International Armed Conflict Since 1945

A Bibliographic Handbook Of Wars And Military Interventions

Herbert K. Tillema

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9780429715099
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

International Armed Conflict Since 1945 is a bibliographic handbook that briefly describes each of 269 international wars and other war-threatening conflicts occurring between 1945 and 1988..

Part One
Introduction

1
Introduction

Armed conflict pervades contemporary international relations. Frequent local and regional wars and military interventions that end just short of war repeatedly challenge the recent semblance of world peace. Nearly every world region has been afflicted since 1945. Most except the smallest states have forcibly intervened within foreign lands upon some occasion. A majority of independent states and non-selfgoverning territories have been recent targets of foreign military force at one time or another, including nearly all of the Third World.

Recent wars are noteworthy despite their ostensible limitations. The Korean War is believed to have killed more soldiers than any prior international encounter except World War I and World War II and contributed by memorable example to ensuing global belligerence between the "communist bloc" and the "free world". Millions died also during the Second Indochina War which dominated the world diplomatic agenda for more than a decade. Other major wars, including repeated conflicts between Israel and her neighbors and between India and Pakistan, have forcibly redefined the political geography of world regions.

Little wars and armed conflicts short of war are often important in themselves and are always significant for what they might become. Modern wars evolve. They do not, as did Pallas Athena, emerge fully grown and armor-clad from the brow of Zeus. Local wars typically begin with small engagements. Regional wars grow from local wars. World wars expand from regional wars. States aim toward war, whether or not they mean to do so, whenever they employ force within foreign lands. They do so frequently and the consequence is not always easily controlled. Serious local resistance, counterattack, or counterintervention by third parties can quickly enlarge an initially isolated affair. Global conflagration has been avoided since World War II but force and war are still widespread. Why states resort to force and how war is contained represent crucial questions in the nuclear era. It would help to know how major wars compare to little wars and to wars that might have been.

In one sense wars may be said to evolve through crises.¹ Costs and risks associated with war are too obvious and too great for most statesmen to embrace them casually. Conflicts among basic values and threats, real or imagined, often presage use of force. Crisis is ubiquitous within international relations, however. A short list of famous crises includes only a few of the many occasions when war was near. States threaten war and risk war whenever they forcibly intervene within foreign domains.

War and intervention are sometimes misrepresented as entirely separate phenomena. Such sharp distinction is due in part to anachronistic legalisms inherited from the nineteenth century. Legal publicists used to condemn unsanctioned interference among states that enjoyed normal diplomatic relations while at the same time tolerating the same or worse within a declared or otherwise rightful "state of war".² Artificial notions of a "state of war" are no longer commonly accepted: war is war without regard to legal niceties; and the same is true of intervention. War in the practical sense is simply destructive combat involving regular military forces.³ International war, as opposed to civil warfare, includes at least one combatant clearly representing a foreign power. Intervention represents intrusive behavior both within and without war.⁴ One form of it, overt military intervention, is essential to contemporary international war.

Overt Military Intervention

The hallmark of all contemporary international wars and of all conflicts immediately threatening international war is overt military intervention. Overt military intervention represents direct military operations openly undertaken by a state's regular military forces within foreign lands in such a manner as to risk immediate combat, hence war, merely if they encounter armed resistance. One may assume today that overt military intervention represents a deliberately authorized act of state. It is also a necessary condition for contemporary international war. Moreover, given that regular military forces are almost universally controlled by individual states today, overt military intervention is now a necessary condition for international war.

Military intervention is seldom ambiguous today as it may occasionally have been in the past. States can and do immediately control distant military forces, in part through electronic communications. The geographical boundaries of individual states are generally well-defined and nearly every spot of land is recognized as part of some state or state dependency. Such private or irregular armies as still exist are generally recognized as such and are seldom capable of waging war far from their home bases. These conditions did not necessarily prevail until the twentieth century, which may help to explain the eighteenth century European practice of declaring war (previously practiced also within ancient Greece) in order to help tell friend from foe. It is no longer necessary to declare war in order to demonstrate responsibility for regular military operations and few states continue to do so.

Contemporary states have more ready means to intervene than in the distant past. Modern technology permits far-flung operations by commandos, aircraft, and ground-based or sea-based artillery and rocketry as well as facilitates distant deployment of ground armies. Nevertheless, overt military intervention is readily recognizable within contemporary international society. It represents all combatready foreign military operations undertaken by regular military forces and only such operations. It includes all ground deployments of regular combat units abroad that involve direct operations such as alert patrol, offensive maneuver, riot quelling, armed seizure of territory, and battle. It includes also commando raids and other combatant small-unit actions, aerial attacks, ground-based artillery and rocketry, and naval bombardment if undertaken by regular foreign military forces. All such operations within any foreign state or non-self-governing territory constitute overt military intervention, including within non-selfgoverning territories administered by the intervenor as distinctive political entities. All such operations place foreign military forces at immediate risk of combat even if they do not actually lead to war.

