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Civil Wars & Global Disorder

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Civil Wars & Global Disorder on the horizon: Dædalus Ending Civil Wars: Constraints & Possibilities edited by Karl Eikenberry & Stephen D. Krasner Francis Fukuyama, Tanisha M. Fazal, Stathis N. Kalyvas, Steven Heydemann, Chuck Call & Susanna P. Campbell, Sumit Ganguly, Clare Lockhart, Thomas Risse & Eric Stollenwerk, Tanja A. Börzel & Sonja Grimm, Seyoum Mesfi n & Abdeta Beyene, Lyse Doucet, Nancy Lindborg & Joseph Hewitt, Richard Gowan & Stephen John Stedman, and Jean-Marie Guéhenno & Global Disorder: Threats Opportunities 2017 Civil Wars Fall Dædalus Native Americans & Academia Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences edited by Ned Blackhawk, K. Tsianina Lomawaima, Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy, Philip J. Deloria, Fall 2017 Loren Ghiglione, Douglas Medin, and Mark Trahant Anti-Corruption: Best Practices edited by Robert I. Rotberg Civil Wars & Global Disorder: Threats & Opportunities Karl Eikenberry & Stephen D. Krasner, guest editors with James D. Fearon Bruce D. Jones & Stephen John Stedman Stewart Patrick · Martha Crenshaw Paul H. Wise & Michele Barry Representing the intellectual community in its breadth Sarah Kenyon Lischer · Vanda Felbab-Brown and diversity, Dædalus explores the frontiers of Hendrik Spruyt · Stephen Biddle · William Reno knowledge and issues of public importance. Aila M. Matanock & Miguel García-Sánchez Barry R. Posen U.S. $15; www.amacad.org; @americanacad Civil War & the Current International System James D. Fearon Abstract: This essay sketches an explanation for the global spread of civil war up to the early 1990s and the partial recession since then, arguing that some of the decline is likely due to policy responses by major powers working principally through the United Nations. Unfortunately, the spread of civil war and state collapse to the Middle East and North Africa region in the last fifteen years has posed one set of problems that the current policy repertoire cannot address well–for several reasons, conflicts in this region are re- sistant to “treatment” by international peacekeeping operations–and has highlighted a second, deeper problem whose effects are gradually worsening and for which there does not appear to be any good solu- tion within the constraints of the present UN system. That is, for many civil war–torn or “postconflict” countries, third parties do not know how to help locals build a self-governing, self-financing state within UN-recognized borders or, in some cases, any borders. This essay provides an overview of the problem of civil war in the post-1945 international system. I first describe global patterns and trends over the whole period, and next sketch an explanation for the spread of civil war up to the early 1990s and the partial re- cession since then. There is reasonable evidence that United Nations and major-power policy responses since the end of the Cold War have contributed to the global decline in civil war since the early 1990s. How- JAMES D. FEARON, a Fellow of the American Academy since 2002, is ever, the spread of civil war and state collapse to the the Theodore and Frances Geballe Middle East and North Africa (mena) region in the Professor in the School of Human- last fifteen years has posed one set of problems that ities and Sciences, Senior Fellow the current policy repertoire cannot address well, at the Freeman Spogli Institute for and has highlighted a second, deeper problem whose International Studies, and Profes- effects are gradually worsening and for which there sor in the Department of Political does not appear to be any good solution within the Science at Stanford University. He has written for such journals as constraints of the present un system. Foreign Affairs, American Political Sci- The first problem is that compared with conflicts in ence Review, and The Quarterly Journal Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America, civil war of Economics. and state collapse in the mena region more directly © 2017 by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences doi:10.1162/DAED_a_00456 18 affect the major powers, and possibly inter- sically the same trends if we consider the James D. national peace and security more broadly. share of independent countries with civil Fearon Third-party peacekeeping operations and wars (the dotted line and right axis in Fig- a panoply of associated aid programs have ure 1, calculated omitting microstates that been deployed to “treat” civil war–torn had populations smaller than half a million countries elsewhere, with a measure of suc- in the year 2000). It is also clear from these cess. In most cases, however, it will be im- data that “prevalence” is the right word. possible to apply this treatment model in Major civil conflict has affected roughly one the mena region due to higher costs and in six nonmicrostates each