Intra-State Conflict, Governments and Security

Stephen M. Saideman, Marie-Joelle J. Zahar, Stephen M. Saideman, Marie-Joelle J. Zahar

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781134045044
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia militar y marítima

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

1 Causing security, reducing fear

Deterring intra-state violence and assuring government restraint

Stephen M. Saideman and Marie-Joëlle Zahar

The 1990s saw a vast expansion of effort by a variety of actors to prevent, manage and/or resolve conflicts around the world, including Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Cambodia, Liberia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, East Timor, and elsewhere with mixed results. The first years of the new millennium have seen more missions in even more apparently hopeless places such as Afghanistan and Iraq. The primary mission for the military inserted into these situations is to create a “safe and secure environment”¹ so that the rest of the peace implementation (or nation-building) processes can take place. What seems to be relatively unproblematic in Bosnia in 2007 is extraordinarily difficult in Afghanistan and Iraq. While the situations in these three countries are most dramatic, all countries face the problem of providing security to their populations.² This is the basic task of government, but it is not an easy one. In practice, a key complication is that governments not only provide security to their people but also serve as perhaps the most dangerous threat. Abuses by governments can threaten individuals and groups far more powerfully than their opponents, including dissidents and insurgents. The universal problem that is the focus of this book is that governments must provide security to their citizens but also remain restrained enough that they do not become the primary threat. We address both the domestic and international dynamics involved as the internal balancing act can be upset by outsiders, and external actors (including the United Nations, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the African Union, individual countries, and other organizations) have increasingly played a role in restoring the internal security of countries.

The problem is that security, as both a concept and a reality, is poorly understood, and particularly in these contexts as the reigning approach, the ethnic security dilemma, largely assumes away the most relevant actor – the government. The starting assumption of this volume is that security is fundamental – that conflict within states has security as a key piece of the puzzle, and that governments are central. Scholars have argued that other factors motivate conflict. World Bank economists, among others, have argued that greed in some form drives conflicts within states (Collier 2000; Collier and Hoeffler 2001). Some political scientists have argued along similar, but not identical, lines of thought that those seeking domination – predators – rather than security are the key actors (Snyder and Jervis 1999). Increasingly, scholars have focused on insurgency, which directs attention away from security of the group and focuses on the weaknesses of states and the tactics and strategies of small numbers of individuals. However, these and other lines of argument ignore a crucial dynamic – that for any of these processes to play out, group members beyond its elites must give support.³ Likewise, for stability to develop after a conflict, individuals and groups must support the peacekeepers and new government: they must deny opponents assistance and provide the new security providers intelligence.⁴ Below, we consider each argument directly and identify the role security plays, implicitly or explicitly.

In the past dozen years, the primary way in which scholars have thought about security in the context of civil wars has been the security dilemma (Posen 1993; Snyder and Jervis 1999; Rose 2000). They have taken a concept from International Relations (Herz 1951; Waltz 1979; Jervis 1978) and applied it to the context of civil wars and ethnic conflict. There is much to be gained, as the key insight from the security dilemma is quite important – that unilateral efforts to make oneself more secure leads others to try to do the same, ultimately leaving all less secure. The challenge is that the translation from the international context to the domestic one has been problematic (David 1997).

In particular, the security dilemma best applies in the absence of government, as it was originally intended – in the relations of sovereign states in a world without a central government. In relations between sub-state units (ethnic groups, for example), the context is one of hierarchy – where the government exists in some form, playing a crucial role in ameliorating or exacerbating the violence. Indeed, one of the essential roles of government is to deter violence – to possess a monopoly of the legitimate use of force and to wield it so that individuals and groups refrain from engaging in serious conflict. This can be quite difficult, as a delicate balance must exist between deterring violence and repressing dissent. Because the state possesses much of the coercive capacity in most states, it is the greatest threat to most groups. Indeed, in most cases of genocide, the perpetrator is the state (Krain 1997; Rummel 2000; Midlarsky 2005).

