Democratic Intervention?

Posted by & filed under Conflict Patterns, Governance

Donald Trump has made statements sceptical of military interventions in the Middle East. This is perhaps a rare piece of good news.

Military intervention as a means of building democracy has once again become a hot topic. The Norwegian government has been criticized due to the consequences of the intervention in Libya. Hillary Clinton has been branded a hawk because she is seen as more willing to use military force than Obama. Some supporters of Bernie Sanders seemed to prefer Trump to Clinton, in the hope that Trump would be less interventionist.

Experiences from the interventions in Afghanistan in 2001, Iraq in 2003 and Libya in 2011 have not been positive. What went wrong? Photo: US Marines – Iraq 2003

The logic behind democratic intervention is clear enough: democracies rarely if ever go to war with each other. Stable democracies also experience few civil wars. If a civil war occurs nonetheless in a stable democracy, as a general rule the conflict will be less bloody than in an authoritarian country. Genocide and politicide are also rare in democracies. An increase in the number of stable democracies, the argument runs, will contribute to lower levels of violence in both domestic and external conflicts.

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This Week in South Sudan – Week 45

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Monday 7 November Kenyan aid workers who allegedly were arrested in Akobo, Jonglei State, by SPLM (IO) field commanders and governors have been released. The reported number of released aid workers varies between 25-75. Ten civilians were wounded in an attack by unknown gunmen, assumedly attempting to target SPLA soldiers in Bentiu, Unity State. Tuesday… Read more »

Myths About War and Violence

Posted by & filed under Conflict Patterns

Illustration: Espen Friberg / Morgenbladet

‘Calculations made by a former president of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, with the assistance of historians from a number of countries, show that since 3600 BC, the world has known only 292 years of peace. Since 650 BC, there have been 1,656 arms races. Sixteen of them ended in economic collapse, the rest in war.’

This story, or slight variations of it, has been circulating in the media for well over 60 years. Military periodicals, in both East and West, as well as journals published by the peace movement, have taken this story at face value.

This is despite the fact that the original author, Norman Cousins, in the heading of his article, which was published in St Louis Post-Dispatch, referred to an ’imaginary experiment’ and later referred to the story as ’fanciful’. The figure for the number of years of global peace seems to have been taken from some rather vague suppositions advanced by European historians in the second half of the 19th century, while the statistic regarding arms races that end in war was a pure invention by Cousins – as was the role of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. In Cousins’s first article, he safeguarded his position by giving the Norwegian author the name ’Dr. Storhjerne’ (‘Dr. Brainy’).

Nonetheless, this tale migrated from the world of fantasy literature into popular non-fiction on the subject of war and peace. Although the origins of this story have been revealed a number of times, the first time as early as 1962, it has proved a difficult story to eradicate. The most recent reference I have found to the story was in a textbook on the causes of war published in 2013 by a well-reputed American academic publishing house. In this case, however, it was presented with a certain amount of scepticism.

Serious research has been conducted on both the relative numbers of years of war and peace, and the link between arms races and war, and I have no wish to distance myself from the warning about arms races that Cousins wished to convey. The problem is that there is no link between this serious research and the popular story that has been circulating for two generations.

It is perhaps the most resilient myth about war and peace in our times.

But there are many others. Here are six more.Read More

What This Election Means for US Foreign Policy

Posted by & filed under Regions and Powers

Photo: Gage Skidmore, Wikimedia Commons

The resonance of this U.S. election campaign is truly enormous, in every corner of the world. But despite much disgust about the mudslinging, it is not necessarily all that negative.

Observers everywhere may be astounded that a candidate so arrogantly ignorant in international affairs could gather so much support, but that has also given them a greater understanding of the global stakes in this moment of choice. Paradoxical as it may seem, many people now have greater appreciation of the value of U.S. leadership and of their interest in preserving it. This leadership is indeed indispensable in various troubled areas, from the South China Sea to the Barents Sea, and hot spots, from Mosul to Donetsk, and cannot be taken for granted.

The Victims of War: Light at the End of the Tunnel?

Posted by & filed under Conflict Patterns

In making the choice between pessimism and optimism, it may be a risky business to lean on everyday news. Let us rather have a look at figures that reveal more long-term tendencies.

