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From Armed Conflict to Political Violence: Mapping & Explaining Conflict Trends

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From Armed Conflict to Political Violence: Mapping & Explaining Conflict Trends From Armed Conflict to Political Violence: Mapping & Explaining Conflict Trends Keith Krause Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/145/4/113/1830780/daed_a_00416.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 Abstract: Most contemporary lethal violence does not occur in conflict zones, the majority of states most affected by lethal violence are not at war, and the levels of lethal violence in many nonconflict settings are higher than in war zones. Much of this nonwar violence is organized, not random, and political in nature. A narrow focus on wars and formal armed conflicts thus obscures the high levels of everyday violence and insecurity around the world. This essay makes the case that adopting a broad understanding of political violence–including violence committed by the state and its agents, and nonphysical violence as the viola- tion of basic rights–is essential to gain insight into the causes and consequences of, and to frame appro- priate responses to, war and violence in the twenty-first century. On December 17, 2010, Mohamed Bouazizi set him- self alight in a small city south of Tunis as a violent and ultimately suicidal protest against the repeated hu- miliation and harassment he suffered from local offi- cials. Street demonstrations broke out the next day in Sidi Bouzid and spread to Tunis ten days later, and on January 14, 2011, Tunisian President Ben Ali resigned. Demonstrations spread across the Middle East, from KEITH KRAUSE is Professor of In- Libya to Yemen. In Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak ternational Relations and Politi- cal Science and Director of the resigned on February 11, and after a brief democratic Centre on Conflict, Development experiment, the military seized power and drastically and Peacebuilding at The Gradu- curtailed vocal opposition. The mid-February protests ate Institute, Geneva. His publica- in Libya spiraled into civil war, international interven- tions include The Global Burden of tion, and insecurity and state collapse. Syrian protests Armed Violence 2011: Lethal Encoun- between March and July 2011 also spiraled downward ters (2011), Armed Groups and Con- into civil war, which has since mutated into a region- temporary Conflicts: Challenging the Weberian State (2010), Critical Se- al conflict involving Iraq, Syria, the Islamic State, and curity Studies (1997), and Arms and various proxies, third parties, and Western volunteers the State: Patterns of Military Produc- and recruits. More than 140,000 people–and possibly tion and Trade (1992). up to 400,000–have been killed to date.1 © 2016 by Keith Krause doi:10.1162/DAED_ a_00416 113 From This synopsis illustrates the challenge in lence–defined as violence used for explicit- Armed our quest to explain the causes and conse- ly stated political ends, or that undermines Conflict to Political quences of armed conflict, or to prevent and challenges the state’s legal monopoly Violence and resolve conflicts and mitigate their over the legitimate use of force, or that im- effects. International relations as a dis- plicates the state and its repressive appara- cipline focuses on the “war” side of this tus–as essential for gaining insight into the situation–in Syria, Libya, and Northern causes and consequences of, and framing Iraq–and starts its analysis when large- appropriate responses to, war and political scale violence has already occurred. This, violence in the twenty-first century. coupled with a weak understanding of how Four facts about contemporary violence war is related to the broader backdrop of make good starting points to broaden our Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/145/4/113/1830780/daed_a_00416.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 political violence (and violence in gener- perspective: 1) most lethal violence does al), obscures the mechanisms and process- not occur in conflict zones; 2) the major- es through which everyday “dynamics of ity of states most affected by lethal vio- contention” can underlie and lead to large- lence are not at war; 3) the levels of lethal scale outbreaks of violence.2 An exclusive violence in some nonconflict settings are focus on war means we know little about higher than in war zones; and 4) much of how we get from such things as state re- this violence–but we do not know how pression or group violence to civil war– much–is organized, nonrandom, and in from Sidi Bouzid to Syria–and what the some sense political. consequences might be for international The first three claims can be substanti- and regional order. ated by approaching violence from a so- There are four good reasons for moving, ciological, criminological, or public health empirically and conceptually, “beyond perspective. An average of 508,000 people war” to study political violence in gener- died violently around the world each year al terms and from a holistic perspective. between 2007 and 2012; only about seven- A narrow empirical focus on war obscures ty thousand–or 15 percent of them–died the scope