Jessica Ward Written Comment Week 7

Three of the articles for this week (Lyall and Wilson, Krasner and Risse, Berman and Maanock) are concerned with how international actors can shape the outcomes of civil conflict. One article, Kalyvas and Balcells, discusses how international actors can shape civil conflict at its start. Kalyvas and Balcells argue that the international system does have influence over civil conflicts, specifically finding that the ending of cold war caused a decline in irregular wars. I argue that the Cold War alone is not a thorough enough argument to fully explain the international system’s effect on civil conflict, but lessons could be drawn from it to form a more extensive argument. The Kalyvas and Balcells “technology of war” argument states that the structure of the international system during the cold war led to an increase in in irregular wars because of material support, revolutionary beliefs, and military doctrine supplied by superpowers. This argument works because it is able to account for the increase in wars in some areas of the world and decrease in others, and because it appears to fit well with the historical experience of proxy wars such as Vietnam or the Afghan resistance to Soviet invasion. However, this argument could be taken further. Why was the Cold War special? How else does the international system influence civil war? The first issue that needs to addressed is the establishment of a conception of the international system. The Kalyvas and Balcells imagination of the system during the Cold War is of two superpowers, the US and the USSR, and a large number of smaller states that are susceptible to their influence. This is a good understanding of the basic structure of the international system during their time period 1944-2004, but a more subtle understanding may be useful. This period was also contained the height of the era of decolonization, the rise of the non-aligned movement, and third wave democracy. This time also saw the beginning of China’s rise into near-superpower status, the sunset of the British empire, the formation of the United Nations, and the rise of Islamism in the governments of Iran and Afghanistan. Eight countries became nuclear powers . These other actors may not have had as great an effect on the world as 1

the United States and the USSR did, but they certainly had some effect. If we think of the international system as a galaxy, the US and the USSR are dueling suns who’s pull of gravity causes planets to circle them. However, these planets also have a gravity of their own and can have moons and satellites or their own, or even influence the orbit of their neighbors. Proxy war is another concept which deserves further exploration. There are two examples of proxy war that are similar to each other: Vietnam and Afghanistan. In Vietnam, communist supported North Vietnamese fought against Americans and American supported South Vietnamese, the North wished to establish a communist country, while the South opposed it, and Americans just didn’t want the first domino to fall in Southeast Asia. In Afghanistan, American supported insurgents fought against Russian invaders. The Russians wished to extend their territory and influence into Afghanistan while the Americans wanted to stop it, and in doing so

Nine if you include South Africa1

supported a mujahideen movement that would become global. However, arguably, the Vietnam war could have happened without outside American or communist intervention, but American intervention in Afghanistan changed the actors involved in the insurgent movement- by choosing to empower Islamist forces, they made the less radical Northern Alliance relatively weak in comparison. it is also possible that without American intervention, Afghanistan would have been a much shorter conflict, with Russians defeating Afghans easily. These two cases showcase one effect of the international system that was not part of the Kalyvas and Balcells argument, selection. By choosing to become involved in these two conflicts, the international system shifted the course of the conflicts. Similarly, the US could have fought against Khmer Rouge in Cambodia or the 1968 Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia. The selection of these conflicts cannot be fully explained by the technology of war argument. One way in which Kalyvas and Balcells could be expanded is by expanding the time period. Is the Cold War a unique event? Is it possible to find a comparison case for the cold war and see if the same effect is seen. Arguably, colonialism can be seen as a potential similar because it is a case of states projecting their influence, albeit in a more direct way. Were the Boer War or the French-Indian war analogous to proxy wars? This is a difficult comparison to make because of the differences between Cold War era influence projection and the literal imperialism of the colonial period, especially given the difference how long each lasted. Similarly, if bi-polarity and its collapse had an identifiable effect on conflict, then the rise and collapse of pre-World War I multi-polarity or post-Cold War unipolarity should also produce effects. In the case of unipolarity, the decline of the stabilizing American influence and willingness to intervene could be thought as one factor behind conflict in Syria and Ukraine. Arguable then, it is the decline of the dominant power structure which introduces in increased element of anarchy into the system and not something special about the Cold War which influences conflict. One result of the end of the Cold War was a decrease of conflict in Latin America and Southeast Asia and an increase in Sub-Saharan Africa and Eurasia. Looking at the types of conflict associated with these regions, proxy war in Southeast Asia and Latin America, and conflict related to establishing new states in post Soviet Eurasia. This shows that conflict related to international politics has varying causes. In the Latin American and Southeast Asian cases, international actors chose to work within states which maintained their sovereign borders. In the Eurasia case, international actors took that sovereignty away, which caused conflict in the reestablishing of sovereignty. Analysis of international politics at the regional level could be a further area for research. Most work is done either on the domestic scale or the international system as a whole. Would it be helpful to think of regions as separate systems? There are factors, such as regional hegemony, which have a small effect on the international scale but a large effect on the regional scale. In this case, it would be useful to know how things like military doctrine or material support flowed through regions and how regional politics comes in to play. One assumption of the technology of war argument is that the choice of irregular war is the result of the inability to fight conventional war instead of a strategic choice. Despite the fact that he had a large army to command, Mao choose guerrilla war tactics. If terrorism can be considered to be a static choice, what about irregular war? Kalyvas and Balcells organize their

typologies of conflict based on military technology as the input and the conventionality and symmetry of the conflict being the output. What if this was reversed? Is military technology the cause of the method of fight or the result? While Kalyvas as Balcells are certainly true in the fact that the international system does have an effect on international conflict, there are several areas where this argument is weak or ready for expansion. It is a frequent theme in international relations literature that domestic politics effects international politics, so the reversal of this presents an interesting area for further work.

Asymmetric Symmetric

Conventional ? Conventional

Non-Conventional Irregular Symmetric non-conventional

Table 1: reversed typology?