Explaining Third‐Party Intervention in Ethnic Conflict: Theory and Evidence

Abstract. One of the most challenging developments for students of international relations is the resurgence of ethnic strife, including secessionism and irredentism. Basic questions are only beginning to be addressed in the post‐Cold War era. Why are some states more likely than others to intervene in ethnic conflicts? How can international norms about third‐party intervention in ethnic conflicts be evaded or ignored by some states but respected by others? Why are some states inclined to use force rather than mediation to resolve ethnic strife? In short, what accounts for the emergence of adventurous and belligerent foreign policies with respect to internal ethnic conflicts? These questions are of increasing importance to students of international politics, yet the dynamics and internationalisation of ethnic conflict are far from fully understood. This study focuses on the dynamics of third‐party intervention in ethnic strife and implications for peaceful resolution. The first section presents a model that identifies the general conditions under which ethnic strife is most likely to lead to intervention by third‐party states. The second uses four cases to illustrate, within the context of the model, different processes with respect to internationalisation of ethnic conflict. The third and final stage identifies implications for policy and theory, along with directions for future research.     

State Failure and the Clash of Civilisations: An Examination of the Magnitude and Extent of Domestic Civilisational Conflict from 1950 to 1996

This study quantitatively examines Samuel Huntington's 'clash of civilisations' theory using data from the State Failure dataset which focuses on intense and violent internal conflicts between 1950 and 1996. The proportion of state failures which are civilisational has remained mostly constant since 1965. The absolute amount of civilisational conflict has dropped considerably since the end of the Cold War. There is no clear evidence that the overall intensity of civilisational state failures is increasing in proportion to non-civilisational state failures. Also, the predictions of Islam's 'bloody borders' and the Confucian/Sinic-Islamic alliance against the West have not yet occurred. In fact, Islamic groups 'clash' mostly with other Islamic groups. However, the majority of the West's civilisational conflicts, during the Cold War and to a lesser extent after it, are with the Islamic civilisation. Thus it is arguable that Huntington's prediction that the Islamic civilisation is a potential threat to the West is probably more due to the end of the relevance of the Cold War paradigm than any post-Cold War changes in the nature of conflict. This highlights the potential influence of paradigms on policy and should serve as a caution to academics and policy makers to be more aware of the assumptions they make based on any paradigm.     

Explaining the Congo Wars

Abstract

From 1996 to 2003, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) was the scene of two major regional wars. The second Congo war (1998–2003) was an especially complex formation of wars within wars, characterised by repeatedly changing alliances between various actors, both internal and external, and by the spread of ethnic conflicts across national borders. However, the recent troubled history of the DRC has often been understood from either a national or an international perspective. The terms of this debate centred on whether the continental wars were linked either to the weak or collapsing state of Zaire/Congo or outside interferences by neighbouring states. The two studies reviewed in this essay both suggest ways of addressing this dichotomy between the internal and external dimensions of the conflicts. By analysing the multitude of conflicts from a regional perspective, both authors can aptly illuminate the linkages and interdependencies among local and national conflicts that became inextricably intertwined and developed into regional and continental conflicts. Thus, this review argues that both comprehensive works on the multiplicity of recent crises in the Great Lakes region significantly contribute to an understanding of the causes and evolution of the Congolese wars.     

A treaty for cyberspace

In the wake of the crippling cyber attack on Estonia's internet infrastructure in 2007, several world powers announced their intentions to deploy offensive capabilities in cyberspace. As cyberspace evolves from a technology enthusiast's domain into a global economic and military ‘battlespace’, the likelihood of a major interstate cyber conflict increases significantly. The article discusses why now may be the time for international society to begin working towards ratification of a global cyber treaty. It begins by reviewing the converging forces responsible for making cyberspace a dynamic zone of political and economic competition among states. It then examines the central debates surrounding how the laws of armed conflict may or may not apply to cyber warfare. The article concludes by arguing that given proper political support, a multilateral cyber treaty could prove an effective international instrument in preventing cyberspace from becoming the default platform for states seeking to settle conflicts outside the reach of customary international law and diplomacy.     

