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Begin New Search Publishing Institution Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies

31. The Ethics of Advice: Conflict Management vs. Human Rights in Ending Civil Wars

Author:
Roy Licklider
Publication Date:
02-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies
Abstract:
The theory of transitional justice, usually either war crimes tribunals and/or truth commissions, rests on the assumption that after internal conflict societies must learn and accept the truth of what sort of violence has occurred in order to build a functioning, united society and that any solution which omits such policies should be rejected. There is no empirical support for this assumption. Moreover, acting on it often implies that civil war should be continued. Conflict resolution theory asserts that all major players, including those who have committed atrocities, must be involved in the settlement if it is to be stable. This is not likely to happen unless some people are promised amnesty. Despite its drawbacks, this seems a more appropriate strategy, especially when dealing with someone else's country and war.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, International Relations, and Human Rights

32. Democratization and Civil War

Author:
Jack Snyder and Edward Mansfield
Publication Date:
02-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies
Abstract:
Many observers have argued that promoting democracy abroad promotes peace. Mature, stable democracies have not fought wars against each other, and they rarely suffer from civil wars. But the path to the democratic peace is not always smooth. We argue that during the initial phase of a democratic transition, states face a heightened risk of civil war. When authoritarian regimes break down, a panoply of elite factions and popular groups jockey for power in a setting in which repressive state authority has been weakened, yet democratic institutions are insufficiently developed to take their place. This can lead to civil war through the lack of institutional means to regulate or repress factional strife. We test this argument by conducting a statistical analysis. The results indicate that countries in the initial stages of democratization are more than twice as likely to experience civil war as are stable regimes or regimes undergoing a transition to autocracy. Then we discuss the causal mechanisms linking democratization and civil war in cases drawn from the statistical analysis. These findings underscore the risks in trying to promote peace through democratization in countries that lack the institutions to contain factional and communal conflicts.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, International Relations, and Democratization

33. The Individual Sources of Economic Nationalism: Evidence From Survey Data

Author:
Pablo M. Pinto and Carmen M. Le Foulon
Publication Date:
12-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies
Abstract:
Political leaders in troubled democracies around the world have resorted to an anti-foreign rhetoric to justify the adoption of policies restricting foreign imports, and the free flow of capital and people, allegedly in defense of the national interest. And this rhetoric has resonated positively with large sectors of the electorate in those countries. A similar trend, exploiting a nationalistic sentiment for economic purposes, is observed in campaigns in the United States to buy American. Most studies to date have analyzed the causes and consequences of economic nationalism at the state level. However, there is good reason to believe that sources of economic nationalism should be traced at the individual level: some individuals might be willing to embrace economic nationalism purely on self-interest, yet others will be forced to trade off material and ideational preferences in order to support the national industry. The existence of this tradeoff at the individual level has important implications for coalition formation on trade, investment and migration policy-making. While recent studies suggest that cultural and ideational interests are likely to influence individual attitudes towards trade, one of the central policy dimensions in economic nationalism, the empirical content of the tradeoff between material and non-material preferences remains untested to date. Using data from the International Social Survey Program (ISSP 2003) we explore whether the effect of nationalism on attitudes towards protectionism varies with the individual's position in the economy. We find preliminary evidence that nationalism systematically affects attitudes towards trade in the United States, but less so in the Philippines. We also find that the effect of nationalism is conditional on individuals' skill, or position in the economy.
Topic:
Economics, Nationalism, and Culture
Political Geography:
United States

34. Reputation and War: Explaining the Intractability of Territorial Conflict

Author:
Barbara F. Walter
Publication Date:
04-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies
Abstract:
Between 1940 and 1996, governments were seventy percent less likely to negotiate with rebels seeking independence or greater territorial autonomy than with rebels seeking any other goal. Current theories suggest that this is due to the economic, strategic, or psychological value of territory under dispute. I argue that a government's decision to negotiate has more to do with the signal the government wishes to send to future challengers than with any specific characteristics of the land in question. If the government believes it could face multiple separatist challenges in the future, it will invest in a reputation for toughness now rather than face additional challengers down the road. If the government knows it will face such a challenge only once, there is less reason to invest in a reputation and negotiation is likely to result. An analysis of all self-determination movements between 1940 and 2000 demonstrates that governments of multiethnic states are far less likely to negotiate than are governments that preside over more homogenous populations.
Topic:
Security, Peace Studies, and Politics

35. Democracy and Military Intervention: Challenges and Opportunities

Author:
Daniel Byman
Publication Date:
02-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies
Abstract:
The Bush administration entered office skeptical of using the U.S. military to build democracy. Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's National Security Advisor, wrote before the election that: "The President must remember that the military is a special instrument. It is lethal, and it is meant to be. It is not a civilian police force. It is not a political referee. And it is most certainly not designed to build a civilian society." Despite this skepticism, policing, building a civilian society, and other tasks inherent to democratization were quickly thrust upon the Bush administration. Even before the fall of the Taliban, the United States and its allies began trying to shape a new government to take power in Kabul. And today, as the United States and its allies move to topple Saddam's regime, they are grappling with how to create a stable and democratic future for Iraq.
Topic:
Security, Government, Peace Studies, and Politics
Political Geography:
United States, Iraq, Taliban, and Kabul