States threaten and intervene in other ways but in doing so are one or more steps further removed from international war. A verbal or written threat, by itself, represents words not concrete action. Homebound military mobilization does no more than signal preparation for military operations. A show of force conducted outside its target, including upon the high seas or in the air, is momentarily safe unless others attack preemptively. Small-arms fire across an international border does not constitute modern warfare by itself although it may precede more serious actions. Forces deployed peaceably to foreign garrisons await orders to take up arms. Police, auxiliaries and other civilian agents are seldom equipped to make war abroad in the full sense of the term, nor are military technicians and advisors who provide merely noncombat services to someone else's armed forces. A state may plausibly deny authority for acts of unofficial parties, including of private bands that it may support covertly.

Overt military intervention is widespread today. Between September 1945 at end of World War II and the end of 1988, 105 states intervened one or more times within 131 other states and non-selfgoverning territories.⁵ These actions represented at least 639 interventions.⁶ Many amounted to little. A few led to major war resulting in military fatalities numbering thousands or even hundreds of thousands.

Seemingly inconsequential interventions do not necessarily differ from war-making ones initially. Israeli aircraft and commandos attacked territories of neighboring states many times. Most attacks ended quickly and represented isolated incidents but a few subsequently mushroomed into major offensives and serious warfare. Nor is there necessarily a fundamental tactical difference between interventions that prove costly and those that do not. The United States deployed thousands of troops to Lebanon both in 1958 and 1982-1984 under similar military plans that included occupation of Beirut airport by U.S. Marines. Two soldiers died by accident during the first intervention. Nearly 300 were killed during the second due primarily to greater local resistance.

States intervene cooperatively as well as aggressively. Cooperative intervention arises under various auspices, including at the specific request of a foreign state, at the behest of colonial administrators, or at invitation of the United Nations or other intergovernmental body. Aggressive attacks such as North Korea's invasion of South Korea are often blamed for war. Cooperative intervention is sometimes excused as mere peacekeeping. The United States was no less a warrior, however, when she battled within South Korea at the behest of that government under the U.N. flag, nor was France when she fought to retain colonial control of Indochina.

International Armed Conflict

Any overt military intervention creates international armed conflict and heightens risk of war. Each international armed conflict represents incipient warfare even if war does not immediately result. Many especially damaging wars grow incrementally by multiplying interventions. Most conflicts start simply when one state intervenes within a foreign territory. Subsequently, a state that is under attack may counterattack the territory of its assailant. Other states may join to support or oppose initial intervenors. Conflict may spread beyond original boundaries in the process. Regional wars, such as the Second Indochina War of the 1960s and early 1970s and the Third Indochina War of the late 1970s and 1980s, typically develop in these ways.

Big and complex wars often appear to have multiple causes due in part to their incremental evolution. A state may intervene initially for one ostensible purpose but find other reasons to continue when war expands. One intervener's motivations are seldom identical to others'. Nor is it necessarily the case that states that oppose one another do so for exactly opposite reasons.

Some international armed conflicts appear to originate within territorial or policy disputes. Protracted border disputes are notorious for tempting arms and are associated, in one way or another, with a majority of major nineteenth and twentieth century wars.⁷ Other international armed conflicts originate within civil strife. Civil violence invites international conflict in several ways. Foreign states may intervene in order to support established governments, to help insurgents, or in the name of neutral peacekeeping. Beleaguered governments may carry the fight to insurgents' foreign sanctuaries. Civil conflict may thus be overlaid by and eventually overshadowed by international war, as within South Vietnam during the 1960s. Most large and lasting civil upheavals involve foreign military intervention, at least episodically.

When a particular war begins or ends is sometimes arguable. Great battles and other memorable military engagements often represent merely a part of longer and larger international armed conflicts. Overt military intervention by both Taiwan and mainland China associated with the Chinese Islands Conflict persisted from 1949 to 1969. Dramatic crisis within the Taiwan Straits during 1954-1955 momentarily intensified this conflict but did not represent its bloodiest period. The Korean War involved a year and a half of border skirmishes costing hundreds of lives preceding North Korea's full-scale invasion of South Korea in June 1950. Four years of repeated lowintensity military operations preceded climactic battles of the Six Day War between Israel and her neighbors in June 1967. Somalia and Ethiopia continued sporadic military interventions for nearly seven years after the supposed end of the Ogaden War in 1978. Major battles are often surrounded by a halo of additional military interventions that involve other intervenors and other territories. The Third Indochina War involved armed conflict between China and Laos and Laos and Thailand as well as major battles involving Cambodia, China and Vietnam.