Resolving or Exacerbating Disputes? The WTO's New Dispute Resolution System

In 1995 the dispute resolution system of the WTO was transformed to make it more effective in enforcing WTO rules. Ironically, the improvements in the system have contributed directly to greater conflict in the WTO. How can improving a system to resolve disputes actually exacerbate conflict? This article identifies a number of conflict‐enhancing consequences of the change in the dispute resolution mechanism. Conflict is not bad per se. Indeed, if the outcome of this conflict is that governments must better justify participation in the WTO, then conflict is good. But there is a danger that international courts are more likely than not to generate conflict, while the international legal and political system is less adept at weathering controversy and addressing valid public concerns. Left unaddressed, conflicts generated by international legal bodies can erode support for the international legal system and multilateral strategies in general. This article suggests solutions designed to build into internationally legalized processes political safety valves, greater political sensitivity, and improved accountability, as well as legitimacy enhancing devices. Demonstrated here in the case of the WTO, the analysis described applies to international legal systems generally.     

State functioning and state failure in the South Pacific

The South Pacific region features enormous variation in state performance. While Polynesian nations such as Samoa have proved to be relatively successful post-colonial states, Melanesian countries like the Solomon Islands are increasingly categorised as 'weak', 'failing' or 'failed' states. Drawing on a range of comparative studies by economists and political scientists in recent years, this article argues that cross-country variation in ethnic diversity between much of Polynesia and Melanesia is a key factor in explaining differences in state performance across the South Pacific. It shows how different kinds of ethnic structure are associated with specific political and economic outcomes, including variation in political stability, economic development, and internal conflict from country to country. In so doing, it helps explain why some parts of the South Pacific appear to be failing while others are relative success stories - and why this is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.     

‘Cypriot-led,Cypriot-owned’: Cyprus talks revisited

Cyprus occupies an unenviable position among a group of intractable international conflicts which transcend their national borders and whose resolution has eluded third-party mediation. The Cyprus dispute has preoccupied theorists and practitioners of conflict resolution ever since the United Nations stationed its peacekeeping force on the island in 1964. Even attempts by the United Nations to revitalise the Cyprus talks following the 2004 referendum on the Annan plan have not yielded satisfactory results. For decades, the Cyprus problem has challenged conventional international analysis and defied traditional approaches to negotiation and peacemaking. This article grapples with the question of why this conflict has not been resolved despite endless negotiations. By extrapolating three seemingly distinct variables—Cypriotisation, Europeanisation and post-Kemalism—this article alludes to changes in the conflict's contextual parameters that are conducive to a political settlement.     

Illiberal peacebuilding in a hybrid regime. Authoritarian strategies for conflict containment in Myanmar

The post-Cold War period has seen the rise of international liberal peacebuilding, as an overarching framework for international interventions in intrastate conflicts. In contrast, the current period is marked by decline of liberal peacebuilding, and a simultaneous rise of domestic illiberal peacebuilding. This has created a gap between the predominant theoretical and policy framework and the actual form of peacebuilding in many conflict-ridden societies. The present article addresses this challenge through a contextual case study of illiberal peacebuilding in Myanmar. The case study shows how a dominant state actor – the military (Tatmadaw) – has used both coercion and co-optation to contain armed resistance against militarized and centralized statebuilding and thereby strengthen the state's territorial control and authority. While the SLORC/SPDC military junta (1988–2011) sought to contain ethnic armed organizations through military offensives, ceasefire agreements and illiberal peacebuilding, the military based USDP-government (2011–2015) institutionalized a hybrid regime as a framework for political transformation of EAOs, and tolerated a degree of dual territorial, administrative and resource control at the local scale. These clientelist measures failed to address the substantive issues behind Myanmar's multiple and protracted conflicts. They were also combined with military offensives against non-ceasefire groups and war by other means in ceasefire areas. Moreover, the case study demonstrates that the Tatmadaw used its tutelary power to obstructs substantive conflict resolution through negotiated state reforms. Myanmar's peace initiatives during the last three decades should thus be understood as illiberal strategies for containing ethnic armed organizations rather than attempts at substantive conflict resolution.     

