Comparing Armed Conflicts

Comparing Armed Conflicts PDF Author: Bruno Charbonneau
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000425207
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
Comparing armed conflicts primes the production of categories that, when mobilized, can alter the trajectories of the conflicts. Considering the political dynamism of spaces of conflict and intervention, and that practitioners regularly seek out academic expertise, this book discusses the possibilities and limits of comparative approaches to understanding armed conflict and intervention. Capacity-building experts, development workers, international organizations, and diplomats use their previous experiences and bring them into new contexts to understand and respond to their environment. Conflict actors can also make comparisons to buttress their political position in negotiations, consolidate their control over fighters, and as calls for transnational rebel solidarity. The use of such comparisons is an inherently political move and it has an impact on the production of scientific knowledge, on conflict dynamics themselves, and on the formulation and implementation of conflict management policy: comparison is inherently a practice of order-making. While there are important epistemological and methodological stakes associated with researchers engaging in comparison, there are also important productive effects connected to the research avenues taken. The chapters in this book were originally published in the Civil Wars.

Comparing Armed Conflicts

Comparing Armed Conflicts PDF Author: Bruno Charbonneau
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000425207
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 192

Get Book Here

Book Description
Comparing armed conflicts primes the production of categories that, when mobilized, can alter the trajectories of the conflicts. Considering the political dynamism of spaces of conflict and intervention, and that practitioners regularly seek out academic expertise, this book discusses the possibilities and limits of comparative approaches to understanding armed conflict and intervention. Capacity-building experts, development workers, international organizations, and diplomats use their previous experiences and bring them into new contexts to understand and respond to their environment. Conflict actors can also make comparisons to buttress their political position in negotiations, consolidate their control over fighters, and as calls for transnational rebel solidarity. The use of such comparisons is an inherently political move and it has an impact on the production of scientific knowledge, on conflict dynamics themselves, and on the formulation and implementation of conflict management policy: comparison is inherently a practice of order-making. While there are important epistemological and methodological stakes associated with researchers engaging in comparison, there are also important productive effects connected to the research avenues taken. The chapters in this book were originally published in the Civil Wars.

Troubled Regions and Failing States

Troubled Regions and Failing States PDF Author: Kristian Berg Harpviken
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing
ISBN: 0857241028
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 393

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Book Description
Is the phenomenon of state failure better understood through a focus on the regional context? To what extent may studies of regional security benefit from a focus on the capacities and vulnerabilities of the states involved? This title addresses these questions.

The Companion to International Humanitarian Law

The Companion to International Humanitarian Law PDF Author: Dražan Djukić
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 900434201X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 759

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Book Description
This important and unique volume begins with seven essays that discuss the contemporary challenges to implementing international humanitarian law. Its second and largest section comprises 263 entries covering the vast majority of IHL concepts. Written by a wide range of experts, each entry explains the essential legal parameters of a particular element of IHL, while offering practical examples and, where relevant, historical considerations, and supplying a short bibliography for further research. The starting point for the selection were notions arising from the Geneva Conventions, the Additional Protocols, and other IHL treaties. However, the reader will also encounter entries going beyond the typical scope of IHL, such as those related to the protection of the natural environment and animals, and entries that, in addition to an IHL perspective, discuss relevant issues through the lens of human rights law, refugee law, international criminal law, the law on State responsibility, national law, and so on. The editors have also attempted to take into account certain concepts that have no direct foundation in IHL, but that are commonly used in mass media and politics, or generate wide interest in contemporary society, such as drones, economic warfare, cyber warfare, sniping, targeted killings, transitional justice, terrorism, and many other topics. The Companion to International Humanitarian Law offers a much-needed tool for both scholars and practitioners, supplying information accessible enough to enable a variety of users to quickly familiarise themselves with it and sufficiently comprehensive to be a source for reflection and further research for more demanding users. Its aim is to facilitate the practical application of IHL, and be of use to a wide audience interested in or confronted with IHL, ranging from professionals in humanitarian assistance and protection in the field, legal officers and advisers at the national and international level, trainers, academics, scholars, and students.

