“New” and “Old” Civil Wars: A Valid Distinction?

2001 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stathis N. Kalyvas
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Popular Support ◽  
Per Se ◽  
The Cold War

This article questions the prevalent argument that civil wars have fundamentally changed since the end of the cold war. According to this argument, “new” civil wars are different from “old” civil wars along at least three related dimensions—they are caused and motivated by private predation rather than collective grievances and ideological concerns; the parties to these conflicts lack popular support and must rely on coercion; and gratuitous, barbaric violence is dispensed against civilian populations. Recent civil wars, therefore, are distinguished as criminal rather than political phenomena. This article traces the origins of this distinction and argues that it is based on an uncritical adoption of categories and labels, combined with deficient information on “new” civil wars and neglect of recent historical research on “old” civil wars. Perceived differences between post—cold war conflicts and previous civil wars may be attributable more to the demise of readily available conceptual categories caused by the end of the cold war than to the end of the cold war per se.

scholarly journals Leadership Emergence and Style: Fidel Castro of Cuba

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-82
Author(s):  
Albert Poliquen Mbiatem
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Leadership Effectiveness ◽  
Equal Opportunities ◽  
Societal Transformation ◽  
Leadership Emergence ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Popular Support ◽  
Fidel Castro ◽  
Leadership Process ◽  
The Cold War

This study examines Fidel Castro’s leadership emergence and style in Cuba with reference to the situation, goals sought, leadership process and the outcomes.  The emergence of Fidel Castro was underpinned by the qualities he exhibited and significant popular support he enjoyed from different strata of the society. Transforming a pre-revolutionary corrupt, oppressive and discriminatory system by creating equal opportunities for everyone was the main objective of Fidel Castro’s led revolution in Cuba. Despite some efforts toward societal transformation, Cubans were divided over the achievements of the revolution. While some expressed positive views about Fidel Castro’s initiated socialism, others described it as a source of frustration.  Findings reveal that the level of leadership effectiveness under Fidel Castro was largely attained through a variety of styles used to address different situations. The resilient abilities Fidel Castro shared with followers could enable socialist Cuba survive the Cold War and the post-Cold War eras.

scholarly journals Cartography of Mangled Minds: Mazen Maarouf’s Jokes for the Gunmen

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (12) ◽  
pp. 141-153
Author(s):  
Judith Sebastian Kurishumoottil Manalil
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Domestic Spaces ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Special Operations ◽  
Conflict Zone ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Private Domain ◽  
The Impact

“Power was the most important subject, as far as we were concerned, during the war” (6). The 20th century was dominated by the two World Wars, the Cold War and the post-Cold War conflicts. The 21st century appears to be no better. Just two decades into the new millennium and we are already experiencing the tremors of outbreaks across the globe, notably referred to as terrorism, ethnic conflict, civil wars and hybrid and special operations warfare. These nonstate, intrastate, and interstate violence have had an impact on the lives of millions of people. It is in this context that Booker longlisted work Jokes for the Gunmen (2019) by the Palestinian-Icelandic author Mazen Maarouf may be read.   Maarouf weaves together twelve stories that offer a kaleidoscope of insights on the impact of war on the civilian population.  Jokes for the Gunmen is grounded in a conflict zone that is for the most part unspecified, except in the “Gramophone” where it is Lebanon (55) while in “Juan and Ausa” it is Spain. Thus the narratives are universalized to reinforce the idea that war is an act of violence against the global citizen and everybody and everywhere is its target. The characters are never given names except for Hossam in “Other –People’s –Dreams - Syndrome” and Juan and Ausa in the eponymous story. This buttresses the design of the universality of the narratives. The author seems to drive home the fact that no one can claim immunity from war and this becomes only too obvious with the narrative space being inundated with fatalities. Again, as we march along the narratives, we find that the boundaries between combatants and civilians, battlefronts and domestic spaces have almost blurred. Everyone is now at the combat zone and the combat zone is everywhere. The private domain of the hearth and the home that once signified security and well-being has also been transformed into dangerous territory.    