Partition,consociation, border‐crossing: some lessons from the national conflict in Ireland/Northern Ireland

ABSTRACT. Outlining Ireland's long history of ethno‐national conflict, and the recent protracted ‘peace process’ in Northern Ireland, contextualises a critique of the problems underlying such conflicts, and the difficulties in transforming externally imposed conflict management into self‐sustaining conflict resolution. It is argued that the problems and difficulties are deeply rooted in a thoroughly modern complex of nationalism, ethnicity, sovereignty and representative democracy. These are knotted together in a common denominator of territoriality, and the nub of the problem is the ‘double paradox’ of democracy's undemocratic origins in the present. Territoriality, the use of bordered geographical space, is a powerful and ubiquitous mode of social organisation which simplifies social control. But it can grossly oversimplify and distort social realities, particularly at borders and especially where territory is contested, thereby reinforcing other distorting simplifications typically found in ethno‐national conflicts. In consequence, radical remedies are needed if the problems are to be overcome. Making ethno‐national peace paradoxically calls for more creative border‐crossing conflicts around other issues.     

War as Feminized Labour in the Global Political Economy of Neoimperialism

ABSTRACT

This article examines the structures of international relations that facilitate political violence in postcolonial states. It explores the intersections of patriarchy and imperialism in the contemporary political economy to understand how armed conflict and political violence in postcolonial states form an integral element of the global economy of accumulation in deeply gendered ways. By focusing on the structural level of analysis, this article argues that the siting of armed conflict in postcolonial contexts serves to maintain neo-colonial relations of exploitation between the West and non-West, and is made both possible and effective through the gendering of political identities and types of work performed in the global economy. I argue here that armed conflict is a form of feminized labour in the global economy. Despite the fact that performing violence is a physically masculine form of labour, the outsourcing of armed conflict as labour in the political economy is ‘feminized’ in that it represents the flexibilization of labour and informalization of market participation. So while at the same time that this work is fulfilling hegemonic ideals of militarized masculinity within the domestic context, at the international level it actually demonstrates the ‘weakness’ or ‘otherness’ of the ‘failed’/feminized state in which this violence occurs, and legitimizes and hence re-entrenches the hegemonic relations between the core and periphery on the basis of problematizing the ‘weak’ state’s masculinity. It is through the discursive construction of the non-Western world as the site of contemporary political violence that mainstream international relations reproduces an orientalist approach to both understanding and addressing the ‘war puzzle’.     

Ecumenist and Controversialist: The Dual Legacy of Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf

Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf (1700–1760) is often remembered for his ecumenical theology. Yet his relationships with other Christians of his time were marked by conflict, and every significant ecumenical connection he made was eventually broken off. This article outlines Zinzendorf's interactions with other Christians in the two centres of Moravianism where his leadership was strongest, Germany and England, and analyses the consistent disintegration of those relations. It concedes that these conflicts were fuelled in part by suspicion of Zinzendorf's radical ideals, fear of his movement's independence, the ecclesial politics of his time, the public's appetite for gossip about the Moravians, and the faults of his conversation partners — all causes that are often invoked to explain eighteenth‐century antipathy toward Zinzendorf. The far more consistent and compelling factor in these conflicts, however, was Zinzendorf's temperament, which included both a noble sense of being above reproach and a distinct irritability. This article argues that Zinzendorf's contentious personality was the decisive impediment to the realisation of his ecumenical goals. It also suggests that his tendency to be a controversialist helps make sense of the contradiction between his ecumenical theology and the failure of his ecumenical program under his leadership.     