Empire's Violent End

Empire's Violent End PDF Author: Thijs Brocades Zaalberg
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501764152
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
In Empire's Violent End, Thijs Brocades Zaalberg and Bart Luttikhuis, along with expert contributors, present comparative research focused specifically on excessive violence in Indonesia, Algeria, Vietnam, Malaysia, Kenya, and other areas during the wars of decolonization. In the last two decades, there have been heated public and scholarly debates in France, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands on the violent end of empire. Nevertheless, the broader comparative investigations into colonial counterinsurgency tend to leave atrocities such as torture, execution, and rape in the margins. The editors describe how such comparisons mostly focus on the differences by engaging in "guilt ranking." Moreover, the dramas that have unfolded in Algeria and Kenya tend to overshadow similar violent events in Indonesia, the very first nation to declare independence directly after World War II. Empire's Violent End is the first book to place the Dutch-Indonesian case at the heart of a comparison with focused, thematic analysis on a diverse range of topics to demonstrate that despite variation in scale, combat intensity, and international dynamics, there were more similarities than differences in the ways colonial powers used extreme forms of violence. By delving into the causes and nature of the abuse, Brocades Zaalberg and Luttikhuis conclude that all cases involved some form of institutionalized impunity, which enabled the type of situation in which the forces in the service of the colonial rulers were able to use extreme violence.

International Law and the Classification of Conflicts

International Law and the Classification of Conflicts PDF Author: Elizabeth Wilmshurst
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191632236
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 735

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Book Description
This book comprises contributions by leading experts in the field of international humanitarian law on the subject of the categorisation or classification of armed conflict. It is divided into two sections: the first aims to provide the reader with a sound understanding of the legal questions surrounding the classification of hostilities and its consequences; the second includes ten case studies that examine practice in respect of classification. Understanding how classification operates in theory and practice is a precursor to identifying the relevant rules that govern parties to hostilities. With changing forms of armed conflict which may involve multi-national operations, transnational armed groups and organized criminal gangs, the need for clarity of the law is all-important. The case studies selected for analysis are Northern Ireland, DRC, Colombia, Afghanistan (from 2001), Gaza, South Ossetia, Iraq (from 2003), Lebanon (2006), the so-called war against Al-Qaeda, and future trends. The studies explore the legal consequences of classification particularly in respect of the use of force, detention in armed conflict, and the relationship between human rights law and international humanitarian law. The practice identified in the case studies allows the final chapter to draw conclusions as to the state of the law on classification.

Ceasefire Agreements and Peace Processes

Ceasefire Agreements and Peace Processes PDF Author: Malin Akebo
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1317204131
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 231

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Book Description
analyses ceasefire agreements in relation to peace processes using qualitative analysis uses a process-oriented conflict dynamics approach to analyse and compare ceasefire agreements will be of much interest to students of peace and conflict studies, intra-state conflict, Asian politics, security studies and IR

Hitler's Ostkrieg and the Indian Wars

Hitler's Ostkrieg and the Indian Wars PDF Author: Edward B. Westermann
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806157135
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
As he prepared to wage his war of annihilation on the Eastern Front, Adolf Hitler repeatedly drew parallels between the Nazi quest for Lebensraum, or living space, in Eastern Europe and the United States’s westward expansion under the banner of Manifest Destiny. The peoples of Eastern Europe were, he said, his “redskins,” and for his colonial fantasy of a “German East” he claimed a historical precedent in the United States’s displacement and killing of the native population. Edward B. Westermann examines the validity, and value, of this claim in Hitler's Ostkrieg and the Indian Wars. The book takes an empirical approach that highlights areas of similarity and continuity, but also explores key distinctions and differences between these two national projects. The westward march of American empire and the Nazi conquest of the East offer clear parallels, not least that both cases fused a sense of national purpose with racial stereotypes that aided in the exclusion, expropriation, and killing of peoples. Westermann evaluates the philosophies of Manifest Destiny and Lebensraum that justified both conquests, the national and administrative policies that framed Nazi and U.S. governmental involvement in these efforts, the military strategies that supported each nation’s political goals, and the role of massacre and atrocity in both processes. Important differences emerge: a goal of annihilation versus one of assimilation and acculturation; a planned military campaign versus a confused strategy of pacification and punishment; large-scale atrocity as routine versus massacre as exception. Comparative history at its best, Westermann’s assessment of these two national projects provides crucial insights into not only their rhetoric and pronouncements but also the application of policy and ideology “on the ground.” His sophisticated and nuanced revelations of the similarities and dissimilarities between these two cases will inform further study of genocide, as well as our understanding of the Nazi conquest of the East and the American conquest of the West.

