Civil Wars
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Marco Widodo
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How should we think about wars in the Middle East? Past scholarship has made great strides in unpacking the region’s nuanced conflict dynamics, but the literature lacks a broader framework to examine how diverse factors interact with the international system and with each other. In a recent CDDRL Research Seminar, Marc Lynch, Professor of Political Science at George Washington University and the Director of the Project on Middle East Political Science, applies a framework of “Warscape Theory” to better understand patterns of state failures, recurrent conflict, and authoritarian rule across the region.

Three observations motivate this project. First, Middle Eastern wars are intricately interconnected. Militias, religious divisions, and refugee crises harbor no regard for borders. Second, these conflicts are long and protracted; wars may simmer down, but they never go away. The potential recurrence of direct violence remains a constant fear and expectation. Third, Middle Eastern political science has remained fairly insular, largely sticking to within region comparisons. Lynch’s warscape intervention draws inspiration from a body of anthropological research on wars in Sub-Saharan Africa, which share many similarities with wars in the Middle East. They rarely have a clear starting or ending point, they are constantly shaped by external great power interventions, and they possess a self-perpetuating dynamic that makes conflict resolution incredibly difficult to achieve.

What qualifies a region as a “warscape?” First, warscapes have protracted conflicts with periods of remission and resurgence. Second, warscape conflicts are highly transnationalized and are not contained by borders in any meaningful sense. Third, violence tends to be highly variable, both temporally and spatially. Significant intra-state differences in violence render state-level observations unhelpful; one part of the country might live in full-fledged war while another remains oblivious to the violence. Fourth, the relative strengths of belligerents are less clear than they present. Combatants possess variable motivations for participating in armed conflict, choosing to pick up and drop arms situationally. Finally, almost as a marketing tactic, groups often distinguish themselves by engaging in extreme — and sometimes performative — brutality. Beheadings, immolations, and other acts of terror simultaneously scare enemies at home and attract support from Gulf sponsors.

Why care about this new lens for studying the Middle East? This warscape framework describes a complicated reality that existing terms like “civil war” struggle to capture. It analytically repositions the state from being the central actor to only one of multiple “competing political orders” while contextualizing micro-level ethnographic observations within a broader landscape of global arms flows and international power structures. Lynch hopes scholars may leverage this lens to investigate how conflict dynamics play out differently in warscape regions compared to non-warscape regions.

Lynch’s characterization of the Middle East as a “warscape” does not suggest that war in the Middle East is inevitable. Instead, putting an end to wars in the Middle East requires a systematic understanding of how actors and structures from the individual level to the transnational level interact with one another. Warscape theory, as Lynch proposes, may enable us to better capture the full range and complexity of these interconnected conflicts.

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The Transformative Power of Anger Under Authoritarian Repression

Cornell Assistant Professor of Political Science Bryn Rosenfeld’s work explains why ordinary citizens — those without activist ties — sometimes take extraordinary risks to stand up to authoritarian regimes.
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Gillian Slee presented her research in a CDDRL seminar on November 7, 2024.
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Home But Not Free: Rule-Breaking and Withdrawal in Reentry

Previous works paint three broad challenges with the parole system: material hardship, negative social networks, and carceral governance. Gillian Slee, Gerhard Casper Postdoctoral Fellow in Rule of Law at CDDRL, proposes a crucial fourth explanation for why re-entry fails: socioemotional dynamics.
Home But Not Free: Rule-Breaking and Withdrawal in Reentry
Klaus Desmet presented his research in a CDDRL seminar on October 24, 2024.
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Polarization in the United States Reconsidered

While many have argued that America has witnessed a shift from disagreements on redistribution to disagreements on culture, Klaus Desmet’s findings indicate otherwise.
Polarization in the United States Reconsidered
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Marc Lynch, Professor of Political Science at George Washington University and the Director of the Project on Middle East Political Science, applies a framework of “Warscape Theory” to better understand patterns of state failures, recurrent conflict, and authoritarian rule across the region.

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The Korean Peninsula stands at a perilous crossroads. Recent missile tests and provocations, coupled with historical trends, paint a worrisome picture of the current state of affairs, prompting some analysts to warn of a looming conflict. The Korea Program at Shorenstein APARC recently hosted two events to analyze these escalating tensions that have sparked global concern.