 

PRIO: Data from the Peace Research Institute Oslo. UCDP: Data from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program

Steven Pinker’s book The Better Angels of Our Nature, published in 2011, painted an optimistic picture of mankind emerging from its violent past. Since then, however, the trend has gone in the wrong direction. My work on a book in Norwegian on the same topic has been conducted during this reversal. The US election has changed this reversal into fears of a major and dramatic setback, if we are to listen to the most pessimistic accounts. Nevertheless, there are still good reasons for optimism in the longer term. The data recorded by the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) suggests that currently there are three main trends in armed conflicts: a long-term reduction in violence; increasing fragmentation; and geographical concentration.

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Countering Violent Extremism: Hidden Human Rights Costs

Posted by & filed under International Summer School

This is a guest blog post by a student who attended this years Peace Research course at the International Summer School 2016.

This summer we witnessed a wave of terrorist attacks all around the world, from peaceful European cities to historically insecure cities in Middle East. While the increasing number of lone wolves has made it considerably more difficult for the intelligence services to predict who the next attacker would be and where the next attack would occur, it is an established fact that the majority of attackers appear to be sympathizers of one of the biggest terrorist organizations of our time, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). In response to this increasing threat, many states have started addressing terrorism in a more comprehensive way by adopting new public strategies, broadly known as Countering Violent Extremism (CVE), that aims at dissuading extremists who have not yet succumbed to the military activities of terrorist organizations but who can be considered as active sympathizers who could potentially join the organization. However, these strategies has faced criticism both from the community targeted by these activities and also policy makers who finds them lacking strong empirical research background and bearing negative effects such as stigmatization of certain religious minorities who are permanently suspected of being vulnerable to the extremist ideologies.

In October 2015, the Human Rights Council passed the first resolution on human rights and preventing and countering violent extremism. PHOTO: U.S. Mission/Eric Bridiers

On 19th February 2015, the White House held its three-day World Summit on Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) “to bring together local, federal, and international leaders to discuss concrete steps the United States and its partners can take to develop community-oriented approaches to counter hateful extremist ideologies that radicalize, recruit or incite to violence”. The summit focused on two issues: first, the specific issue of foreign terrorist fighters (FTFs) leaving their home Western Countries to join ISIS in Syria and Iraq, and second, the thematic issue of countering violent extremism. Although both terms have their roots in the Security Council resolution 2178 (2014), the global attention to CVE strategies mostly came about after the White House Summit and, particularly, the UN World Leaders Summit on Countering Violent Extremism in September 2015. The Summit, which was followed by a series of smaller, regional meetings, could be considered as a change in the hardline approach towards terrorism after the 9/11 attack.

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This Week in South Sudan – Week 44

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Monday 31 October According to the new Global Impunity Index by The Committee to Protect Journalists, South Sudan ranks among the top five countries where journalists have been murdered with impunity in 2016. Tuesday 1 November The newly emerged rebel group, the South Sudan Democratic Front (SSDF) called for the removal of the “failed and illegitimate… Read more »

To Tame a Hawk

Posted by & filed under Regions and Powers

Hillary Clinton is not seeking attention for her views on Syria. And she has her reasons for not doing so.
hillary-clinton-pres-2016

We can safely say that the 2016 US election campaign has been one of a kind. There is nothing new about the use of harsh rhetoric in pursuit of votes. The candidates and their supporters will freely attack each other and opposing policies and proposals. Things may become heated, but usually the arguments are about substance. This year, focusing on issues of substance has proved to be more than usually difficult, primarily because one of the candidates has conducted a campaign dominated by form rather than substance. One area that has been more or less devoid of attention is foreign policy. Read More

This Week in South Sudan – Week 43

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Monday 24 October Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir has given the Government of South Sudan (GOSS) a two-month deadline to force Sudanese rebels in South Sudan to leave the country. According to the SPLA (IO), 11 government soldiers were killed during a road ambush along the Kola-Wedakona road in northern Upper Nile State. A SPLA (IO)-allied… Read more »

This Week in South Sudan – Week 42

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Monday 17 October Riek Machar claims that following the July clashes in Juba, the SPLA used seven different planes to locate and attempt to kill him as they pursued him for 37 days from Juba to the Congolese border. IRIN Analysis: “Congo’s South Sudan rebel problem” The Guardian: “Attack on aid workers in South Sudan:… Read more »