Peace and Conflict 2008

J. Joseph Hewitt, Jonathan Wilkenfeld, Ted Robert Gurr

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781594514005
• eBook ISBN: 9781000161595
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Pace e sviluppo globale

Peace and Conflict is a biennial publication that provides key data and documents trends in national and international conflicts ranging from isolated acts of terrorism to internal civil strife to full-fledged interstate war. Peace and Conflict is a large format, full-color reference including numerous graphs, tables, maps, and appendices dedicated to the visual presentation of data. Crisp narratives are highlighted with pull-quote extracts that summarize trends and major findings.

1. INTRODUCTION TO PEACE AND CONFLICT 2008

The modern age demands that we think in terms of human security... a concept that acknowledges the inherent linkages between economic and social development, respect for human rights, and peace.... Until we understand and act accordingly, we will not have either national or international security.

Mohamed ElBaradei, October 24, 2006
Sadat Lecture for Peace, University of Maryland

Previous editions of Peace and Conflict reported evidence of a sustained post-Cold War decline in armed conflicts within states and a growing capacity of states, acting singly and multilaterally, to avoid and end internal wars. This volume has no such clear story line. New evidence, and a closer look at old evidence, suggests that if there was a global movement toward peace in the 1990s and early years of the 21st century, it has stalled. Some positive trends are still evident but they are offset by new challenges. These challenges point to a conflict syndrome—a collection of factors that often operate concurrently to undermine the stability of states and erode the foundations of human security. Taken together, the essays in this volume explore aspects of these factors.

•Has the magnitude of armed conflict declined? The answer is yes when judged by falling numbers of internal wars and their average death-tolls across the last 20 years. But when we tabulate the number of states engaged in armed conflicts, either their own or multilateral wars as in Iraq and Afghanistan, the long-run trend is up. A larger portion of the global community of states is involved now than in any other time in the past six decades (see chapter 11). And the historic low of 19 ongoing armed conflicts in 2004 was followed by an increase to 25 in 2005.

•Are deadly conflicts more avoidable now than in the past? International crises, which in the past often led to armed conflict within and among states, have declined in number since the mid-1980s (see chapters 3 and 8). Many separatist conflicts have been contained, especially long-lasting ones like those in Northern Ireland and Indonesia’s Aceh province (see chapter 5). But overall new armed conflicts have been erupting at roughly the same pace for the past 60 years. Moreover, an unusually large number of “new” conflicts began in 2005–06, and some were born from the failure of past peace processes, as in Sri Lanka and Azerbaijan.

•Has the “third wave” of democratization continued to rise? Full democracies have numbered about 80 since the mid-1990s (77 in 2006) compared with less than 40 autocratic regimes (34 in 2006). Democratic governance is the norm in the early 21st century but in recent years more regimes have edged into anocracy—a middling category of regimes with an incoherent mix of authoritarian and democratic features (chapter 4). The existence of 49 anocratic polities in 2005 is of particular concern because, as a group, they are much more susceptible than either full democracies or autocracies to political instability and armed conflict (chapter 2), to terrorist attacks (chapter 6), and to international crises (chapter 8).

•Is state failure merely a local concern? While the global community is increasingly aware of the dreadful conditions facing the populations of unstable and failing states, Peace and Conflict carefully traces the dangerous propensity for these states to host domestic and international terrorist organizations (see chapter 6). Equally alarming is the likelihood that these states will become participants in crises either on the regional or global stage. A staggering 77 percent of all international crises in the post-Cold War era have involved at least one unstable or failing state (see chapter 8). As Mohamed ElBaradei (2006) has recently observed, we must acknowledge the inherent linkages between economic and social development, respect for human rights, and peace.

•How is the international community responding to old and new conflict challenges? Since 2000, the number of active peacekeeping operations has been more than double the number at any point during the Cold War. They are about equally divided between UN operations and those by regional organizations. In one-fifth of all 126 missions undertaken since 1948 there was no “peace” to keep, and instead peacekeepers had to use force proactively. Success rates have been about equally good for UN and regional missions, and substantially higher than alleged by skeptics (chapter 10).

•Are civilians more secure from armed conflict? The average lethality of war has declined for those caught up in combat, but not for civilians in guerrilla wars. Of 81 states that fought large-scale insurgencies from 1945 to 2000, one in three resorted to mass killing of civilians thought to support the rebels. The greater the civilian support for guerrillas and the greater the guerrilla’s threat to the government, the more likely governments are to choose a deliberate policy of mass killing (chapter 9). Such a policy of genocidal violence and ethnic cleansing has caused at least a quarter-million deaths in Sudan’s Darfur region in the last three years. A weak African Union peacekeeping force with a limited mandate can do little more than observe the suffering. Darfur is the worst failure of the international responsibility to protect civilians since the Rwandan genocide of 1994.

Local and regional threats to peace are of greater concern to most people than global patterns. From 1980 to 2005 there were no significant trends, up or down, in fatalities from warfare in either Asia (if the Afghan civil war of 1976–2003 is excluded) or the Middle East (excluding the Iran-Iraq war of 1980–88). Africa experienced an irregular decline, more pronounced if the Congo-centered wars of the late 1990s are excluded. In Europe the wars accompanying the breakup of Yugoslavia sent the trend sharply upward until 2001. Only the Americas show a steady and significant declining trend over the 25-year span (chapter 11).

