FINAL EXAM IR - part two of the course
Hoorcollege 11 6 April Lucy Hall: multi-level politics of war
Multi-level
- supranational: Nato, UN security council
- International: NGO’s social movements
- national: elections, control of arms/weapons
- subnational: provincials elections, city governments
- regional: EU, the Americas, African Union
Conceptual definitions of war:
- Bull: War is organized violence carried out by political units against each other
- feminist theories: war and gender are co-constructed, symbolic, and
embodied, it harms bodies.
- Correlates of War (Singer and Small)
- sustained combat involving substantial fatalities. Defining war in terms
of violence. The taking of human life is the defining characteristic. So
deaths are qualified in terms of numbers.
Uppsala Conflict Data Program: main provider of data on organized violence.
- state-based: two governments, two states, going to war (at least 25 battle-
related deaths)
- nonstate: the use of armed forces between two armed groups (at least 25
battle-related deaths)
- one-sided: organized violence against civilians
- Definitions from UCDP have become the gold standard in how conflicts are
defined and studied.
Internationalized armed conflict
Virtually no armed conflict remains confined to the territory of one state, free from
foreign involvement.
Kaldor (1999) on new wars: a contradictory process involving both integration and
fragmentation, homogenization and diversification, globalization and localization.
Old wars:
- actors: regular armed forces
- goals: geopolitical interests or for ideology (democracy/socialism)
- methods: capturing territory through military means
- forms of finance: largely financed by states + taxes
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,The logic of violence in civil war
- onset phase (macro)
- government and opposition fight based on macro cleavages
- violence creates and exacerbates grievances
- war phase (micro)
- violence affects government/rebel territorial control
- civilians have useful information about the loyalties of the population
- In areas of dominant control, selective violence is used to extract information
New wars:
- actors: private security, contractors, paramilitaries, organized crime groups
- goals: identity - national, ethnic, religious
- methods: displacing civilian populations, violence towards civilians to control
territory
- gorms of finance: loot and pillage, diaspora support, smuggling in goods (oil,
gold, diamonds, people, drugs.
Internationalized armed conflict
Virtually no armed conflict remains confined to the territory of one state, free from
foreign involvement.
Kalyvas (2003)
subject The ontology of political violence: Action and Identity in Civil Wars
Claim Civil war fosters interaction among actors with distinct identities and
interests. It is the convergence of local motives and supralocal
imperatives that endows civil war with its particular character and leads
to joint violence that straddles the divide between the political and
the private,
the collective and the individual. Rather than posit a dichotomy between
greed and grievances, I point to the interaction between political and
private identities and actions. To understand violence, one has to take
into account local cleavages.
Arguments Often local cleavages are preexisting without being grafted onto the master
cleavage. War may generate new local cleavages because power shifts at the
local level upset delicate arrangements. Local cleavages may be compatible
both with an escalation of violence, as competing factions try to gain
advantage, and with moderation, as they have the means to strike local deals.
Evidence suggests that a key motive is settling private underscores
unrelated to the war master’s cleavage.
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, definitions Alliance (linking center and periphery): entails a transaction between
supralocal and local actors, whereby the former supply the latter with
external muscle, thus allowing them to win decisive local advantage; in
exchange the former rely on local conflicts to recruit and motivate
supporters and obtain local control, resources, and information
For local actors this is a means rather than a goal. (means for local
advantage)
Grievance: The feeling within a group that they are disadvantaged within a
central government. The feeling of getting the better of a conflict.
Greed: more wealth, power.
Overig
Kaldor (2013)
subject New and Old wars, Organised violence in a global era
Argument The new wars arise in the context of the erosion of the
autonomy of the state and, the disintegration of the state. In
particular, the erosion of the monopoly of legitimate organized
violence. The capacity of states to use force unilaterally
against other states has been weakened. This is due to
privatization, international norms, and military integration. The
goals of the new wars are about identity politics in contrast to
the geo-political or ideological goals of earlier wars.
3 characteristics of new warfare
- The new wars are about identity politics (see definition)
- Changed mode of warfare: guerilla warfare and
counter-insurgency. In old wars, the goal was to
capture territory by military means. In guerilla
warfare, the territory is captured through
political control of the population → gruesome
violence to create fear and conflict.
- The new globalized war economy: decentralized,
participation in war is low, unemployment is high.
Although the new wars are concentrated in Africa, Eastern
Europa and Asia, they are a global phenomenon, not just
because of the presence of global networks, or because they
are reported globally. There isn’t a bipolar or multipolar world
order on the basis of identity anymore.
Clausewitz on old wars: three different tendencies.
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