On February 21, the seminar “Slow Boil: What to Expect from North Korea in 2024,” featured Victor Cha, D.S. Song-KF Chair, Professor of Government at Georgetown University, and Senior Vice President for Asia and Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Cha discussed historical behavioral patterns of North Korean missile tests, military provocations, and weapons demonstrations, and what all these might mean for security on the Korean peninsula.

The following week, on March 7, at the seminar  “Is North Korea Preparing for War?,” we were joined by Robert Carlin, a non-resident scholar at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey and Siegfried Hecker, a professor of practice at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, and in the Department of Nuclear Engineering at Texas A&M University. Carlin and Hecker, both formerly our colleagues at the Stanford Center for International Security and Cooperation, discussed their recent 38 North article, “Is Kim Jong Un Preparing for War?,” which posits that Pyongyang has already made the strategic decision to go to war. 

The speakers at both events delved into the various rationales behind North Korea's actions and provided contrasting viewpoints on the trajectory of the situation. While Carlin and Hecker painted a grim picture of North Korea's intentions to engage in warfare and advocated for robust security measures, Cha argued that, while 2024 will be a challenging year, established approaches such as diplomacy and deterrence will remain effective in managing relations with Pyongyang. 

Rhetorical Preparations for Conflict

Carlin and Hecker provided a grave assessment, suggesting that “Kim Jong Un has made a strategic decision to go to war,” akin to his grandfather's stance in 1950. Hecker provided historical context, indicating that despite attempts at normalization with the United States, each North Korean leader has simultaneously explored the development of its nuclear weapons arsenal and accumulation of its conventional armaments. Hecker argued, "The Korean War was never settled, it was an armistice, and so, more or less, North Korea has been preparing for war, but this is different and we are really concerned.”

Carlin noted a shift that occurred at the Workers’ Party plenum at the end of 2022, in which “Pyongyang announced new measures that demonstrated that the old policy with the U.S. was over and that they were going to move much more towards the Russians.” The plenum also marked a rhetorical shift where Kim Jong Un introduced the phrase “war preparations.” “Some people say, ‘Oh that's normal North Korean rhetoric’ — it's not normal. They had not been talking at that level to their own people about war preparations […] they talked a lot about deterrence which meant building up, but not war preparations,” said Carlin.

According to Carlin, Pyongyang has “primed the pan for a clash in the Yellow Sea […] everything we have seen in the last year suggests very strongly that this is a decision the regime has made, and that it will patiently move in this direction.”

The speakers both argued that Kim's shift stems from a perceived failure of past diplomatic endeavors and a traumatic setback at the 2019 Hanoi summit, when, as Hecker indicated, the North Koreans decided to abandon the 30-year policy of seeking normalization with the United States. “This is a more dangerous time than any time since the start of the Korean War,” Hecker warned.
 

The Demilitarized Zone The Demilitarized Zone (Photo Credit: Michael Breger)

The Inevitable Tensions of Deterrence

In contrast, Cha’s assessment of the situation is more cautiously optimistic, anticipating a surge in North Korean provocations in 2024 but attributing it to historical patterns rather than a definitive strategic shift. According to Cha, we should  expect North Korean belligerence to increase in 2024, while dialogue looks unlikely.” He highlighted North Korea's tendency to ramp up provocations during U.S. election years, produced data on the increasing number of provocations since the 1990s, and emphasized Kim's repeated rejections of dialogue with the Biden administration.

Cha also provided four reasons why he does not expect a war with North Korea in 2024: “First, Pyongyang is not confident enough in its capability to deter U.S. and South Korean retaliation […] Second, the uptempo in U.S.-ROK and U.S.-ROK-Japan exercising […] Third, if North Korea were ready to go to war, they would not be selling all their ammunition to Russia […] and fourth, if North Korea were really ready to go to war, they would not be decoupling from South Korea.”

Cha suggested that, while war is unlikely, “coercion, particularly against South Korea, and North Korea-Russia relations are only going to grow.” He described North Korea’s transfer of armaments from Najin to Dunai in Russia to three munition storage facilities near the Ukrainian front. Cha sees a possible change in the U.S. North Korea policy approach from focusing on denuclearization to curtailing and disincentivizing this behavior.