Regional trends are of little help in anticipating specific future challenges to security. The Peace and Conflict Instability Ledger in chapter 2 assesses each country’s risks of future political instability based on five factors as measured in 2004. They are regime anocracy, high infant mortality, lack of integration in the global economy, high levels of militarization, and warfare in neighboring states. Of the 25 countries with the highest risks for political instability and internal war—ten or more times greater than the average risks in the OECD democracies—19 are in Africa, two in the Middle East (Iraq and Lebanon), three in Asia (Afghanistan, India, and Bangladesh, with Cambodia just below the threshold), and only one in the Americas (Haiti, though Brazil and Bolivia are not far behind). Some of these countries, including India and Ethiopia as well as Iraq and Afghanistan, confront ongoing insurgencies. The risk factors used are background conditions, not predicated on armed conflict per se, so prospects for peace in these countries are not good irrespective of current events or conflict outcomes.

Country risks of instability do shift over time: Mozambique, Iran, and Peru were among the ten highest-risk countries as of 2000 but now have moved down to middle levels of risk—principally because of domestic political changes in Iran from anocracy toward autocracy, and in Peru from anocracy toward restoration of full democracy. Congo and Rwanda, both devastated by civil war and mass killings in the 1990s, also are now at middle levels of risk, appreciably lower than most of their neighbors (see chapter 2).

Terrorism, especially by Islamists, is an existential threat to security in all world regions. This issue of Peace and Conflict reports on two new data collection projects that have already yielded several important generalizations about global and regional patterns of terror. One analysis, in chapter 7, is specific to ethnic and religious minorities in the Middle East and reports two particularly striking findings. First, most of the 112 organizations representing minorities in this region did not use terrorism between 1980 and 2004—the period covered by the study. Those that do typically have alternated among electoral politics, protest, and violence—often pursuing several strategies simultaneously. Terrorism is used, avoided, or abandoned depending on political circumstances. Second, democratization in the Middle East has led to increases in both conventional politics and terrorism. It remains to be seen whether these patterns also will be observed in other world regions.

Chapter 6 reports a first-ever global study that includes all international and domestic terrorist events. Currently it covers 1970 to 1997 and is being extended to the present. One distinctive pattern can be seen—the principal locales of terrorism are shifting over time. In the 1970s terrorism was mainly a European problem, in the 1980s a serious threat in Latin America, in the 1990s an Asian and African challenge (chapter 6). When data collection is current it will no doubt confirm the perception that terrorism is now most common in, and likely to originate from, the Islamic world.

Let us revisit an issue raised by Monty Marshall and Ted Robert Gurr in their conclusions to the 2003 and 2005 editions of Peace and Conflict. What has been the impact of changing US policy on trends in global and regional security? This volume provides suggestive evidence. The US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq created or exacerbated international crises and pulled many allied states into combat operations in both countries. The lethality of conflict in Iraq has reached horrendous proportions for civilians. These wars also provide provocations and targets for terrorist attacks on the US and its allies. How far these attacks will spread and persist is beyond the current reach of our data and vision. Moreover the US promotion of democracy in these two countries provides space for partisan electoral politics by ethnic and religious groups but also, paradoxically, increases risks of terrorism. International efforts at peacekeeping continue apace, at the highest level of the past half-century, so it cannot be said that US invasions and unilateralism have dented the post-Cold War commitment of most international actors to contain and resolve local and regional conflicts. US policies may have exacerbated the problem but have not stopped the international community, or even US policymakers, from attempting to manage local wars and regional crises.

Peace and security are shifting targets. Armed conflicts declined to a historic low of 19 in 2004 only to increase in the following years. New conflicts begin, “settled” conflicts can reemerge or manifest themselves in new ways. Democratic regimes are generally more effective in containing conflicts and more likely to join international projects of conflict management, but new and partial democracies are potentially unstable. Their leaders may prove to be autocrats who, when tempted or challenged, will put aside democratic pretenses.

By itself, terrorism is not likely to be the most serious future challenge to international security. Rather, the most important threat to human security and state stability is the impact of a set of associated hazards, a conflict syndrome, that poses the gravest danger. The evidence presented in this volume leads us to conclude that high-risk states are simultaneously politically unstable, challenged by rebels and terrorists, tempted to resort to mass killings of civilians, and enmeshed in international crises. There are predictable pathways into these syndromes but no clearly marked exits.

Ted Robert Gurr
Joseph Hewitt
Jonathan Wilkenfeld

A conflict syndrome… poses the gravest danger.… High-risk states are simultaneously politically unstable, challenged by rebels and terrorists, tempted to resort to mass killings of civilians, and enmeshed in international crises. There are predictable pathways into these syndromes but no clearly marked exits.

2. THE PEACE AND CONFLICT INSTABILITY LEDGER: RANKING STATES ON FUTURE RISKS

J. Joseph Hewitt

Which countries are at greatest risk of future civil conflict and instability? A definitive answer to that question would have great value to policymakers. With reliable early warning about the states at greatest risk, scarce resources could be directed accordingly. Investment of preventive resources in high-risk states is preferable to managing the consequences of state failure. Those consequences are often enormous and catastrophic. In the wake of state failure, humanitarian crises and increased military violence can leave a gruesome human death toll. Failed states are more likely to provide havens for terrorist organizations. They may tr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Publication Note
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The Peace and Conflict Instability Ledger: Ranking States on Future Risks
• 3 Trends in Global Conflict, 1946–2005
• 4 Trends in Democratization: A Focus on Instability in Anocracies
• 5 Self-Determination Movements and Their Outcomes
• 6 Global Terrorism and Failed States
• 7 Ethnopolitical Violence and Terrorism in the Middle East
• 8 Unstable States and International Crises
• 9 Mass Killing of Civilians in Time of War, 1945–2000
• 10 International Peacekeeping: The UN versus Regional Organizations
• 11 Unpacking Global Trends in Violent Conflict, 1946–2005
• Appendix—Major Armed Conflicts
• References
• Editorial Board and Authors
• About the Contributors