Rebranding the State: Uganda's Strategic Use of the International Criminal Court

When governments invite the International Criminal Court (ICC) to conduct investigations within their own borders, they seem to indicate acceptance of global norms of accountability for wartime atrocities. The first of these self‐referrals came from Uganda, whose government requested investigation into its conflict with the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a conflict within which it, too, committed large‐scale human rights violations. This article argues that Uganda used the ICC to help solve a problem faced by many of the world's least powerful states, whose domestic politics are often structured through patron–client networks. Their rulers need to distribute basic state resources, including physical protection, to loyal clients without alienating donors who demand provision of these same resources by right to all citizens. By inviting external scrutiny and manipulating the investigative process, the Ugandan government received an international seal of approval for practices that the ICC would normally punish. This strategy has system‐wide consequences in that repeated mislabelling of rights violations as compliant with international norms causes the meaning of compliance to become incoherent, and norms are less able to constrain the behaviour of all states in the long run.     

Geographies of state failure and sophistication in maritime piracy hijackings

Many analysts are concerned about territories subject to state failure becoming safe havens for terrorists. In this article, I apply this logic to maritime piracy syndicates and their ship hijacking operations, and argue that a focus on the geographies of state failure can help us explain why pirates' behavior varies between failed and weak states. Analysis of a dataset of hijacking incidents suggests that state failure is associated with less sophisticated attacks, while state weakness encourages more sophisticated attacks. Through case studies of the process by which pirates carry out their attacks in East Africa and Southeast Asia, I argue that it is the differences in political and economic landscapes that influence how pirates embed their operations across territory, and thus how they carry out their operations. Notably, because they do not have to worry about enforcement, pirates in failed states can engage in time-intensive kidnappings for ransom, while only weak states provide the markets and transportation infrastructure necessary for operations where ships and cargo are seized and sold for profit. These findings suggest that weak states might actually be more problematic for international security in some respects than failed states.     

Separatist states and post–Soviet conflicts

This article examines why the conflicts in Moldova, Georgia and Azerbaijan in the former Soviet Union have not been resolved in the last ten years, whereas a peace agreement has been reached in Tajikistan. The analysis centres on the role of the self–declared separatist states that have emerged in the midst of the post–Soviet states: the Pridnestrovyan Moldovan Republic inside Moldovan borders, the Republic of South Ossetia and the republic of Abkhazia within Georgian borders, and the Nagorno–Karabakh Republic of Azerbaijan. The argument is divided into four parts, starting first with a brief discussion of the reasons that allowed a fragile peace to arise in Tajikistan. The article then defines the concept of a de facto state, that is, a state without international recognition but with empirical existence. The main part of the article examines the range of forces, internal to the de facto states as well as external to them, that weave together to sustain the current status quo of non–resolution.     

Global Utopias and Clashing Civilizations: Misunderstanding the Present

This is an edited text of the 23rd Martin Wright Memorial Lecture delivered at the Royal Institute of International Affairs on 14 October 1997 in which John Gray argues that international conflict does not come from 'clashes of civilization', but rather from the conflicting interests and policies of states. In order to cope better with such conflicts, we should understand that some conflicts are intractable.     

Seeking peace and security in the Horn of Africa: the contribution of the Inter‐Governmental Authority on Development

This article assesses the contribution that IGAD has made to regional security in the Horn of Africa since the adoption of its peace and security mandate in 1996. It describes the evolution of IGAD and its mandate in the context of regional conflict and wider African peace and security processes. It explores the local dynamics of the two major IGAD‐led peace processes, in Sudan (1993–2005) and in Somalia (2002–2004), and discusses the effectiveness of IGAD's institutional role. A consideration of the wider impact of the peace agreements highlights the way IGAD has enhanced its role by setting the agenda on peace support operations in Somalia. The article concludes that IGAD's successes are more the result of regional power politics than of its institutional strength per se. Despite the obvious need for a better regional security framework, the scope for the IGAD Secretariat to develop an autonomous conflict‐resolution capability will remain limited. However, IGAD brings a new diplomatic dimension to conflict management that locks in regional states and locks out interested parties beyond the region. With regard to Somalia, the organization has played a pivotal role in directing African and wider international responses to conflict in the region.     