An Uncertain Year Ahead

Whether or not the escalating tensions since the 2019 Hanoi Summit mean that Pyongyang is headed to war, its increased belligerence is a clear signal that Kim’s government has shifted its efforts. North Korea is now pursuing its security and economic agendas without any indication of attempting to normalize relations with the United States or South Korea. Furthermore, it continues to strengthen its partnership with the China-Russia bloc. The assessment of continued tensions on the Korean Peninsula is undisputed.

Ultimately, both perspectives shared by the speakers highlight the need for vigilance, strategic coordination, and innovative policy solutions to address the escalating tensions in the region.
 

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Portrait of Kiyoteru Tsutsui and a silhouette of the Toyko Syline at night.
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Decoding Japan's Pulse: Insights from the Stanford Japan Barometer

The Asahi Shimbun is publishing a series highlighting the Stanford Japan Barometer, a periodic public opinion survey co-developed by Stanford sociologist Kiyoteru Tsutsui and Dartmouth College political scientist Charles Crabtree, which unveils nuanced preferences and evolving attitudes of the Japanese public on political, economic, and social issues.
Decoding Japan's Pulse: Insights from the Stanford Japan Barometer
Gidong Kim
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Popular Political Sentiments: Understanding Nationalism and Its Varied Effects on Liberal Democracy

Korea Program Postdoctoral Fellow Gidong Kim discusses his research into nationalism and its behavioral consequences in Korea and East Asia.
Popular Political Sentiments: Understanding Nationalism and Its Varied Effects on Liberal Democracy
Gi-Wook Shin on a video screen in a TV studio speaking to a host of South Korean-based Arirang TV.
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Video Interview: Gi-Wook Shin's 2024 Forecast for South Korea's Politics, Diplomacy, and Culture

APARC and Korea Program Director Gi-Wook Shin joined Arirang News to examine geopolitical uncertainty surrounding the Korean Peninsula in 2024, North Korea's intentions, Japan-U.S.-South Korea trilateral cooperation, Seoul-Beijing relations, tensions over Taiwan, and South Korean politics and soft power.
Video Interview: Gi-Wook Shin's 2024 Forecast for South Korea's Politics, Diplomacy, and Culture
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Amid North Korea’s increasing provocations, APARC’s Korea Program hosted three experts — Robert Carlin, Victor Cha, and Siegfried Hecker — to consider whether Pyongyang plans to go to war.

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Time:  7:30am-8:45am  California, USA 15 February 2022 
3:30pm-4:45pm London, UK 15 February 2022
11:30pm-12:45am  Singapore, 15-16 February 2022

How does India’s civil-military relationship affect its security? Historically, civil-military relations have been characterized by an “absent dialogue,” with the military enjoying almost complete operational autonomy in planning and fighting wars. But that arrangement has produced some mixed results for Indian national security, and is coming under increasing strain in an environment of intensifying peacetime strategic competition. New Delhi recognizes the need for reform, and has made some halting progress. This webinar will examine the evolution of civil-military relations in India, the challenges with the current configuration, and the agenda for reform that will face the next Chief of Defence Staff.

Speakers: 

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Anit Mukherjee is an Associate Professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, in Singapore. He is the award-winning author of The Absent Dialogue: Politicians, Bureaucrats and the Military in India, the definitive analysis of Indian civil-military relations. He is also Non-Resident Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Advanced Study of India (CASI), University of Pennsylvania, and at Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP), New Delhi. Prior to his academic career, he was a Major in the Indian Army and is an alumnus of India’s National Defence Academy (NDA), Khadakwasla. Anit holds a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University.

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Saawani Raje-Byrne is a lecturer (assistant professor) in International History at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. She is currently working on a book, based on her PhD dissertation, that presents novel theoretical analysis and detailed historical case studies of Indian civil-military relations. She previously taught at Defence Studies Department at King’s, and the Joint Services Command and Staff College at Shrivenham, and was a researcher at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi. She holds a PhD from King’s College London, and a BA from the University of Cambridge.