Reputation in Deterrence and Decision-Making

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vesna Danilovic ◽  
Joe Clare ◽  
Colin Tucker
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Strategic Issues ◽  
Past Behavior ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Large N ◽  
Quantitative Analyses ◽  
The Cold War

Reputation in the context of international relations is an actor’s attribute as assessed by others from its past behavior. Interest in how reputational concerns can affect the dynamics of conflict arose in the canonical works by Schelling and the subsequent wave of deterrence research. Concerned primarily with the Cold War strategic issues, with some exceptions such as Huth who in 1988 analyzed it in the broader historical scope, scholarly attention to the role of reputation declined in the immediate post-Cold War period only to resurge in the 21st century. The last two decades witnessed a renaissance that resulted in unpacking the notion of reputation into several types and examining its influence in a number of areas, ranging from deterrence, compellence, to other types of militarized conflicts, civil wars, alliance choices, and sanctions, as well as issues of compliance with international commitments in institutional and cooperative studies. In such richness of research, the role of reputation in deterrence and strategic conflict in general, where it originated, still draws the largest amount of research as well as controversies. Besides several different conceptual and theoretical approaches, especially in the rationalist and psychological literature, there is methodological diversity as well, encompassing formal-theoretic models, large-N quantitative analyses, and survey experiments.

Land of Blue Helmets

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Arab World ◽  
International Conflicts ◽  
Member States ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Past ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Political Mediation

Born in 1945, the United Nations (UN) came to life in the Arab world. It was there that the UN dealt with early diplomatic challenges that helped shape its institutions such as peacekeeping and political mediation. It was also there that the UN found itself trapped in, and sometimes part of, confounding geopolitical tensions in key international conflicts in the Cold War and post-Cold War periods, such as hostilities between Palestine and Iraq and between Libya and Syria. Much has changed over the past seven decades, but what has not changed is the central role played by the UN. This book's claim is that the UN is a constant site of struggle in the Arab world and equally that the Arab world serves as a location for the UN to define itself against the shifting politics of its age. Looking at the UN from the standpoint of the Arab world, this volume includes chapters on the potential and the problems of a UN that is framed by both the promises of its Charter and the contradictions of its member states.

Worse Than a Monolith

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas J. Christensen
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Burden Sharing ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Coercive Diplomacy ◽  
Regional Conflicts ◽  
Security Relations ◽  
Opposing Camp ◽  
The Cold War

In brute-force struggles for survival, such as the two world wars, disorganization and divisions within an enemy alliance are to one's own advantage. However, most international security politics involve coercive diplomacy and negotiations short of all-out war. This book demonstrates that when states are engaged in coercive diplomacy—combining threats and assurances to influence the behavior of real or potential adversaries—divisions, rivalries, and lack of coordination within the opposing camp often make it more difficult to prevent the onset of regional conflicts, to prevent existing conflicts from escalating, and to negotiate the end to those conflicts promptly. Focusing on relations between the Communist and anti-Communist alliances in Asia during the Cold War, the book explores how internal divisions and lack of cohesion in the two alliances complicated and undercut coercive diplomacy by sending confusing signals about strength, resolve, and intent. In the case of the Communist camp, internal mistrust and rivalries catalyzed the movement's aggressiveness in ways that we would not have expected from a more cohesive movement under Moscow's clear control. Reviewing newly available archival material, the book examines the instability in relations across the Asian Cold War divide, and sheds new light on the Korean and Vietnam wars. While recognizing clear differences between the Cold War and post-Cold War environments, the book investigates how efforts to adjust burden-sharing roles among the United States and its Asian security partners have complicated U.S. security relations with the People's Republic of China since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Truth to Power

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Policy Issue ◽  
International Terrorism ◽  
Intelligence Community ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government ◽  
Intelligence Support ◽  
The Cold War

This first-ever history of the US National Intelligence Council (NIC) is told through the reflections of its eight chairs in the period from the end of the Cold War until 2017. Coeditors Robert Hutchings and Gregory Treverton add a substantial introduction placing the NIC in its historical context going all the way back to the Board of National Estimates in the 1940s, as well as a concluding chapter that highlights key themes and judgments. The historic mission of this remarkable but little-understood organization is strategic intelligence assessment in service of senior American foreign policymakers. It has been at the center of every critical foreign policy issue during the period covered by this volume: helping shape America’s post–Cold War strategies, confronting sectarian conflicts around the world, meeting the new challenge of international terrorism, and now assessing the radical restructuring of the global order. Each chapter places its particular period of the NIC’s history in context (the global situation, the administration, the intelligence community) and assesses the most important issues with which the NIC grappled during the period, acknowledging failures as well as claiming successes. With the creation of the director of national intelligence in 2005, the NIC’s mission mushroomed to include direct intelligence support to the main policymaking committees in the government. The mission shift took the NIC directly into the thick of the action but may have come at the expense of weakening its historic role of providing over-the horizon strategic analysis.

