war, a dataset widely apply by scholars of conflict, classifies civil wars as having over 1000 war-related casualties per year of conflict. This swan is a small fraction of the millions killed in the Second Sudanese Civil state of war and Cambodian Civil War, for example, but excludes several highly tell conflicts, such(prenominal) as The Troubles of couplingern Ireland and the struggle of the African National sex act in Apartheid-era South Africa. That the Party in revolt against the de jure Government possesses an organized military force, an spot responsible for its acts, acting within a authoritative territory and having the means of respecting and ensuring respect for the Convention.That the legal Government is obliged to have recourse to the regular military forces against insurgents organized as military and in possession of a part of the case territory. That the de jure Government has recognized the insurgents as belligerents or That it has claimed for itself the rights of a belligerent or That it has accorded the insurgents recognition as belligerents for the purposes only of the present Convention or That the dispute has been admitted to the agenda of the Security Council or the General Assembly of t he United Nations as being a panic to global peace, a breach of the peace, or an act of aggression.That the insurgents have an arranging purporting to have the characteristics of a State.That the insurgent civil authority exercises de facto authority over the population within a determinate portion of the internal territory.That the build up forces act under the direction of an organized authority and are fain to observe the ordinary laws of war. That the insurgent civil authority agrees to be funk by the provisions of the Convention.Causes of civil war in the Collier-Hoeffler ModelScholars probe the cause of civil war are attracted by two contend theories, greed versus grievance. Roughly stated are conflicts caused by who people are, whether that be delimit in terms of ethnicity, religion or other genial affiliation, or do conflicts begin because it is in the frugal best interests of individuals and groups to lolly them? Scholarly analysis supports the conclusion that economic and structural factors are more important than those of identity in predicting occurrences of civil war. A comprehensive studies of civil war was carried out by a team from the World depone in the early 21st century.The theater framework, which came to be called the Collier-Hoeffler Model, examined 78 five-year increments when civil war occurred from 1960 to 1999, as well as 1,167 five-year increments of no civil war for comparison, and subjected the data set to regression analysis to see the transaction of various factors. The factors that were shown to have a statistically significant effect on the guess that a civil war would occur in any assumption five-year period were Availability of financeA high proportion of native commodities in national exports significantly amplifications the risk of a conflict. A country at peak danger, with commodities comprising 32% of gross domestic product, has a 22% risk of falling into civil war in a given five-year period, while a country with no radical goodness exports has a 1% risk. When disaggregated, only petroleum and non-petroleum groupings showed different results a country with relatively low levels of dependence on petroleum exports is at meagerly less risk, while a high-level of dependence on cover as an export results in slightly more risk of a civil war than national dependence on another primary commodity.The authors of the essay interpreted this as being the result of the ease by which primary commodities may be extorted or spellbindd compared to other forms of wealth, for example, it is easy to capture and control the output of a gold mine or crude oil field compared to a sector of garment manufacturing or hospitality services. A second source of finance is national diasporas, which can fund rebellions and insurgencies from abroad.The study found that statistically switching the size of a countrys diaspora from the smallest found in the study to the largest resulted in a sixfold incre ase in the chance of a civil war. Low per capita income has been proposed as a cause for grievance, prompting armed rebellion. However, for this to be true, one would expect economic inequality to also be a significant factor in rebellions, which it is not. The study therefore concluded that the economic model of opportunity greet better explained the findings. Population sizeThe various factors contributing to the risk of civil war rise increase with population size. The risk of a civil war rises approximately proportionately with the size of a countrys population. Gleditsch et al. did not find a relationship between ethnic groups with polygyny and increase frequency of civil wars but nations having legal polygamy may have more civil wars. They argued that misogyny is a better explanation than polygyny. They found that change magnitude womens rights were are associated with less civil wars and that legal polygamy had no effect aft(prenominal) womens rights were controlled for. D uration of civil warsAnn Hironaka, author of Neverending Wars, divides the modern record of civil wars into the pre-nineteenth century, 19th century to early twentieth century, and late 20th century. In 19th-century Europe, the length of civil wars fell significantly, mostly