Moderated by :
Arzan Tarapore, South Asia research scholar at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Stanford University

This event is co-sponsored by Center for South Asia

Via Zoom  Register at:
https://bit.ly/3HpyMMO

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This event is available through livestream only. Please register in advance to receive a personalized link to watch the webinar:  https://bit.ly/3tNN7wG

Myanmar Back into Darkness: 2021 Shorenstein Journalism Award Recipient Swe Win to Headline Award Panel Discussion

The military coup in February 2021 put an abrupt end to hopes of democracy and liberty in Myanmar.  With every form of free speech now brutally suppressed, one of the major victims of the coup has been the independent press. Newsrooms were raided and dozens of journalists have been arrested. Several publications, including Myanmar Now, had their operating licenses revoked and their websites blocked. Most of the staff of the news outlets targets by the junta were forced to flee to territories along the country's border areas controlled by ethnic armed organizations. From there, they continue their professional work despite the threats to their lives and logistical difficulties.  
 

Join APARC as we honor Burmese investigative journalist Swe Win, editor-in-chief of Myanmar Now and winner of the 2021 Shorenstein Journalism Award. In his award keynote address, Swe Win will speak about journalism under threat in Myanmar, what it is like to report on the crisis in the country from outside while in exile, and Myanmar’s future.

The keynote will be followed by a conversation with Swe Win and two experts: Scot Marciel, a career diplomat, former U.S. ambassador to Myanmar, and currently a visiting practitioner fellow on Southeast Asia at APARC, and Eileen Donahoe, executive director of the Global Digital Policy Incubator at Stanford.

The event will conclude with an audience Q&A session moderated by Donald K. EmmersonDirector of the Southeast Asia Program at APARC.

Follow us on Twitter and use the hashtag #SJA21 to join the conversation.

Speakers:

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Photo of Swe Win, winner of 2021 Shorenstein Journalism Award
Swe Win is a Burmese journalist, human rights defender, and the chief editor of Yangon-based news outlet Myanmar Now. He has survived an assassination attempt and detention by his own government. Now he leads Myanmar Now from exile and his newsroom is in hiding.

Swe Win has written extensively on human rights cases that involve physical injury or death, unlawful detention or miscarriage of justice in Myanmar. He is the recipient of the 2019 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Emergent Leadership, which is regarded as Asia's equivalent of the Nobel Prize, the 2017 European Union’s Schuman Award for Human Rights, and the 2016 Presidential Certificate of Honor for Social Service through Journalism from the Myanmar Ministry of Information for his groundbreaking investigation into years-long abuse of domestic workers at a Yangon tailor shop.

Previously, he worked as a senior reporter for the Irrawaddy Magazine and freelanced for international publications such as the New York Times. From 1998 to 2005, he spent seven years in jail for distributing anti-junta material.

Photograph: Thet Htoo for the Mekong Review - https://mekongreview.com/cause-and-karma

 

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Eileen Donahoe is the executive director of the Global Digital Policy Incubator (GDPI) at the Cyber Policy Center at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. GDPI is a global multi-stakeholder collaboration hub for development of policies that reinforce human rights and democratic values in digitized society. Areas of current research include AI and human rights, combating digital disinformation, and governance of digital platforms.

Donahoe served in the Obama administration as the first U.S. Ambassador to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, at a time of significant institutional reform and innovation. After leaving government, she joined Human Rights Watch as director of global affairs, where she represented the organization worldwide on human rights foreign policy, with special emphasis on digital rights, cybersecurity, and internet governance. Earlier in her career, she was a technology litigator at Fenwick & West in Silicon Valley.

She serves on the National Endowment for Democracy Board of Directors; the Transatlantic Commission on Election Integrity; the World Economic Forum Future Council on the Digital Economy; University of Essex Advisory Board on Human Rights, Big Data and Technology; NDI Designing for Democracy Advisory Board; Freedom Online Coalition Advisory Network; and Dartmouth College Board of Trustees.

 

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Scot Marciel is a career diplomat with 35 years of experience in Asia and around the world. He is currently a visiting practitioner fellow on Southeast Asia at Shorenstein APARC.

Mr. Marciel served as U.S. Ambassador to Myanmar from March 2016 through May 2020, leading a mission of 500 employees during the difficult Rohingya crisis and a challenging time for both Myanmar’s democratic transition and the United States-Myanmar relationship. Prior to serving in Myanmar, Ambassador Marciel served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for East Asia and the Pacific at the State Department, where he oversaw U.S. relations with Southeast Asia.

In previous roles, he served as U.S. ambassador to Indonesia, the first U.S. ambassador for ASEAN Affairs, deputy assistant secretary of state for Southeast Asia, at U.S. missions in Turkey, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Brazil and the Philippines, and at the State Department in Washington in multiple positions.

