Since the end of the Cold War, a series of costly civil wars, many of them ethnic conflicts, have dominated the international security agenda. This volume offers a detailed examination of four recent interventions by the international community.

Since the end of the Cold War, a series of costly civil wars, many of them ethnic conflicts, have dominated the international security agenda. This volume offers a detailed examination of four recent interventions by the international community.

Why do some civil wars end in successfully implemented peace settlements while others are fought to the finish? Numerous competing theories address this question. Yet not until now has a study combined the historical sweep, empirical richness, and conceptual rigor necessary to put them thoroughly to the test and draw lessons invaluable to students, scholars, and policymakers. Using data on every civil war fought between 1940 and 1992, Barbara Walter details the conditions that lead combatants to partake in what she defines as a three-step process--the decision on whether to initiate negotiations, to compromise, and, finally, to implement any resulting terms. Her key finding: rarely are such conflicts resolved without active third-party intervention. Walter argues that for negotiations to succeed it is not enough for the opposing sides to resolve the underlying issues behind a civil war. Instead the combatants must clear the much higher hurdle of designing credible guarantees on the terms of agreement--something that is difficult without outside assistance. Examining conflicts from Greece to Laos, China to Columbia, Bosnia to Rwanda, Walter confirms just how crucial the prospect of third-party security guarantees and effective power-sharing pacts can be--and that adversaries do, in fact, consider such factors in deciding whether to negotiate or fight. While taking many other variables into account and acknowledging that third parties must also weigh the costs and benefits of involvement in civil war resolution, this study reveals not only how peace is possible, but probable.

Attempts to resolve why self-determination disputes between governments and ethnic minorities so often result in civil war.

There is a real security gap in the world today. Millions of people in regions like the Middle East or East and Central Africa or Central Asia where new wars are taking place live in daily fear of violence. Moreover new wars are increasingly intertwined with other global risks the spread of disease, vulnerability to natural disasters, poverty and homelessness. Yet our security conceptions, drawn from the dominant experience of World War II and based on the use of conventional military force, do not reduce that insecurity; rather they make it worse. This book is an exploration of this security gap. It makes the case for a new approach to security based on a global conversation- a public debate among civil society groups and individuals as well as states and international institutions. The chapters follow on from Kaldors path breaking analysis of the character of new wars in places like the Balkans or Africa during the 1990s. The first four chapters provide a context; they cover the experience of humanitarian intervention, the nature of American power, the new nationalist and religious movements that are associated with globalization, and how these various aspects of current security dilemmas have played out in the Balkans. The last three chapters are more normative, dealing with the evolution of the idea of global civil society, the relevance of just war theory in a global era, and the concept of human security and what it might mean to implement such a concept. This book will appeal to all those interested in issues of peace and conflict, in particular to students of politics and international relations.

This volume seeks to understand the central role of governments in intra-state conflicts.The book explores how the government in any society plays two pivotal roles: as a deterrent against those who would use violence; and as a potential danger to the society. These roles come into conflict with each other, as those governments that can best deter

This book compares post-civil war societies to look at the presence or absence of organized violence, analysing why some ex-combatants return to organised violence and others do not. Even though former fighters have been identified as a major source of insecurity, there have been few efforts to systematically examine why some ex-combatants re-engage in organized violence, while others do not. This book compares the presence or absence of organized violence in different ex-combatant communities – former fighters that used to belong to the same armed faction and who share a common, horizontal identity based on shared war-and peacetime experiences – in the Republic of Congo (ex-Cobras, Cocoyes and Ninjas) and Sierra Leone (ex-Armed Forces Revolutionary Council, Civil Defense Force and Revolutionary United Front). The main determinants of ex-combatant violence are whether former fighters have access to elites and to second-tier individuals – such as former mid-level commanders – who can act as intermediaries between the two. By utilizing relationships based on selective incentives and social networks, these two kinds of remobilizers are able to generate the needed enticements and feelings of affinity, trust or fear to convince ex-combatants to resort to arms. These findings demonstrate that the outbreak of ex-combatant violence can only be understood by more clearly incorporating an actor perspective, focusing on three levels of analysis: the elite, midlevel and grass-root. This book will be of much interest to students of peacebuilding, civil wars, post-conflict reconstruction, war and conflict studies, security studies and IR.