year since 2000 other obstacles related to nationalism, the and almost one in five today; at the peak in transnational jihadi movement, and the in- 1992, it was nearly one in three.1 tensity of conflict among the region’s big- Figure 2’s panels break down the trends gest powers. by region. These mirror the global pattern The second problem is that third-par- for the two most conflict-prone regions, ty efforts to build effective, self-sustaining Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, and also for states in countries where states have col- Latin America. The most striking exception lapsed due to civil war, misrule, or invasion is the mena region, which roughly mirrors have mainly been failures. This is painfully the other high-conflict regions until around evident in the U.S. experiences in Afghani- 2003, but has seen a large increase from stan and Iraq. To some degree, it appears to three wars in 2002 to twelve ongoing wars generalize to the experience of postconflict in 2014.2 All other regions had major de- peacekeeping operations and foreign aid ef- clines in civil conflict after the early 1990s. forts in a number of low-income countries From the steady increase after 1945 shown outside of the mena region. Third par- in Figure 1, one might suppose that civil ties do not know how to bring about the wars were breaking out more frequently construction of self-governing states that over time. This is not so. Civil wars have be- can support themselves financially within gun over the whole period at a rate of about un-approved boundaries. 2.2 new conflicts per year on average, with at best a very slight trend downward.3 The A common misconception is that the con- reason for the impressive increase in prev- temporary prevalence of civil war is large- alence up to the early 1990s is that the rate ly a post–Cold War phenomenon. Figure 1 at which civil wars have ended has been con- shows that the number of civil wars in prog- sistently lower, averaging 1.77 per year. Sup- ress each year increased steadily throughout pose that each morning you pour a random the Cold War, already reaching levels in the amount of water into a tank and then re- 1980s greater than at present. There was a move a different random amount of water rapid increase around the time of the end in the afternoon, with the average amount of the Soviet Union, a spike that contribut- going in greater than the average amount ed to the perception that widespread civil coming out. The tank will gradually fill up. war was a new, post–Cold War international This same sort of dynamic is behind the problem. But after reaching a high point of gradual increase and the contemporary forty-eight ongoing wars in 1992, the preva- prevalence of civil war in the post-1945 in- lence of civil war has actually declined quite ternational system. a bit, leveling out over the last fifteen years A related implication is that the average between the high twenties and low thirties. duration of civil wars in progress has in- The un state system expanded a great creased over time. The international system deal over this whole period, but we see ba- has been accumulating long-running con- 146 (4) Fall 2017 19 Civil War & Figure 1 the Current Civil Wars by Year, 1945–2014 International System # Ongoing Wars/Country (Nonmicrostates) # of Civil Wars Ongoing # of Civil Wars % Countries (Nonmicrostates) with Civil War Ongoing with Civil War % Countries (Nonmicrostates) 0 10 20 30 40 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 Year Source: Updated version of the civil war list described in James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin, “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War,” American Political Science Review 97 (1) (February 2003): 75–90. Available at http:// fearonresearch.stanford.edu/. fl icts. Figure 3 shows that the average du- in which rebels have aimed to capture the ration of civil wars in progress is currently central government, as opposed to winning greater than twenty years, refl ecting some greater autonomy or regional secession, has very long-running, intractable confl icts in been fairly stable since the 1960s, varying Afghanistan, Myanmar, the Philippines, without clear trend between 50 and 60 per- India, Turkey, and Somalia, among others. cent. The proportion in which the combat- Even median durations of wars in progress ants have been organized primarily along have climbed to remarkably high levels: it ethnic rather than ideological lines has in- was nineteen years in 2010 and fourteen creased somewhat over the whole period years in 2014 (the recent fall mainly refl ect- since World War II, from around 60 per- ing the entry of a number of new confl icts cent in the early years to around 70 or 75 in the wake of the Arab Spring). percent since the end of the Cold War.4 A Three fi nal observations concern types of much more striking change has been the re- civil confl icts.
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