United States ' Logic Behind Multilateral Peace Building Strategies

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.

In the world today, ideological differences are the root causes of many conflicts between individuals or nations and if allowed to aggravate, it becomes the brush strokes for a canvas that turn out to be the portrait of an all-out warfare. However, before countries engage in militarism, it is prudent that the leadership takes pragmatic steps towards a peaceable resolution because the misconception among architects of conflict is to further private agenda for their personal benefit. In a blind quest for gratification, these benefits are an opportunity cost for the larger society who is the unfortunate recipient of the ensuing anarchy. Nothing is fair in war; casualties caught up within the crossfire

While advocacy of federalism as a tool for managing ethnic conflict continues to grow with respect to a diverse set of cases, its proponents and opponents point to different cases of federal success and failure. However, supposed benefits and no-benefits of federalism have been challenged by both those who argue that federalism exacerbates or mitigates ethnic conflict. This debate about the merits and demerits of post-conflict federalism has reached a deadlock, largely as a consequence of

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

No nation is ever merely able to act at its people’s whim; a system of alliances and treaties has formed over the course of history, and breaking any of those agreements can mean anything from a small conflict to a large-scale war. One such

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.

Conflict, whether between states or within states, is costly. Not only is the event itself costly but it is inefficient because oftentimes the same outcome could’ve been reached without conflict. Yet, conflict still occurs in the international system. If both parties knew what the outcome of a particular conflict would be, they could reach an agreement beforehand to avoid conflict’s high cost. However, predicting the future is not yet possible and so to address this issue, James Fearon developed a bargaining model of war that aims to explain why states so often fail to reach peaceful bargains. Building upon this rationalist explanation for war, Benjamin Valentino discusses the use of mass killing as a rational tool for leaders. Both arguments fail to take into account the individual experience – an experience driven and shaped by emotion. The events in Kosovo in the

This essay analyses the reasoning behind the difficulty of solving intra-state conflicts. First, it examines the nature of Intra-State Conflicts, defining their origins and clarifying the different types. The Arab Spring serves as the case in point to elucidate the problem. Furthermore, it is necessary to describe the role of international actors in preventing as well as solving intra-state conflicts. Interventionism, as a conflict management tool will be empirically assessed. This essay argues that there are still imperialist characteristics in the behaviour of Western States, by emphasising upon NATO foreign policy conducted in response to the Arab Uprising. The biased interventions in intra-state conflict by international actors are highlighted as to why such conflicts are so difficult to resolve. Concluding, it is remarked that ethnic, religious and cultural tension within states, as well the friction between whole civilizations are a significant factor for the complicated nature of intra-state conflicts.

Keller (1997) discusses how internal civil wars rely on military support and arms from across borders. Analysts have long highlighted the relevance of “transboundary formations” that “link global regional, national, and local forces through structures, networks, and discourses that have wide-ranging impact, both benign and malign” (Callaghy, Kassimir & Latham 2001: 5). Non-state actors are able to consolidate their power through their interactions with the international and regional community (Bayart 1993). Mampilly (2011) argues that it is crucial to consider the impact of transnational actors on the behavior of rebel groups as it relates to civilian governance. These relations can bolster non-state actors, including armed groups (Guyer 1994; Ferguson & Gupta 2002). Zahar even argues that because insurgents view themselves as “independent political entities,” they “work to legitimize themselves by interacting with transnational actors” (2001: 60). Mampilly comments that transnational actors support rebel groups by providing them with resources that influence their ability and will to deal with civilian governance (2011: 89). Rebel groups incorporate these transnational actors into their governance systems in order to supplant or supplement their dependence on civilian support, and therefore, their own capacity to provide civilians with goods. And so in general, it is feasible to assume that help drawn from other states will have a damaging effect on civilian governance

Next, I control for several factors that also influence the recurrence of war in a post-conflict society. First, the duration of previous civil wars affects the probability of winning and the amount of time actors must fight to achieve victory should they choose to resume fighting. Previous war duration in years is used to control for this.

Rudolf and Findley (2016) look into whether the fragmentation of combatants throughout civil war has any long lasting effects on the ability of peace following civil wars. they state that the splintering of combatant groups, will produce potential spoiler groups that are neither related nor insignificant in the course of civil war resolution. The connections made with the spoiling and credible commitment literatures, the authors hypothesize that rebel splintering speeds the reappearance of civil wars. The results advocate the need to pay more attention to the dynamics of fragmentation. “For example, governments that attempt to splinter groups or to use existing fragmentations within rebel groups to end a civil war may encourage the unintended

Collier (2003) also argues that economic agendas appear to be central to understanding why civil wars start. Civil wars need both motive and opportunity incentives to start conflicts. However he argues that opportunities are more important in explaining conflicts than motives. I think the new trend to focus on the means of financing conflicts, coupled with the failure of rebel groups to articulate and achieve their objectives, have led to a discourse to find ‘rational’ arguments to dismiss the grievance factor of conflicts as explained by Arowobusoye (2005). I would argue that identity and ethnicity are major factors that are more accurate than the war economies in the instigation of civil wars.

In the pursuit of positive peace for the global community, certain mechanisms are necessary in order to better protect human rights and resolve interstate conflicts. Prior to the events of World War II, a cogent set of laws defining those human rights, much less violations therein were never heard at an international scale. The International Criminal Court has the role as both appellate for justice and voice for peace in the international community but has not yet resolve the contradictory ends of both roles. That contradictory end is that many countries proclaim the necessity of the International Criminal Court as an advocate for conflict resolution and peace advocacy while being resist or outright antagonistic towards the court when their own state has committed those same crimes. To the ends of defending basic universal rights, the International Criminal Court (hereafter ICC) serves that capacity when state level systems cannot or will not act accordingly.

Anarchy, the third principle demarcated by the Oxford Handbook of International Relations, establishes that the absence of an international government provides feeding ground for self-help to accumulate (Oxford, 133). Though NATO and the UN act as international interventionists, they are not an international government, and as much as the United States to assert itself as an international policeman, it does not step its foot into every state’s affairs. Without an international government in place, the Kosovo Albanian Conflict was able to happen. Self-help for all parties was an inevitable aspect of the bloodshed. Kosovars and Serbians alike felt like they were dying and killing for a cause they believed in.