referable to the disposition of the conflicts as battles for the power center of the state, the strength of centralized governments, and the normally supple and conclusive intervention by other states to support the government. Following World War II the duration of civil wars grew past the norm of the pre-19th century, largely due to languidness of the many postcolonial states and the intervention by major powers on both sides of conflict. The most obvious parkality to civil wars are that they occur in fragile states. Civil wars in the 19th and early 20th centuriesCivil wars through the 19th century to early 20th century tend to be short the average length of a civil war between 1900 and 1944 was on e and half years. The state itself was the obvious center of authority in the majority of cases, and the civil wars were thus fought for control of the state. This meant that whoever had control of the large(p) and the military could normally crush resistance. If a rebellion failed to warmly trance the capital and control of the military for itself, it was normally doomed to a quick destruction.For example, the fighting associated with the 1871 Paris Commune occurred almost entirely in Paris, and end quickly once the military sided with the government. The power of non-state actors resulted in a move value placed on sovereignty in the 18th and 19th centuries, which further reduced the number of civil wars. For example, the pirates of the Barbary Coast were recognized as de facto states because of their military power. The Barbary pirates thus had no need to rebel against the Ottoman Empire, who were their titular state government, to gain recognition for their sovereignty. Conv ersely, states such as Virginia and Massachusetts in the United States of America did not have sovereign status, but had significant political and economic independence coupled with wonky federal control, simplification the incentive to secede.The two major global ideologies, monarchism and democracy, led to several civil wars. However, a bi-polar world, divided between the two ideologies, did not develop, largely due the dominance of monarchists through most of the period. The monarchists would thus normally intervene in other countries to stop democratic movements taking control and forming democratic governments, which were seen by monarchists as being both dangerous and unpredictable. The Great Powers, defined in the 1815 Congress of Vienna as the United Kingdom, Habsburg Austria, Prussia, France, and Russia, would frequently coordinate interventions in other nations civil wars, nearly always on the side of the superjacent government. Given the military strength of the Great P owers, these interventions were nearly always decisive and quickly ended the civil wars. on that point were several exceptions from the general normal of quick civil wars during this period.The American Civil War was unusual for at least two reasons it was fought around regional identities, rather than political ideologies, and it was ended through a war of attrition, rather than over a decisive battle over control of the capital, as was the norm. The Spanish Civil War was exceptional because both sides of the war received support from interact massive powers Germany, Italy, and Portugal support opposition leader Francisco Franco, while France and the Soviet Union supported the government . Civil wars since 1945In the 1990s, about twenty civil wars were occurring at the same time during an average year, a rate about ten times the diachronic average since the 19th century. However, the rate of new civil wars had not increase appreciably the drastic rise in the number of ongoing wars after World War II was a result of the tripling of the average duration of civil wars to over four years. This increase was a result of the increase number of states, the fragility of states formed after 1945, the decline in interstate war, and the Cold War rivalry. Following World War II, the major European powers divested themselves of their colonies at an increasing rate the number of ex-colonial states jumped from about 30 to almost 120 after the war. The rate of state formation leveled off in the 1980s, at which point few colonies remained. More states also meant more states in which to have long civil wars.Hironaka statistically measures the impact of the increased number of ex-colonial states as increasing the post-WWII incidence of civil wars by +clxv% over the pre-1945 number. While the new ex-colonial states appeared to follow the blueprint of the idealized state centralized government, territory enclosed by defined borders, and citizenry with defined rights -, as w ell as accessories such as a national flag, an anthem, a seat at the United Nations and an official economic policy, they were in actuality far weaker than the Western states they were modeled after. In Western states, the structure of governments intimately matched states actual capabilities, which had been arduously developed over centuries. The development of strong administrative structures, in particular those related to extraction of taxes, is closely associated with the intense war between predatory European states in the 17th and 18th centuries, or in Charles Tillys famous formulation War made the state and the state made war.For example, the formation of the modern states of Germany and Italy in the 19th century is closely associated with the wars of