 


About the Shorenstein Journalism Award:

The Shorenstein Journalism Award, which carries a cash prize of US $10,000, recognizes outstanding journalists who have spent their careers helping audiences around the world understand the complexities of the Asia-Pacific region, defined broadly to include Northeast, Southeast, South, and Central Asia and Australasia. Award recipients are veteran journalists with a distinguished body of work. News organizations are also eligible for the award.

The award is sponsored and presented by the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) at Stanford University. It honors the legacy of the Center’s benefactor, Mr. Walter H. Shorenstein, and his twin passions for promoting excellence in journalism and understanding of Asia. It also symbolizes the Center’s commitment to journalism that persistently and courageously seeks accuracy, deep reporting, and nuanced coverage in an age when attacks are regularly launched on the independent news media, on fact-based truth, and on those who tell it.

An annual tradition, the Shorenstein Journalism Award alternates between recipients whose work has mostly been conveyed through American news media and recipients whose work has mostly been conveyed through news media in one or more parts of the Asia-Pacific region. Included among the latter candidates are journalists who are from the region and work there, and who, in addition to their recognized excellence, may have helped defend and encourage free media in one or more countries in the region.

Learn more at https://aparc.fsi.stanford.edu/events/shorenstein-journalism-award.

Virtual Webinar Via Zoom

Register at: https://bit.ly/3tNN7wG

Swe Win <br><i>Editor-in-Chief, Myanmar Now; 2021 Shorenstein Journalism Award Winner </i><br><br>
Eileen Donahoe <br><i> Executive Director, Global Digital Policy Incubator, Stanford University </i><br><br>
Scot Marciel <br><i> Career Diplomat, Former U.S. Ambassador to Myanmar; Visiting Practitioner Fellow on Southeast Asia, Shorenstein APARC, Stanford University </i><br><br>
Panel Discussions

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Michael (Mike) Breger joined APARC in 2021 and serves as the Center's communications manager. He collaborates with the Center's leadership to share the work and expertise of APARC faculty and researchers with a broad audience of academics, policymakers, and industry leaders across the globe. 

Michael started his career at Stanford working at Green Library, and later at the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, serving as the event and communications coordinator. He has also worked in a variety of sales and marketing roles in Silicon Valley.

Michael holds a master's in liberal arts from Stanford University and a bachelor's in history and astronomy from the University of Virginia. A history buff and avid follower of international current events, Michael loves learning about different cultures, languages, and literatures. When he is not at work, Michael enjoys reading, music, and the outdoors.

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Abstract: This chapter reviews the evolution of Martha Crenshaw’s interests in and approaches to researching terrorism, a trajectory that begins in the 1960s and extends to the present. The story is necessarily partial and incomplete as well as personal. Her first research project concentrated on the use of terrorism by the FLN during the Algerian War, and her current research deals with patterns of cooperation and competition among militant groups and with the relationship between jihadist-oriented transnational terrorism and civil war. Along the way she has analyzed the causes of terrorism as well as its endings, individual motivations for terrorism, group strategies, organizational dynamics, political contexts for terrorism, state responses, and the consequences of counterterrorist policies. Terrorism remains a challenging topic for research as well as a persistent policy problem for decision-makers. We still struggle to explain both the “why” and the “how” of terrorism.

 

Click here to view full chapter

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Jamie O’Connell is a Lecturer in Residence at Stanford Law School. He teaches and writes on political and legal development and has particular expertise in law and development, transitional justice, democratization, post-conflict reconstruction, and business and human rights. Until 2018, he was a Senior Fellow of the Honorable G. William and Ariadna Miller Institute for Global Challenges and the Law at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, as well as a Lecturer in Residence, teaching both law and undergraduate students.

O’Connell has worked on human rights and development in over a dozen countries in Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Europe, under the auspices of the United Nations, local and international non-governmental organizations, and academic institutions. He co-founded International Professional Partnerships for Sierra Leone, a non-governmental organization that worked with the government of Sierra Leone to enhance the performance of its agencies and civil servants. Earlier in his career, O’Connell studied international business as a researcher at Harvard Business School, publishing numerous case studies. He has directed the Human Rights Clinic at the University of Sierra Leone and taught as a visitor at Harvard Law School and Columbia Law School. O’Connell clerked for the Honorable James R. Browning on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and is admitted to practice in California (inactive status) and New York. In 2016-17, he was a visiting professor and Fulbright Senior Scholar at the University of Valencia (Spain) Faculty of Law.