Italy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabrizio Coticchia
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Literature Review ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
First Century ◽  
Military Interventions ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
The World ◽  
The Cold War

Since the end of the bipolar era, Italy has regularly undertaken military interventions around the world, with an average of 8,000 units employed abroad in the twenty-first century. Moreover, Italy is one of the principal contributors to the UN operations. The end of the cold war represented a turning point for Italian defence, allowing for greater military dynamism. Several reforms have been approved, while public opinion changed its view regarding the armed forces. This chapter aims to provide a comprehensive perspective of the process of transformation that occurred in post-cold-war Italian defence, looking at the evolution of national strategies, military doctrines, and the structure of forces. After a brief literature review, the study highlights the process of transformation of Italian defeshnce policy since 1989. Through primary and secondary sources, the chapter illustrates the main changes that occurred, the never-ending cold-war legacies, and key challenges.

Peaceful Change in Northeast Asia: Maintaining the “Minimal Peace”

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bhubhindar Singh
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Northeast Asia ◽  
Institutional Structure ◽  
Economic Interdependence ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Liberal Internationalism ◽  
The Us ◽  
Regional Order ◽  
The Cold War

Northeast Asia is usually associated with conflict and war. Out of the five regional order transitions from the Sinocentric order to the present post–Cold War period, only one was peaceful, the Cold War to post–Cold War transition. In fact, the peaceful transition led to a state of minimal peace in post–Cold War Northeast Asia. As the chapter discusses, this was due to three realist-liberal factors: America’s hegemonic role, strong economic interdependence, and a stable institutional structure. These factors not only ensured development and prosperity but also mitigated the negative effects of political and strategic tensions between states. However, this minimal peace is in danger of unraveling. Since 2010, the region is arguably in the early stages of another transition fueled by the worsening Sino-US competition. While the organizing ideas of liberal internationalism—economic interdependence and institutional building—will remain resilient, whether or not minimal peace is sustainable will be determined by the outcome of the US-China competition.

scholarly journals Sad delusions: The decline and rise of Greater Europe

2021 ◽  
pp. 187936652199975
Author(s):  
Richard Sakwa
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Order ◽  
Berlin Wall ◽  
Mikhail Gorbachev ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Fundamental Tension ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
West European

The end of the Cold War was accompanied by the idea that the fall of the Berlin Wall represented the beginning of the unification of Europe. Mikhail Gorbachev talked in terms of a “Common European Home,” an idea that continues in the guise of the project for a “Greater Europe.” However, right from the start, the transformative idea of Greater Europe was countered by the notion of “Europe whole and free,” whose fundamental dynamic was the enlargement of the existing West European order to encompass the rest of the continent. This was a program for the enlargement of the Atlantic system. After some prevarication, the enlargement agenda proved unacceptable to Moscow, and while it continues to argue in favor of transformation its main efforts are now devoted to creating some sort of “greater Eurasia.” There remains a fundamental tension between Atlanticist and pan-continental version of the post-–Cold War international order in the region. This tension gave rise to conflict and war: in 2008 (the Russo-Georgian War) and again from 2014 (Ukraine), and to what some call the Second Cold War. The continent is once again divided. However, pan-continentalism is far from dead, and although Greater Eurasian ideas have thrived, some sort of Greater European continentalism remains on the agenda. Is this, though, no more than a “sad delusion” or a genuine possibility?

Cold-War Commons: Tragedy, Critique, and the Future of the Illiberal Problem Space

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 457-488
Author(s):  
Monica Eppinger
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Problem Space ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Social Theories ◽  
The Commons ◽  
Political Dimensions ◽  
A Site ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Property Regimes

Abstract Major twentieth-century social theories like socialism and liberalism depended on property as an explanatory principle, prefiguring a geopolitical rivalry grounded in differing property regimes. This article examines the Cold War as an under-analyzed context for the idea of “the tragedy of the commons.” In Soviet practice, collectivization was meant to provide the material basis for cultivating particular forms of sociability and an antidote to the ills of private property. Outsiders came to conceptualize it as tragic in both economic and political dimensions. Understanding the commons as a site of tragedy informed Western “answers” to the “problem” of Soviet collective ownership when the Cold War ended. Privatization became a mechanism for defusing old tragedies, central to a post-Cold War project of advancing “market democracy.” Meanwhile, the notion of an “illiberal commons” stands ready for redeployment in future situations conceived as tragically problematic.

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