expansion and consolidation led by Prussia and Sardinia, respectively. such states are considered weak or fragile. The strong-weak categorisation is not the same as Western-non-Western, as some Latin American states simila r Argentina and Brazil and Middle Eastern states like Egypt and Israel are considered to have strong administrative structures and economic infrastructure. Historically, the international association would have targeted weak states for territorial reserve absorption or colonial subordination or, alternatively, such states would fragment into pieces small enough to be effectively administered and secured by a local power. However, international norms towards sovereignty changed in the wake of WWII in ways that support and maintain the existence of weak states.Weak states are given de jure sovereignty equal to that of other states, even when they do not have de facto sovereignty or control of their own territory, including the privileges of international diplomatic recognition and an equal vote in the United Nations. Further, the international society offers development aid to weak states, which helps maintain the facade of a surgery modern state by giving the appearance that the state is unfastened of fulfilling its implied responsibilities of control and order. The formation of a strong international law administration and norms against territorial aggression is strongly associated with the dramatic drop in the number of interstate wars, though it has also been attributed to the effect of the Cold War or to the changing nature of economic development.Consequently, military aggression that results in territorial annexation became increasingly likely to prompt international condemnation, diplomatic censure, a reduction in international aid or the introduction of economic sanction, or, as in the case of 1990 invasion of Kuwait by Iraq, international military intervention to reverse the territorial aggression. Similarly, the international community haslargely refused to recognize secessionist regions, while keeping some secessionist self-declared states such as chinaware in diplomatic recognition limbo. While there is not a large body of academic work exami ning the relationship, Hironakas statistical study found a correlation that suggests that every major international anti-secessionist resolve increased the number of ongoing civil wars by +10%, or a total +114% from 1945 to 1997. The diplomatic and legal protection given by the international community, as well as economic support to weak governments and discouragement of secession, thus had the unintended effect of encouraging civil wars.There has been an enormous amount of international intervention in civil wars since 1945 that served to spend wars. While intervention has been practiced since the international system has existed, its nature changed substantially. It became common for both the state and opposition group to receive foreign support, allowing wars to exsert well past the point when domestic resources had been exhausted. Superpowers, such as the European great powers, had always felt no compunction in intervening in civil wars that affected their interests, while di stant regional powers such as the United States could declare the interventionist Monroe Doctrine of 1821 for events in its Central American backyard.However, the large population of weak states after 1945 allowed intervention by former colonial powers, regional powers and neighboring states who themselves often had scarce resources. On average, a civil war with interstate intervention was 300% longer than those without. When disaggregated, a civil war with intervention on only one side is 156% longer, while intervention on both sides lengthens the average civil war by an addition 92%. If one of the intervening states was a superpower, a civil war is extended a further 72% a conflict such as the Angolan Civil War, in which there is two-sided foreign intervention, including by a superpower, would be 538% longer on average than a civil war without any international intervention. issuing of the Cold WarThe Cold War provided a global internet of material and ideological support that p erpetuated civil wars, which were mainly fought in weak ex-colonial states, rather than the relatively strong states that were aligned with the Warsaw Pact and North Atlantic Treaty Organization.In some cases, superpowers would superimpose Cold War ideology onto local conflicts, while in others local actors using Cold War ideology would attract the attention of a superpower to take for support. Using a separate statistical evaluation than used higher up for interventions, civil wars that included pro- or anti-communist forces lasted 141% longer than the average non-Cold War conflict, while a Cold War civil war that attracted superpower intervention resulted in wars typically lasting over three times as long as other civil wars. Conversely, the end of the Cold War marked by the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 resulted in a reduction in the duration of Cold War civil wars of 92% or, phrased another way, a roughly ten-fold increase in the rate of resolution of Cold War civil wars. L engthy Cold War-associated civil conflicts that institute to a halt include the wars of Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua . See alsoThe logic of Violence in Civil WarWar of IndependenceWars of national liberationReferences