At least 269 international armed conflicts started between 1945 and 1988.⁸ Some lasted longer than did others. Some involved one and others many directly related overt military interventions. Among them are all generally recognized international wars. Many others ended short of war.

Many seemingly inconsequential international armed conflicts offer insights into the process that makes war. Some represent small battles that almost got out of hand, including between Egypt and Libya in 1977 and between Mali and Upper Volta in 1985. Others appear to anticipate serious wars that follow at a later date. France intervened briefly within Morocco several times before becoming involved in protracted struggle during the North African War beginning in 1952. Libya participated in the Chadian Civil War during 1978-1980 prior to the much more costly Libyan-Chadian War of 1983-1987. Iran and Iraq fought over the Shatt El-Arab between 1972 and 1975 before the onset of the disastrous Persian Gulf War in 1979.

Nearly every world region has been afflicted by international armed conflict, small and large, since World War II. The Western Hemisphere and Europe have been comparatively fortunate but not exempt. Only North America has been entirely spared. The Caribbean has witnessed several minor engagements. Central America has suffered numerous civil conflicts that spilled over international borders, especially during the late 1970s and 1980s, as well as the serious Football War of 1969 between El Salvador and Honduras. Territorial disputes have brought trouble to South America, including during the Malvinas (Falklands) War in 1982. Europe, too, has experienced international armed conflict, most notably associated with the Greek Civil War during the late 1940s, the Budapest Uprising within Hungary in 1956, and recurrent strife involving Cyprus from the 1950s to the 1970s.

Africa has been a war-torn continent both before and after most states gained independence during the early 1960s. Within West Africa, Portugal fought into the 1970s in an effort to retain control of what became Guinea-Bissau. Internal strife within newly independent Central African states has provoked frequent international conflict, including the Congolese Civil War that brought U.N. involvement and recurrent conflict within Chad. Peace within the Horn of Africa has been challenged by competing claims of nationality, most notably between Somalia and Ethiopia but also growing out of the persistent Eritrean War. East Africa has suffered similarly from Madagascar to Mauritius to Rwanda and Burundi. Policy and territorial disputes also contributed to major war between Uganda and Tanzania. Southern Africa has been beset by long struggle against white rule, including during the Southwest African War, 1960-1988, embracing both Angola and Namibia, within Mozambique and also Rhodesia. The North African War spread throughout the Maghreb and beyond during the 1950s and early 1960s. It was followed by protracted warfare within the Western Sahara beginning in 1974.

The Middle East has suffered also. The Persian Gulf region has been the scene of repeated conflict, including growing out of Kurdish separatism and Iranian-Iraqi confrontations that culminated in the Persian Gulf War that killed hundreds of thousands of soldiers. Levantine states of the Eastern Mediterranean, including Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, have conflicted perpetually since the Palestine War associated with the birth of Israel. Southern Arabia was highly unstable until very recently, resulting in the Aden-Yemeni War of 1961-1967 among other violent events.

Asia has been host to many especially destructive international armed conflicts. Southwest Asia experienced primarily minor disturbances until the Russo-Afghan War began in 1979. East Asia, on the other hand, witnessed the Korean War and protracted violence associated with the Chinese Islands Conflict and Tibetan Occupation until the 1960s as well as dangerous small battles between the Soviet Union and China in 1969. South Asia has been riven by repeated wars involving India and her neighbors, especially between India and Pakistan. Southeast Asia, particularly Indochina, has known little peace since World War II. International conflict has occasionally come even to Pacific Oceania since the late 1970s.

Cases of International Armed Conflict Since 1945

The following chapters include brief synopses of each of 269 international armed conflicts initiated between September 2, 1945, and December 31, 1988.⁹ These include major wars, small wars and armed engagements short of war. Each is defined by incidence of foreign overt military intervention. Events involving non-self-governing territories are included but conflicts confined within fully integrated states are omitted except when foreign states overtly intervene. A few notable civil conflicts thus gain no mention here, including the Biafran War within Nigeria and continuing strife within Northern Ireland. International crises that may have threatened war but did not proceed so far as overt military intervention, such as the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, are also omitted.

Each chapter represents a geographic region. Individual conflicts within a region are arrayed chronologically. Each synopsis highlights who intervened wh...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• PART ONE INTRODUCTION
• PART TWO WESTERN HEMISPHERE AND EUROPE
• PART THREE AFRICA
• PART FOUR MIDDLE EAST
• PART FIVE ASIA AND OCEANIA
• List of International Armed Conflicts, 1945-1988
• General Reference
• Bibliography
• Index