Do International Interventions Prolong Civil Conflicts? The Effect of Ex Ante Expectations

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Date	01 April 2022
DOI	10.1177/0095327X20967658
Published date	01 April 2022
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https://doi.org/10.1177/0095327X20967658

Armed Forces & Society

2022, Vol. 48(2) 302 –322

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DOI: 10.1177/0095327X20967658

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Article

Do International

Interventions Prolong

Civil Conflicts? The

Effect of Ex Ante

Expectations

Tsukasa Watanabe

Abstract

Many studies have found that third-party intervention tends to prolong the duration

of civil conflict. However, some studies have suggested that mere expectations of

external intervention can prolong conflict duration even in the absence of actual

intervention. Therefore, the effects of external interventions in prolonging the

duration of civil conflicts remain unclear. This study examines the direct effect of

third-party intervention on the duration of civil conflict by controlling for the indi-

rect effect of expectations of external intervention. The probabilities of intervention

were estimated, and the direct effect of interventions was tested by controlling

for the effect of ex ante expectations. The empirical findings were as follows:

(1) Third-party intervention has no direct effect of prolonging the duration of a

conflict when expectations are controlled for, and (2) Third-party intervention may

have an indirect effect of shortening conflict duration, which contradicts the findings

of previous studies.

Keywords

civil wars, international relations, third-party intervention, expectations

Department of International Politics, School of International Politics, Economics, and Communication,

Aoyama Gakuin University, Tokyo, Japan

Corresponding Author:

Tsukasa Watanabe, Department of International Politics, School of International Politics, Economics,

and Communication, Aoyama Gakuin University, 4-4-25 Shibuya, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 150-8366, Japan.

Email: d6120002@aoyama.jp

Elucidating the effect of unilateral interventions on the duration of civil conflicts, the

recent examples of which include interventions by the United States and Russia in

Syria, is necessary for their effective management. The war in Syria has become the

deadliest civil war in the 21st century. A better understanding of the effect of

intervention would have enabled the United Nations (UN) Security Council and the

international community to manage the crisis better. These pro blems have been

widely debated by scholars who have suggested that third-party intervention may

have the effect of prolonging the duration of a civil conflict (Balch-Lindsay &

Enterline, 2000; Balch-Lindsay et al., 2008; Regan, 2002). While some studies have

pointed out that the mere presence of expectations of intervention can affect the

duration of a conflict (Akcinaroglu & Radziszewski, 2005), analyses of the effects of

third-party intervention have not differentiated between the direct ex post effect of

an intervention and the ex ante effect of an expected intervention. This article

examines the direct impact of a unilateral third-party intervention on the duration

of civil conflict by accounting for the ex ante effect of an anticipated intervention.

The empirical results suggest that unila teral intervention does not have a direct

impact on the duration of conflict.

Elucidation of the dynamics of civil conflicts essentially requires an understand-

ing of the effects of unilateral third-party interventions. Indeed, one third of the

39 ongoing civil conflicts in 2014 were internationalized through third-party inter-

ventions in support of one or both of the antagonists (Pettersson & Wallensteen,

2015). Although third-party intervention s can be unilateral or multilateral, most

interventions in conflicts that have occurred since the end of the Second World War

have been unilateral. According to Regan (2002), there were 1,036 individual inter-

ventions in civil conflicts between 1944 and 1999; among these, 929 were unilateral

and no more than 107 were multilateral interventions by international organizations

like the UN or North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Yet, despite their prevalence,

unilateral interventions have attracted limited scholarl y attention compared with

multilateral interventions that have generated a substantial body of empirical liter-

ature focusing on the role of UN peacekeeping in civil conflict management.

Therefore, this article, aims to examine both the direct and indirect effects of

unilateral third-party intervention in civil conflicts using a quantitative approach.

First, reviewing the existing literature on unilateral third-party interventions, I

explain the role of expectations regarding future pro-rebel interventions, which

affect the duration of conflicts. Next, I compute the predicted probabilities of exter-

nal intervention for each civil conflict to control for the effect of expectations of

intervention in the models of conflict duration. Logit analysis is employed to exam-

ine which factors affect the likelihood of each type of unilateral intervention and

predict the probabilities of intervention for each case based on estimates derived

from the logit model. Finally, I test the direct effects of third-party intervention on

civil conflict duration, controlling for the expected likelihood of intervention using

survival analysis. Two key findings of this empirical study are as follows:

(1) Third-party intervention has no direct effect of prolonging conflict duration when

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