This leads to two dilemmas that reinforce each other. The first is that the state, to prevent violence, must be sufficiently threatening to deter potential opponents while accommodating enough dissent so that frustration does not build into challenges. This dilemma is most clearly relevant pre-conflict, particularly in existing studies, but it also matters in the post-conflict peace-building process, as the new institutions must be capable so that past rebels do not have an easy way out of the political process. The second is that the state must be assertive enough to protect any group, but not seen as too favorable toward anyone or else groups will compete to gain control of the state, creating a political security dilemma. This dynamic has largely been studied from the perspective of post-conflict design of institutions, but is also clearly significant for the prevention of conflict. The political security dilemma is that any effort to gain control over the state by any group will create doubts about its ability to protect and deter, leading to counter-efforts to control the government. This reinforces the initial instincts of the first group, leading to a spiral of competition, ultimately reducing the ability of the government to deter conflict (Saideman 1998).

This type of interaction suggests that it might be more appropriate to think of security not so much as a good – the presence or absence of which defines rules of interaction – but as a continually renewed bargain between the state and constituent groups. In this volume, we seek a better understanding of security’s role in intra-state conflicts ranging from peaceful dissent to outbursts of violence to protracted civil wars. Perceptions of insecurity are central to the eruption of violence; securitization is necessary to restore sustainable peace. While other actors can sometimes step in to provide security on a temporary basis, the state remains the main provider of security, and outsiders can only depart if the state can provide security to all (or, at least, to most). State strategies are central to situations of war and peace alike. Although we focus on security, we approach it by applying a different set of concepts from International Relations – applying deterrence theory to the domestic context – while remaining sensitive to the differences between intra- and inter-state politics. The operating questions guiding this work are:

• Under what conditions can the state deter violence? What strategies are best suited to this effect?
• Under what conditions is the state the most significant generator of violence?
• Under what conditions can the state assure the citizens that it is not a threat and cannot be captured by a particular group?
• How do external pressures affect the deterrence-assurance dynamics within states?
• Is the challenge of providing security different on the morrow of violent conflict?
• Can external actors step in to provide security should the state be unable or unwilling to do so?

Each chapter takes a different perspective on one or more of these questions, as the concepts of security and fear are inherently multi-disciplinary. The contributors come from a variety of fields, areas of expertise, methodological approaches, and theoretical orientations, and they consider a wide variety of cases, ranging from advanced democracies to failing autocracies. The contributions share a focus on security, doubts about existing understandings, and fresh approaches to the questions at hand. The point of this book is not to throw out the baby with the bathwater – security is crucial to our understanding of intra-state violence, even if the application of security concepts from International Relations have, thus far, been flawed. Instead, we recast security as a central element of the puzzle of intra-state war and peace. By focusing on the strategies that yield more or less security for groups, we also bring the state back in. Indeed, we argue that government strategies and actions are fundamental to understanding outcomes. We also seek to identify opportunities for and constraints on the state’s ability to provide security to its constituent groups. In short, this contribution proposes an integrated approach to understanding the causes of civil war, civil peace, and situations in between these two extremes. Just as the study of interstate war needs to focus on the outbreak of war and the existence of peace, our effort here addresses both sides of the question, which is particularly important since civil and ethnic peace of various forms is far more prevalent than war.

In the next section, we consider some of the most prominent accounts of civil conflict, indicating that they tend to overlook the security dynamics inherent in the processes that they consider. The following section addresses the security dilemma, the most common application of a security-based logic to the topic at hand. We then delineate an alternative – that deterrence logic can help us understand the dynamics of intra-state violence. We then develop some of the implications of the logic of deterrence. The chapter concludes with a discussion of scope of the volume, the contributions and how they fit into the deterrence framework we sketch.

The role of security in theories of civil conflict

A variety of interests may motivate conflict, ranging from prejudice to greed, from insecurity to hatred. In this section, we consider three approaches to understanding the causes of civil conflict, as each has implications for how such conflicts should be resolved.⁵ While there are many theories, we focus on three approaches: elite politics, greed, and insurgency. Some of these take security more seriously and more explicitly than the others, but a key question to be asked of all is: How does the rest of the population fit in? Efforts to mobilize conflict require support beyond a narrow cadre. One of the key problems in much of the work in this area is that the links between masses and elites are largely assumed or ignored. The thinking here is that the level of insecurity plays a key role in mediating the relationship between state and society and between elites and the population.

Nationalist elites

First, it has been commonly argued that elites promote conflict, particularly ethnic conflict, to divide opponents and divert domestic audiences away from issues that politicians want to avoid, like responsibility for a failing economy. Gagnon (1994/5, 2004), one of many, argues that Slobodan Milosevic used Serb nationalism to maintain his position, despite a collapsing economy. Snyder (1999) argues that this kind of dynamic is likely to play out during democratization processes as incumbents seek to hold onto their positions. While this can be opportunistic, as elites see an opening, it can also be compelled, as political competition may force politicians to take stronger and stronger stands on behalf of a group – outbidding (Rothschild 1981; Horowitz 1985).

