Cost Benefit Analysis of Third-Party Intervention in Intrastate Conflict

His approach attempts to consider deeper causes of intrastate violence than traditional case-studies have done (Newman 2014, 63). Newman identifies four general types of civil war: ethnic, political-ideological, weakened or failed state, and resource-based (Newman 2014, 63-65). Most intrastate conflicts can be characterized by a combination of these classifications and their influences. Newman defines four loose requirements for a conflict to be considered using this model. First, a conflict must mainly occur within the borders of an internationally recognized state to be considered “civil” rather than interstate (Newman 2014, 62). Secondly, civil wars are fought between organized groups rather than individuals or unorganized affiliates (Newman 2014, 62). Governmental military forces fit this mold, but are not required for a conflict to be deemed as intrastate. Third, there must be evidence of sustained violence. Newman defines this threshold as 1,000 fatalities (Newman 2014, 62). Last, belligerents must be fighting with a political objective in mind (Newman 2014, 62). This requirement is given a wide range of applicability, as almost any objectives of a group can be defined as political. The Nigerian civil war of the late 1960s fits all of these parameters, and can therefore be analyzed using the typologic system devised by

Throughout history, our world has constantly been bruised and battered by civil turmoil. Today, the civil war in Syria decimates the country; the Israeli and Palestinian conflict rages on; tens of thousands of people have been killed in South Sudan's ongoing civil war. It is not always easy to isolate what exactly ignites the flames of war, but, whenever possible, finding a workable, calm and satisfying solution to a potential uprising is preferable.

War is not a common phenomenon anymore after the post cold war era. According a research conducted on active armed conflict across the world at the Uppsala University in Sweden, of all the 101 active armed conflicted between the late 80s and mid 90s, only six were actually between two different states (Solenberg &Wallensteen, 1997). These statistics clearly indicates that the conflict in today's world is more internal and ethnic based.

Carl von Clausewitz stated that “the value of [the] object must determine the sacrifices to be made for it in magnitude and also in duration.” (Clausewitz, 92) With that maxim in mind, it makes strategic sense for an outside power to intervene in an insurgency when it supports the power’s policy objective and the cost of the intervention does not exceed the value of the object.

In the international arena, there is no hierarchical rule to keep states in line or behaved; meaning that the international system is constantly in anarchy, aka the state of nature. This lack of rule enforcement puts states in a constant state of war, in a constant state where they need to stay on guard and in a tactical advantage otherwise the safety and well being of their state will be in jeopardy. In this scenario, the state’s number one priority is to protect itself and act in its self interest when need be, despite if it would typically be deemed immoral. (Donnelly 20)

The parties involved in many civil wars are often not just limited to the country in which the war is actually taking place. Often, other countries will give aid to one side of the conflict or even involve their own military forces. Recent examples of such occurrences include Russian, American, and Turkish involvement in the present Syrian Civil War and the NATO bombing campaign during the Kosovo War. These countries expend massive amounts of resources and lose great numbers of troops in these conflicts often to uncertain ends. This begs the question: Why do foreign powers involve themselves in the civil wars of other countries? It is possible that such interventions occur because the intervening party believes that they could make strategic gains by doing so. Another theory is that countries intervene when they feel that there is a moral obligation to get involved in the conflict (Kim 2012, 19). However, even when circumstances seem to be in favor of a foreign power intervening, they do not involve themselves. This paper will test these hypotheses by examining the intervention by the United States and Russia primarily in the current Syrian Civil War and attempt to discern their motives for

The purpose of this essay is to inform on the similarities and differences between systemic and domestic causes of war. According to World Politics by Jeffry Frieden, David Lake, and Kenneth Schultz, systemic causes deal with states that are unitary actors and their interactions with one another. It can deal with a state’s position within international organizations and also their relationships with other states. In contract, domestic causes of war pertain specifically to what goes on internally and factors within a state that may lead to war. Wars that occur between two or more states due to systemic and domestic causes are referred to as interstate wars.

The following wars have been divided between 1.) Wars caused by ethnic issues and 2.) Wars not caused by ethnic issues. After determining the cause of war, I will focus on particular aspects of the war predominantly the death toll, how long the war lasted, if core states got involved in the conflict and if so how far removed were they from the region of conflict. Finally and most importantly, I will compare and contrast the two types of wars (1.) Wars caused by ethnic conflict and 2.) Wars not caused by ethnic conflict) and determine how these wars were ultimately resolved. More specifically, I am determining if wars caused by ethic issues are resolved by internal means or whether they are resolved by external factors such as core states or states that have an invested interest in the matter.

