While competitive intervention perpetuated hegemonic instability, cooperative and co-optative intervention seemed to lead the country in the direction of illiberal democracy, in which greater hegemonic stability exists and may persist for some time."--BOOK JACKET.

This book identifies the conditions under which foreign countries intervene in civil wars, contending that we should consider four dimensions of civil war intervention. The first dimension is the civil war itself. The characteristics of the civil war itself are important determinants of a third party’s decision making regarding intervention. The second dimension is the characteristics of intervening states, and includes their capabilities and domestic political environments. The third is the relationship between the host country and the intervening country. These states’ formal alliances and the differences in military capability between the target country and the potential intervener have an impact on the decision making process. The fourth dimension is the relationship between the interveners. This framework of four dimensions proves critical in understanding foreign intervention in civil wars. Based on this framework, the model for the intervention mechanism can reflect reality better. By including the relationships between the interveners here, the book shows that it is important to distinguish between intervention on the side of the government and intervention on behalf of the opposition. Without distinguishing between these, it is impossible to consider the concepts of counter-intervention and bandwagoning intervention.

This dissertation explores two interrelated puzzles about external intervention and internal war. The first asks why rebels, governments, and third party interveners often continue to invest in costly and protracted conflicts rather than sue for peace and a negotiated settlement. The second considers the consequences of these behaviors for temporal variation in the average duration and global prevalence of civil wars. A central finding that emerges concerns the critical role of competitive intervention-two sided, simultaneous military assistance from different third party states to both government and rebel combatants-in the dynamics and intractability of civil wars across time and around the globe. Developing a generalizable theory of competitive intervention, the dissertation explains the distortionary effects this form of external meddling has on domestic bargaining processes, describes the unique strategic dilemmas it entails for third party interveners, and links its varying prevalence to international systemic change. In doing so, it moves beyond popular anecdotes about "proxy wars" by deriving theoretically-grounded propositions about the strategic logics motivating competitive intervention in civil wars. It also uncovers a heretofore overlooked feature of this form of intervention-namely, that "not losing" is often more important than "winning" from the perspective of third party interveners under the shadow of inadvertent escalation. The theory is tested with a mixed-method design that combines statistical analyses of all civil wars fought between 1975 and 2009 with detailed case studies of competitive intervention in Angola (1975-1991) and Afghanistan (1979-1992). The dissertation's theoretical and empirical results shed new light on the international dimensions of civil war, address ongoing debates concerning the utility of intervention as a conflict management tool, and inform policy prescriptions aimed at resolving some of today's most violent internal conflicts.

Since the end of the Cold War, the international community, and the USA in particular, has intervened in a series of civil conflicts around the world. In a number of cases, where actions such as economic sanctions or diplomatic pressures have failed, military interventions have been undertaken. This 1999 book examines four US-sponsored interventions (Panama, Somalia, Haiti and Bosnia), focusing on efforts to reconstruct the state which have followed military action. Such nation-building is vital if conflict is not to recur. In each of the four cases, Karin von Hippel considers the factors which led the USA to intervene, the path of military intervention, and the nation-building efforts which followed. The book seeks to provide a greater understanding of the successes and failures of US policy, to improve strategies for reconstruction, and to provide some insight into the conditions under which intervention and nation-building are likely to succeed.