and scale of intentional harm as- in wars or formal armed conflicts.3 The re- sociated with “nonwar” forms of violence. mainder–more than four-hundred thou- It understates the human costs and conse- sand–died in nonwar contexts, and a sig- quences of war-related violence. It limits nificant proportion of these (around 5 per- the scope of debate on moral and legal re- cent) died at the hands of the state or its sponsibility to forms of violence covered agents.4 Even if (as I argue below) this pic- by just war principles and international hu- ture of the number of war-related violent manitarian law, while obscuring the mor- deaths is misleadingly low, it shows that ally equivalent responsibility that govern- war is only one piece of a much larger puz- ments should face for other forms of vio- zle of lethal violence. lence and harm committed in their name. Figure 1 standardizes violent deaths in Finally, it hinders understanding of the way the thirty most violent states. While there different forms of violence may be linked may be uncertainty around the specific through processes that escalate and exac- rankings, these numbers are conservative, erbate conflicts, and that may have broad- and are based on aggregating conflict and er impacts on state formation, state disin- nonconflict violent death data. tegration, and regional order. Some of the most violent countries in the In this essay, I will unpack these claims, world, such as Syria, Afghanistan, South and make the case for adopting a three-di- Sudan, Pakistan, and Yemen are in war mensional understanding of political vio- zones. But some Latin American and Carib- 114 Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences Figure 1 Keith Violent Deaths per 100,000 of Population, Annual Average, 2007–2012 Krause Syria* Honduras Venezuela Swaziland Afghanistan* El Salvador Belize Jamaica Lesotho Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/145/4/113/1830780/daed_a_00416.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 Colombia* Guatemala South Africa South Sudan* Somalia* Puerto Rico Brazil Iraq* Bahamas Dominican Republic Panama Lesser Antilles** Botswana Mexico Guyana Seychelles Namibia Democratic Republic of the Congo* Kyrgyzstan Yemen* Central African Republic* Libya* Nicaragua Iran* Gabon Cape Verde Pakistan* Ethiopia* 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200 Rate per 100,000 Population Source: Geneva Declaration Secretariat, Global Burden of Armed Violence 2015: Every Body Counts (Cambridge: Cam- bridge University Press, 2015). * Emerging from or experiencing armed conflict. ** Given the small population of the Lesser Antilles, the eight sovereign states of the region were grouped to- gether and their rates averaged to produce a regional estimate. The countries in question are Antigua and Bar- buda, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago. 145 (4) Fall 2016 115 From bean countries that are not at war, including Zooming in on war-related violence also Armed Honduras, Venezuela, and El Salvador, are highlights limitations in the way in which Conflict to Political more dangerous places to live than Afghan- the human and social costs of war are pre- Violence istan. Other countries with high levels of sented. Most trend analysis of wars is based lethal violence, including Brazil, Colombia, on a threshold of either one thousand or at Mexico, South Africa, and the Democratic least twenty-five battle-related deaths per Republic of the Congo, are also not formally year.8 Based on this, we obtain the picture at war. of recent trends shown in Figure 2. For the fourth claim, there are few sys- In this account, interstate war is all but tematic overviews of the scope of polit- obsolete. There were no interstate wars in ical violence in nonwar settings, and we 2013, and only seven ongoing wars with Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/145/4/113/1830780/daed_a_00416.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 lack common definitions of what consti- more than one thousand battle deaths. tutes communal violence, terrorist attacks, Lowering the threshold to include conflicts politically motivated violence, organized with twenty-five or more battle deaths, criminal and gang violence, riots, and so there were thirty-three ongoing armed con- on.5 Cross-national comparisons of the flicts in 2013, of which twenty-four were in- scale and distribution of violence with- ternal conflicts and nine were “internation- in states are uncommon, and most coun- alized internal conflicts” in which external try-level and microlevel work is discon- parties were actively engaged.9 The overall nected analytically from a larger picture.6 number of wars has also declined to around Adopting a narrowly criminological or le- thirty per year. And the human costs of war gal perspective and labeling all nonconflict have also allegedly declined, with the an- deaths as “homicides” is also misleading, nual total of battle deaths in these data sets since “homicide” conjures up a form of in- hovering around sixty thousand per year, al- terpersonal violence that is individual, un- though this figure has risen since 2013 due organized, relatively random, not linked to to intense fighting in Syria and Iraq.
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