In Somalia, the U.S. withdrew its forces after losing eighteen Rangers. In Rwanda, genocidal Hutus deterred Western intervention by killing ten Belgian soldiers. In Bosnia, compellence clearly failed against Milosovic, who continued his policy of ethnic cleansing of Albanians in Bosnia despite Western threats. Pushed by Western public opinion, NATO finally screwed up its courage to intervene, but then failed to go after known war criminals because of the vulnerability of its lightly armed forces, whose primary mission was the distribution of aid (Freedman:124-25). There is an important lesson here, and one that has been consistently ignored by theorists of threat-based strategies. It has to do with the ability to inflict pain versus the willingness to suffer it. As we observed, Schelling and American policymakers ignored the latter in Indochina, concentrating only on how much damage they could inflict on North Vietnam and the Viet Cong. The U.S. lost the war because its Vietnamese opponents were willing to accept far more suffering than the American people. This phenomenon is equally pronounced today. Self-deterrence, in effect, prevented intervention in Rwanda and stalled it for a long time in the former Yugoslavia. It did not have this effect in Afghanistan and Iraq, where the Bush administration grossly underestimated its costs and

Secondly, the motivation for war in pursuit of honor was alleviated through the formalization of international diplomacy and the evolution of beliefs about human rights. Lastly, we reviewed how the pursuit of self-interests, specifically security and resources, continues to serve a motivator for conflict, but primarily between those states operating outside of the current international order. So what are the implications of this argument for the future? The way in which we choose to manage the self-interests of states is of utmost importance. There is either the potential to reduce self-interests as a motivator for war, or the potential to erode the previous reduction of fear as a motivator. The current international order has prevented great-power war for over 70 years. There have been conflicts motivated by self-interests, but they pale in comparison to the death and destruction of the world wars. As threats to security arise and resources are restrained, states have the option to work within the system to meet them or pursue them by other

Diverse personal encounters with non-state armed actors animate my research agenda, and I seek to discern the meaning of a picture formed by pieces of a puzzle collected during my years of military service. As a peacekeeper in Kosovo, I witnessed how a random rifle shot could spark a series of reprisals across invisible lines that separated villages. My soldiers and I were almost powerless to stop them. On one hand, our legal mandate prevented our ability to take direct action. One the other, we understood so little about our adversaries we did not fully know which action to take. Subsequent experiences leading soldiers during counterinsurgency efforts in both Iraq and Afghanistan immersed me again in the turmoil created by overlapping networks of non-state armed groups competing for economic, social, and political power. Each incident revealed another piece of the puzzle, but the picture it formed remained unclear. I started to wonder if the pieces actually fit, or if I was putting them together incorrectly.

In Out of the Mountains, David Kilcullen (2013) identifies and analyzes four of the variables which he believes will shape the character of warfare and conflict in the future. His study of these trends structure a system of security studies that incorporate non-state and unknown actors, as well as unorganized groups and cultural influences into conflict examination. It also allows for the consideration of economic, historical, and developing information while studying warfare. Kilcullen (2013) coins this system of analysis as his “Theory of Competitive Control.” This theory moves beyond the tactical focus that his earlier works exhibited and takes a deeper look at how peace-keeping strategies will be required to evolve as time passes and

In the modern world, politics and war are connected in an important way. Political competition has led to civil wars in many countries. Moreover, political interference from developed countries has led to political instability in foreign countries. For example, in the recent past the world has witnessed political crisis some Arab countries such as Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and Libya. In each of these countries, war has led to loss of lives and property. Considering the political instability in these countries, we should ask ourselves: was there an aspect of external interference from developed countries? Well, credible sources indicate that the political instability in the said Arab counties was as a result of foreign policies of some developed countries. In this case, the idea was to create democratic countries in the affected countries since most of these countries were ruled by dictators (Buterbaugh, Neil, Calin &Theresa 7).

In order to test this hypothesis properly, multiple steps and measures needed to be taken to ensure that the data procured was not only accurate but also pertinent to the study. The first of these steps was to establish a standardized definition of what actually determines what is and what is not an intrastate war. As a result of many differing definitions of what constitutes a civil war, information was gathered from the Correlates of War organization. The organizations defines an intrastate conflict which, “must meet same definitional requirements of all wars in that the war must involve sustained combat, involving organized armed forces, resulting in a minimum of 1,000 battle-related combatant fatalities within a twelve month period,” (Sarkees). The researchers for the Correlates of War went further in their definition by providing the requirements that both sides must be organized and provide “resistance” to one another (Sarkees). This attempts to differentiate civil wars from other violent acts such as massacres, genocides, or coup d’états.

1. International conflict among countries is more likely of what we may think. Today there are many different ongoing conflicts. International conflict is a stage of opposition, disagreement or incompatibility between two or more states (Malek). The term "international conflict" referred to conflicts between different nations and conflicts between people and organizations in different nations (Mr. Turetzky lec 11). It also applies to inter-group conflicts within one country when one group is fighting for independence or increased social, political, or economic power. International conflicts can be divided into two branches: private international conflict and public international conflict. A private international conflict is a disagreement