Armed Conflict and Schooling: Evidence from the 1994 Rwandan Genocide

Armed Conflict and Schooling: Evidence from the 1994 Rwandan Genocide PDF Author: Richard Akresh
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN:
Category : Armed Conflict
Languages : en
Pages : 38

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Book Description
Abstract: To examine the impact of Rwanda's 1994 genocide on children's schooling, the authors combine two cross-sectional household surveys collected before and after the genocide. The identification strategy uses pre-war data to control for an age group's baseline schooling and exploits variation across provinces in the intensity of killings and which children's cohorts were school-aged when exposed to the war. The findings show a strong negative impact of the genocide on schooling, with exposed children completing one-half year less education representing an 18.3 percent decline. The effect is robust to including control variables, alternative sources for genocide intensity, and an instrumental variables strategy.

Comparative Peace Processes in Latin America

Comparative Peace Processes in Latin America PDF Author: Cynthia Arnson
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804735896
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 516

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Book Description
This book is about ending guerrilla conflicts in Latin America through political means. It is about peace processes, aimed at securing an end to military hostilities in the context of agreements that touch on some of the principal political, economic, social, and ethnic imbalances that led to conflict in the first place. The book presents a carefully structured comparative analysis of six Latin American countries--Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Colombia, and Peru--which experienced guerrilla warfare that outlasted the end of the Cold War. The book explores in detail the unique constellation of national and international events that allowed some wars to end in negotiated settlement, one to end in virtual defeat of the insurgents, and the others to rage on. The aim of the book is to identify the variables that contribute to the success or failure of a peace dialogue. Though the individual case studies deal with dynamics that have allowed for or impeded successful negotiations, the contributors also examine comparatively such recurrent dilemmas as securing justice for victims of human rights abuses, reforming the military and police forces, and reconstructing the domestic economy. Serving as a bridge between the distinct literatures on democratization in Latin America and on conflict resolution, the book underscores the reciprocal influences that peace processes and democratic transition have on each other, and the ways democratic "space” is created and political participation enhanced by means of a peace dialogue with insurgent forces. The case studies--by country and issue specialists from Latin America, the United States, and Europe--are augmented by commentaries of senior practitioners most directly involved in peace negotiations, including United Nations officials, former peace advisers, and activists from civil society.

Mastering the Gray Zone

Mastering the Gray Zone PDF Author: Michael J. Mazarr
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 9781329784611
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 154

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Book Description
"Discussions of an emerging practice of 'gray zone' conflict have become increasingly common throughout the U.S. Army and the wider national security community, but the concept remains ill-defined and poorly understood. This monograph aims to contribute to the emerging dialogue about competition and rivalry in the gray zone by defining the term, comparing and contrasting it with related theories, and offering tentative hypotheses about this increasingly important form of state competition. The idea of operating gradually and somewhat covertly to remain below key thresholds of response is hardly new. Many approaches being used today -- such as support for proxy forces and insurgent militias -- have been employed for millennia. The monograph argues that the emergence of this more coherent and intentional form of gray zone conflict is best understood as the confluence of three factors. Understood in this context, gray zone strategies can be defined as a form of conflict that pursues political objectives through integrated campaigns; employs mostly nonmilitary or nonkinetic tools; strives to remain under key escalatory or red line thresholds to avoid outright conventional conflict; and moves gradually toward its objectives rather than seeking conclusive results in a relatively limited period of time. Having examined the scope and character of gray zone conflict, the monograph offers seven hypotheses about this emerging form of rivalry. Finally, the monograph offers recommendations for the United States and its friends and allies to deal with this challenge"--Publisher's web site.