36. The Problem with Redundancy Problem: Will more nuclear security forces produce nuclear security?

Author:
Scott D. Sagan
Publication Date:
11-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies
Abstract:
After the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, many scholars, journalists, and public officials expressed fears about the security of nuclear facilities in the United States. Terrorists could attack military bases, weapons in transit, or nuclear weapons production and dismantlement plants in order to steal a weapon or its components. Terrorists might attack nuclear power reactors, nuclear materials storage sites, nuclear waste transportation vehicles, or nuclear research facilities, with two basic motives in mind: to cause a conventional explosion, spreading radioactive materials in the area; or to seize the nuclear materials, which could be used for building either a dirty bomb (a radiological weapon) or, conceivably, a primitive nuclear bomb. These fears were highlighted in President George Bush's January 2002 State of the Union address, in which he reported that diagrams of American nuclear plants were discovered in al-Qaeda hideouts in Afghanistan. Senior U.S. intelligence officials also revealed that Osama bin Laden had sent operatives to try to purchase stolen nuclear materials and that there was “pretty convincing evidence” that al-Qaeda operatives had been “casing” nuclear power plants in the U.S. prior to the September 11th attacks. In January 2002, U.S. intelligence agencies issued a warning, based on an interrogation of a captured terrorist, of a possible attack on a nuclear power plant or Department of Energy (DOE) nuclear weapons facility. Then, in June 2002, the Justice Department announced that it had arrested an American citizen who had joined al-Qaeda in Pakistan and was sent back to the United States to develop and execute a plan to seize nuclear materials and use them in a radiological bomb attack.
Political Geography:
Pakistan, Afghanistan, United States, America, and Middle East

37. Does Conflict Beget Conflict? Explaining Recurrent Civil War

Author:
Barbara F. Walter
Publication Date:
06-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies
Abstract:
This article seeks to explain why some countries experience recurring civil war while others do not. It argues that renewed war has less to do with the attributes of a previous war, as many people have argued, and more to do with the incentives individual citizens have to join rebel groups at any given point in time. Civil wars will have little chance to get off the ground unless individual farmers, shopkeepers, and workers choose to enlist in the rebel armies that are necessary to pursue a war, and enlistment is likely to be attractive when two conditions hold: the status quo for the average citizen is perceived to be worse than the possibility of death in combat, and there is no non-violent outlet for political change. An analysis of all civil wars ending between 1945 and 1996 suggests that improvements in basic living conditions and in the average person's access to political participation have a significant negative effect on the likelihood of renewed war. Countries that are able to increase the economic well-being of their citizenry, and create a more open political system are less likely to experience multiple civil wars regardless of what happened in a previous conflict.
Topic:
Security, Peace Studies, and Politics

38. States, Scarcity, and Civil Strife in the Developing World

Author:
Colin Kahl
Publication Date:
04-1999
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies
Abstract:
Since the early 1990s, the National Security Strategy (NSS) of the United States has identified civil strife in developing countries as an important threat to American interests and pointed to demographic and environmental pressures as potential sources of these conflicts. As the Clinton administration's 1996 NSS notes, “America's security imperatives... have fundamentally changed. The central security challenge of the past half century—the threat of communist expansion—is gone. The dangers we face today are more diverse... [L]arge-scale environmental degradation, exacerbated by rapid population growth, threatens to undermine political stability in many countries and regions.”President Clinton echoed these sentiments in a speech before the United Nations on June 26, 1997, declaring that efforts to preserve the planet's natural resources were “crucial not only for the quality of our individual environments and health, but also to maintain stability and peace within nations and among them.” Similar concerns have been voiced outside Washington. In 1991, for example, then NATO secretary general Manfred Worner argued that “[t]he immense conflict potential building up in the Third World, characterized by growing wealth differentials, an exploding demography, climate shifts and the prospect for environmental disaster, combined with the resource conflicts of the future, cannot be left out of our security calculations...”And, in an influential and particularly apocalyptic article entitled “The Coming Anarchy,” Robert Kaplan went so far as to suggest that the environment was “the national-security issue of the early twenty-first century. The political and strategic impact of surging population, spreading disease, deforestation and soil erosion, water depletion, air pollution, and, possibly, rising sea levels in critical, overcrowded regions... will be the core foreign-policy challenge from which most others will ultimately emanate...”
Topic:
Security, Economics, Environment, International Political Economy, and Third World
Political Geography:
United States, America, and Washington