Internal Conflict and the International Community

Abstract

INTERNAL CONFLICT AND THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY Wars Without End? Roderic Alley Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2004. x, 242pp, US$84.95 cloth (ISBN 0-7546-0976-6)Since World War II, half of the world's states have experienced intrastate conflict, and in the last decade alone there have been almost 90 such conflicts. Meanwhile, interstate wars have dwindled to a handful. Roderic Alley's book addresses issues that are long overdue for international relations scholars, particularly how the internal conflicts of today's world affect, and are affected by, the international community, and whether or not the discipline of international relations is adequately equipped to deal with these wars.Most of the toughest military and political decisions that the international community has had to face in the last two decades have been about whether to intervene in the internal affairs of another state. While such interventions are not new in history-indeed such interventions have shaped most of today's borders-what is new is the idea of intervening to negotiate agreements between warring parties within a state, or on behalf of an oppressed community. No UN action was proposed to halt the Biafran war in Nigeria, or to end the Khmer Rouge massacres in Cambodia, or to stop the atrocities of Idi Amin in Uganda. Indeed, the UN charter, adopted in 1945, explicitly prohibits intervening on matters that fall within the domestic jurisdictions of states. Nevertheless, in the last few decades intervention has been considered or carried out in at least a dozen wars, from Somalia and the former Yugoslavia to Sierra Leone and Sudan.In assessing the pros and cons for such interventions, Alley notes that while intrastate conflicts often occur in response to internal issues, the international community has to accept its own culpability in assisting the development of many of these wars. International conditions shape internal conflicts though a mix of neglect, discriminatory standard setting, unregulated resource exploitation, asymmetrical commercial penetration, and past colonial incorporation (35). In addition, he notes that such wars are often fuelled by arms and monetary transfers that originate in the developed world and it therefore is incumbent upon such nations at least to consider interventions.However, he also notes that [t]o its cost, the international community has yet to establish the institutional systems and ethical codes that can comprehend, register, and articulate responses to internal conflict and its emanations (36). …