O’Connell’s scholarship includes “Representation, Paternalism, and Exclusion: The Divergent Impacts of the AKP’s Populism on Human Rights In Turkey” in Human Rights in a Time of Populism: Challenges and Responses (2020); “When Prosecution Is Not Enough: How the International Criminal Court Can Prevent Atrocity and Advance Accountability by Emulating Regional Human Rights Institutions” (with James L. Cavallaro, Yale Journal of International Law, 2020); “Common Interests, Closer Allies: How Democracy in Arab States Can Benefit the West” (Stanford Journal of International Law, 2012); “Empowering the Disadvantaged after Dictatorship and Conflict: Legal Empowerment, Transitions and Transitional Justice,” in Legal Empowerment: Practitioners’ Perspectives (2010); “East Timor 1999,” in The Responsibility to Protect: Moving the Campaign Forward (2007); “Gambling with the Psyche: Does Prosecuting Human Rights Violators Console Their Victims?” (Harvard International Law Journal, 2005); “Here Interest Meets Humanity: How to End the War and Support Reconstruction in Liberia, and the Case for Modest American Leadership” (Harvard Human Rights Journal, 2004); and Sierra Leone’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and Special Court: A Citizen’s Handbook (with Paul James-Allen and Sheku B.S. Lahai, 2003).

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What are the effects of international intervention on the rule of law after civil war? Rule of law requires not only that state authorities abide by legal limits on their power, but also that citizens rely on state laws and institutions to adjudicate disputes. Using an original survey and list experiment in Liberia, I show that exposure to the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) increased citizens’ reliance on state over nonstate authorities to resolve the most serious incidents of crime and violence, and increased nonstate authorities’ reliance on legal over illegal mechanisms of dispute resolution. I use multiple identification strategies to support a causal interpretation of these results, including an instrumental variables strategy that leverages plausibly exogenous variation in the distribution of UNMIL personnel induced by the killing of seven peacekeepers in neighboring Côte d'Ivoire. My results are still detectable two years later, even in communities that report no further exposure to peacekeepers. I also find that exposure to UNMIL did not mitigate and may in fact have exacerbated citizens’ perceptions of state corruption and bias in the short term, but that these apparently adverse effects dissipated over time. I conclude by discussing implications of these complex but overall beneficial effects.

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By Hal Benton, Seattle Times staff reporter

Karl Eikenberry is a retired Army officer whose two tours of Afghanistan duty — and later service as ambassador to that nation — left him keenly aware of the limits of U.S. military power.

As a soldier, Eikenberry launched the still-ongoing effort to build an Afghan military force capable of fending off the Taliban. As a diplomat, he was stationed at the Kabul embassy during President Barack Obama’s surge that would eventually push American troop strength in Afghanistan to more than 100,000 service members in an attempt to improve security.

“Americans and the world have rightly been disappointed with the results of our costly military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan in the 21st century. Hugely expensive, protracted … and damaging to our country’s prestige abroad,” Eikenberry said Thursday to a Town Hall audience in Seattle.

Read the full article in The Seattle Times.

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From October 22–23, 2018, the U.S.-Asia Security Initiative (USASI) at Stanford University, in conjunction with the Institute for China-U.S. People-to-People Exchange at Peking University and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS), gathered scholars and policy practitioners at the Stanford Center at Peking University to participate in the “Civil Wars, Intrastate Violence, and International Responses” workshop. The workshop was an extension of a project examining the threats posed by intrastate warfare launched in 2015 and led by AAAS and Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. The goal of this workshop was to facilitate frank discussions exposing participants to a wide range of views on intrastate violence and international responses.

The workshop was divided into sessions that assessed trends in intrastate violence since the end of the Cold War, examined the threats to international security posed by civil wars and intrastate violence, and evaluated international responses, including an analysis of the limits of intervention and a discussion of policy recommendations. Participants also had an opportunity to make closing comments and recommendations for future research.

This report provides an executive summary and summaries of the workshop sessions on a non-attribution basis.
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Todd Richardson
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