Human security and development in Africa

There has been a recent rise in optimism about Africa's prospects: increased economic growth; renewed regional and national political commitments to good governance; and fewer conflicts. Yet, given current trends and with less than eight years until 2015, Africa is likely to fail to meet every single one of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Home to almost one‐third of the world's poor, Africa's challenges remain as daunting as ever. Despite highly publicized increased growth in some economies, the combined economies of Africa have, on average, actually shrunk and are far from meeting the required 7 per cent growth needed to tackle extreme poverty. A similar picture emerges from the analysis of Africa's performance on the other MDGs. In a world where security and development are inextricably connected in complex and multifaceted ways, Africans are, as a result, among the most insecure. By reviewing a select number of political, security and socio‐economic indicators for the continent, this analysis evaluates the reasons underlying Africa's continuing predicament. It identifies four critical issues: ensuring peace and security; fostering good governance; fighting HIV/ AIDS; and managing the debt crisis. In assessing these developmental security challenges, the article recalls that the MDGs are more than time bound, quantified targets for poverty alleviation–they also represent a commitment by all members of the international community, underwritten by principles of co‐responsibility and partnership, to an enlarged notion of development based on the recognition that human development is key to sustaining social and economic progress. In recent years, and often following failures, especially in Africa, to protect civilian populations from the violence and predation of civil wars, a series of high‐level commissions and expert groups have conducted strategic reviews of the UN system and its function in global politics. The debate has also developed at the theoretical level involving both a recon‐ceptualization of security, from state centred norms to what is referred to as the globalization of security around the human security norm. There has also been a reconceptualization of peacekeeping, where the peacekeeping force has enough robustness to use force not only to protect populations under the emergent responsibility to protect norm, but also enough conflict resolution capacity to facilitate operations across the conflict–development–peacebuilding continuum. This article opens up a discussion of how these ideas might be relevant to security regime building and conflict resolution in African contexts, and suggests how initiatives in Africa might begin to make a contribution to the theory and practice of cosmopolitan peacekeeping.     

Global Incorporation and Local Conflict: Sierra Leonean Mining Regions

Abstract: This paper draws upon a world‐system core–periphery framework to examine the nature and causes of persistent low‐level conflict in Sierra Leonean mining regions. Conflict is endemic because of asymmetrical power relations between global core‐state corporations and peripheral weak‐state Sierra Leone, which are mirrored locally within its mining regions. Structural constraints inherent in these relationships generate and sustain socioeconomic, cultural and environmental inequities. The paper reveals the complex web of micropolitics in the mining locale core‐periphery microcosm involving a weak state, exploitative corporations and oppressive traditional social hierarchies. The findings are relevant to effective policy making and conflict resolution.     

Russia,humanitarian intervention and the Responsibility to Protect: the case of Syria

Western analysis perceives Russian approaches to issues of humanitarian intervention and the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) as running counter to western‐inspired international norms. This debate has surfaced with some vigour over Russia's policy in the Syria conflict where, in order to protect its strategic interests in Syria, an obstructionist Moscow has been accused of ignoring humanitarian considerations and allowing time for the Assad regime to crush the opposition by vetoing a resolution threatening to impose sanctions. While Russian approaches are undoubtedly explained by a desire to maximize its growing political influence and trade advantages to serve its legitimate foreign policy interests, and while Moscow's attitudes to intervention and R2P exhibit important differences from those of the major western liberal democracies, its arguments are in fact framed within a largely rational argument rooted in ‘traditional’ state‐centred international law. This article first highlights key arguments in the scholarly literature on intervention and R2P before going on to examine the evolution of Russian views on these issues. The analysis then focuses on the extent to which Moscow's arguments impact on international legal debates on the Libya and Syria conflicts. The article then seeks to explore how Russian approaches to intervention/R2P reflect fundamental trends in its foreign policy thinking and its quest for legitimacy in a negotiated international order. Finally, it attempts to raise some important questions regarding Russia's role in the future direction of the intervention/R2P debates.