End of Cold War is not the cause.

PositionCivil Wars

According to conventional thinking, the end of the Cold War helped unleash a spate of civil conflicts among ethnic groups whose simmering animosities had been stifled by superpower hegemony. It was commonly accepted that ethnic and religious diversity made countries more prone to civil war, and it was believed that conflicts could be predicted to break out in areas with the strongest ethnic or political grievances.

Yet, research on the causes of civil wars by political scientists David Laitin and James Fearon, Stanford (Calif.) University, refutes these popular theories. "We're finding that none of this holds up when we look at the data," Fearon contends. Instead, the professors argue, internal wars are more likely to happen in mountainous, impoverished, politically unstable regions that favor rural guerrilla warfare or insurgency. "It's not that grievances are irrelevant; rather, they are ubiquitous," maintains Laitin. "When there is a rebellion, there is no assurance that solving its stated grievance will cause it to stop, because it might be a proxy for something else."

Finding the root causes of civil wars is critical, the researchers stress, because they are so devastating. "This is an immense public health problem," Laitin states. Since the end of World War II, 16,500,000 people have died in internal conflicts, compared with 3,300,000 in interstate wars. About 122 civil wars have raged since 1945, compared with 25 conventional ones. Internal conflicts last six years on average and bring about widespread refugee dislocation and economic devastation, as seen in Afghanistan, Somalia, and Lebanon. Despite this heavy toll, civil wars have been studied far less than conventional conflicts and are not properly understood.

Fearon and Laitin argue that the prevalence of internal war is mainly the result of the accumulation of protracted postcolonial conflicts since the 1950s and 1960s, rather than a sudden change associated with the post-Cold War international system. The number of civil conflicts has increased over time because they break out faster than they end. On average, 2.3 wars have begun annually, while 1.7 conflicts have been resolved each year.

"We shouldn't assume, as some policymakers in the...

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT