Civil Wars, Insecurity, and Intervention

by Barbara Walter, Jack Snyder

Overview

Since the end of the cold war, a series of costly civil wars, many of them ethnic conflicts, have dominated the international security agenda. The international community, often acting through the United Nations or regional organizations like NATO, has felt compelled to intervene with military forces in many of these conflicts—four of which comprise the heart of this book: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Somalia, Cambodia, and Rwanda. Civil Wars, Insecurity, and Intervention is a detailed examination by a host of distinguished scholars of these recent interventions in order to draw lessons for today's policy debates.

The contributors view ethnic conflict and internal war through the prism of the concept of the security dilemma—a situation in which parties with strong incentives to cooperate wind up nonetheless in bloody competition out of distrust of the opponent. Civil Wars, Insecurity, and Intervention assesses how international intervention can help solve the security dilemma in civil wars by designing political and military arrangements that make security commitments credible to the warring parties. The mixed record of partial successes, failures, and in some cases counterproductive interventions suggests an urgent need to extract lessons with a view toward developing a framework for making future policy choices.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231116275
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	09/22/1999
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Barbara F. Walter is assistant professor of political science at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at the University of California, San Diego.

Jack Snyder is Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Relations and chair of the Political Science Department at Columbia University.

Table of Contents

Part One Civil War and Insecurity
1. Civil War and the Security Dilemma, by Jack Snyder and Robert Jervis
2. Designing Transitions for Violent Civil War, by Barbara F. Walter
Part Two Case Studies
3. Bosnia and Herzegovina: How Not to End Civil War, by Susan L. Woodward
4. Military Intervention in Rwanda's "Two Wars'': Partisanship and Indifference, by Bruce D. Jones
5. Somalia: Civil War and International Intervention, by David D. Laitin
6. War and Peace in Cambodia, by Michael W. Doyle
Part Three Comparative Analyses
7. When All Else Fails: Evaluating Population Transfers and Partition as Solutions to Ethnic Conflict, by Chaim D. Kaufmann
8. The Rationality of Fear: Political Opportunism and Ethnic Conflict, by Rui J. P. de Figueiredo, Jr., and Barry R. Weingast
9. Conclusion, by Barbara F. Walter
Index

What People are Saying About This

Roy Licklider

Civil wars and interventions are right at the top of our foreign policy agenda and are likely to stay there. This book is a product of very intelligent consideration on these issues and is a major contribution to the ongoing foreign policy debates.

— Roy Licklider, professor of political science, Rutgers University

Steven R. David

This is a first-rate collection of superb articles dealing with the causes and cures of internal war. Without exception, each chapter stands by itself as an excellent piece of analysis and is a pleasure to read.

— Steven R. David, professor of political science, John Hopkins University

Donald Rothchild

This intelligent and well-researched volume is an important contribution to the running dialogue on intense ethnic-related conflicts.

— Donald Rothchild, Professor of Political Science, University of California, Davis

Editorial Reviews

This volume is a must for anyone interested in the management of ethnic conflicts as it does a good job of highlighting the difficulties and dilemmas that have to be overcome if interventions are [sic] be more successful in the future than they have been in the past.

International Affairs - Peter Viggo Jakobsen

This volume is a must for anyone interested in the management of ethnic conflicts as it does a good job of highlighting the difficulties and dilemmas that have to be overcome if interventions are [sic] be more successful in the future than they have been in the past.

— Peter Viggo Jakobsen, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

International Affairs

Shows how fear and uncertainty can combine to promote and prolong civil wars, and uncovers conditions in which high levels of fear and uncertainty are likely to emerge within a country and how outside intervention may or may not help manage these issues. Early chapters assess the concept of the security dilemma, analyze why civil war adversaries walk away from peace negotiations, and discuss problems of demobilization and democratization. Later chapters offer four case studies on Bosnia, Rwanda, Somalia, and Cambodia. Final chapters examine the need for physical separation of competing ethnic groups, and consider why average citizens continue to support bloody wars. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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