While elites can try to create divisions based on identity or other cleavages, they are limited by the support they receive. Politicians are not magicians and cannot dupe a large part of the electorate⁶ easily. That is, for leaders to be successful, they need followers. The question of under what conditions will extremist politicians be successful is poorly understood. The case of Yugoslavia is instructive as Milosevic was able to point toward the new leadership in Croatia, and vice versa (Gagnon 2004). Because individuals had some reason to fear what might happen in the future, they threw their support to a politician promising to defend their interests. Thus, we need to take seriously what causes individuals and groups to support politicians promising rather risky policies and potentially dangerous futures.

Our hunch here is that extremist politicians are more likely to receive support if the individuals and groups perceive the context to be somewhat dangerous (Saideman 1998). That is, if the government is seen as unable to deter threatening actors, or, worse, is vulnerable to capture, in which case, the state becomes the threat. De Figueiredo and Weingast (1999) develop a game theoretic argument, asserting that voters will choose more extreme candidates if they possess only a modest degree of fear that failing to do so might risk domination or extinction. The calculation is that a modest chance of a horrible result multiplied by said outcome is greater than “risking” moderation. This rational logic coincides with findings from cognitive psychology. Prospect theory holds that individuals weigh more heavily possible losses more than potential gains, so they are willing to gamble more to avoid losing.⁷ Therefore, we should expect that constituents are likely to support politicians promising to defend them even if the threat is relatively unlikely as long as the consequences are severe – which they are if the state is potentially up for grabs. In addition, sociologists have long argued that people are more likely to support their group if they perceive an external threat (Coser 1956). Thus, the key to understanding the success of extremist politicians is the level of threat perceived by potential supporters. Therefore, we must understand what causes individuals and groups to be secure enough to ignore such appeals and what causes these folks to be insecure enough to follow extremists.

Greed

As the century turned, the discourse shifted to focus on greed – that leaders of insurgents, either as their primary goal or as necessity demanded, were driven by the existence of easily lootable resources. Spurred by a team of World Bank scientists led by Paul Collier, this debate focused on the necessities of rebellion.⁸ That is, it takes resources to finance violence against a government – to buy arms, to encourage followers, to bribe government officials, etc. This argument helped to make sense of the roles played by “conflict diamonds” in Africa, opium in Afghanistan, cocaine in Columbia, and other “easily lootable” resources elsewhere. However, recent studies (Ross 2004) suggest that while the existence of such resources may prolong civil wars, they are not necessary for their outbreak. Thus, this line of thinking provides some clues but also some questions for the topic at hand.

While something else might trigger conflict, it may be that the proceeds from lootable resources may help to buy, or, at least, rent support from relevant populations. Even though small core groups can conduct much violence, they require support from the locals. Lootable resources may be used to gain the necessary support from the indigenous population. However, there is a problem – that resources are finite and needs are many. While leaders of a rebellion can use drugs, minerals and other “capital” to buy arms and pay off the inner circle, these assets are not without limit, so buying off entire populations seems unlikely to be a winning strategy. Indeed, Weinstein (2007) demonstrates that access to resources tends to lead to strategies that are less successful. Instead, coercion may be applied to the wider audience of this group. This raises a problem that insurgency theorists address more directly (see below) – the competition between government and opponents to provide security to the relevant populations. If a population’s security is largely guaranteed by the government, then the opponents will appear to be more like criminals as they run drugs, steal and sell minerals, and the like. If the government cannot provide security, and particularly if it is seen as a threat, then the criminal activities of the dissidents may be viewed as noble, worthy of support. Thus, it comes back to the state – can it deter conflict or is it a generator of violence?

Insurgency

Fearon and Laitin (2003) have argued that opportunity essentially drives civil war. That is, insurgency is the preferred strategy for fighting against a government, given the imbalance of forces. Governments may tolerate a little rebellion, and the ease of repression shapes how much violence they are willing to tolerate. Geography plays a role here as mountains and other terrain features that make counter-insurgency difficult increase the probability of conflict. Level of economic development plays a large role, as individuals in richer states are more resistant to recruiting, and such states are more ...