Killing like a state: explaining the edge cases of rebel perpetration of wartime genocidal violence

The Taliban’s victory in Afghanistan in 2021 has led to calls for a review of counterinsurgency strategy. One aspect of COIN strategy in Afghanistan was the use of militias in the anti-insurgent campaign the Taliban. As well as their use in Afghanistan, states have successfully countered insurgent violence through the deployment of, or cooperating with, pro-government militias elsewhere. Indeed, between 1981 and 2014, more than 504 militias were active across the world, 1 1 Sabine Carey, et al., ‘The Life, Death and Diversity of Pro-Government Militias: The Fully Revised Pro-Government Militias Database Version 2.0’, Research and Politics 9/1 (2022). of which many were identified as anti-insurgent non-state forces in counter-rebel campaigns. Taking Colombia and Philippines as two contemporary cases, this paper will explore the limited contributions of anti-insurgent militias (such as the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia and the Manila Crusaders for Peace and Democracy) in counterinsurgency campaigns. The paper will seek to identify the reasons why these armed groups produce contributions in countering armed rebels. These case studies are diverse and both have faced highly adaptable and unique rebel campaigns. Both highlight how the use of militias as counterinsurgency mechanisms can yield positive results. Using evidence from both case studies (government reports, primary archives etc.), I provide evidence of how militias can produce valuable results for a government’s anti-insurgent campaign.

While the study of perpetrators has benefited greatly from burgeoning work on motivations for participating in genocidal violence, there is a considerable gap regarding how these motivations change over time. This article draws on psychological theories to provide an approach to understanding such motivational change. In the interaction of situational and dispositional approaches, the article proposes that motivations derive from and are structured by hierarchies of needs and that these hierarchies can change through three processes of adaption within the hierarchy: motivation addition, motivation removal and hierarchy re-ordering. The article is primarily conceptual but draws on insights from various different cases in its development and illustrates the model with empirical examples of motivations for participating in genocidal violence.

Violent Non-State Actors: The Politics of Territorial Governance is an original in-depth scholarly explanation of the impact of territorial penetration, control and governance on the effectiveness of the activities of violent non-state actors (VNSA). The theoretical framework operates with the assertion that a non-linear causal relationship mediated through the capacity for territorial control and governance exists between the effectiveness of objective achievement and territorial penetration. Using four case studies, Zdenek Ludvík links these interrelated concepts of territorial penetration, territorial control and territorial governance into an interrelated sequentially conceptualized causal framework. To this end, extensive and unique empirical material gathered to examine the activities of VNSA in considerable detail presents a wholly original and comprehensive method of measuring the degree of territorial capability of VNSA. Zdenek Ludvík demonstrates that there is no directly proportional relationship between territorial penetration and objective effectiveness, since neither territorial penetration nor territorial control alone are sufficient to achieve increased effectiveness. He shows that territorial penetration and territorial governance are necessary conditions for objective effectiveness, since only when territorial penetration and territorial control are followed by territorial governance at the level of advanced wartime social order can VNSA hope to achieve a higher degree of effectiveness.

With an increased focus on the role of pro-government militias in understanding intra-state conflict, scholars have primarily argued that states use militias as a proxy of the government because of low capacity or as a means of avoiding responsibility for violence against civilians. However, states with both high capacity and a willingness to commit violence against civilians have also relied upon pro-government militias in counterinsurgency operations. This paper argues that states involved in enduring interstate rivalries are more likely to use pro-government militias in order to reserve conventional military forces for potential conflict with their rival. Based on a case study of India’s Kashmir insurgency and logit analysis of pro-government militia data from 1981 to 2001, the findings provide empirical support for this theory and are robust to alternative measures and model specifications.

Pro-government militias are a prominent feature of civil wars. Governments in Ukraine, Russia, Syria, and Sudan recruit irregular forces in their armed struggle against insurgents. The United States collaborated with Awakening groups to counter the insurgency in Iraq, just as colonizers used local armed groups to fight rebellions in their colonies. A now quite wide and established cross-disciplinary literature on pro-government nonstate armed groups has generated a variety of research questions for scholars interested in conflict, political violence, and political stability: Does the presence of such groups indicate a new type of conflict? What are the dynamics that drive governments to align with informal armed groups and that make armed groups choose to side with the government? Given the risks entailed in surrendering a monopoly of violence, is there a turning point in a conflict when governments enlist these groups? How successful are these groups? Why do governments use these nonstate armed actors to shape foreign conflicts, whether as insurgents or counterinsurgents abroad? Are these nonstate armed actors always useful to governments or perhaps even an indicator of state failure? How do pro-government militias affect the safety and security of civilians? The enduring pattern of collaboration between governments and pro-government armed groups challenges conventional theory and the idea of an evolutionary process of the modern state consolidating the means of violence. Research on these groups and their consequences began with case studies, and these continue to yield valuable insights. More recently, survey work and cross-national quantitative research have contributed to our knowledge. This mix of methods is opening new lines of inquiry for research on insurgencies and the delivery of the core public good of effective security.

The paper studies the way younger and older adolescents with intellectual disabilities perceive their personal security. The research data were collected by formalized interview, subjective scaling techniques, analysis of personal files, observation diaries, etc. The obtained information was processed using the methods of content and frequency analyses, the Mann-Whitney U test, the Spearman’s rank correlation, and the chi-square distribution. The perception of personal security included such concepts as threat, defense, security, and subjective personal security. The study revealed significant differences between younger and older adolescents in their perception of danger, threat, defense, security, and responsibility for personal security. Children with intellectual disabilities developed ideas about personal security in adolescence, their perception of threat and defense depended on life experience and socialization. Their categorical structure corresponded to the norm but was inferior in terms of generalization and cognitive complexity. They separated threat and defense from security, which they associated with safety rules. The results could be included in programs of corrective psychological and pedagogical support.

Although the existing literature on Pro-Government Militias (PGMs) is rife with studies on various aspects of government-militia relations, not much is known about specific approaches that governments employ to ensure loyalty of their semi-formal proxies. Lessons from recent civil war in Sudan and other cases of PGMs turning their arms against their former patrons further enhance the importance of understanding which mechanisms (if any) incumbents deploy to prevent militias from “going rogue.” In this study, we examine three mechanisms employed by governments to guarantee loyalty of their militia allies. We emphasize the importance of personal, sectarian and other ideological fractionalization within rebel groups; deployment of extreme violence by PGMs against co-ethnic civilians; and formation of rival militias as the most effective PGM loyalty assurance tools available to the incumbents. We test these theoretical assumptions on the case study of the Second Chechen War to elucidate how each of these mechanisms was implemented in practice during the decades-long counterinsurgency campaign waged by Moscow.

As a colony of the United States since 1898, Puerto Rico has continuously been pressured to incorporate English as a co-official language along with Spanish, the vernacular of the majority of islanders. This paper presents the historical context of language education policy in Puerto Rico as a case study in order to understand Spanish language maintenance despite more than 115 years of U.S. colonization. After providing a brief review of literature regarding perceptions of language threat and how they have traditionally been viewed, the paper uses the island's context to explore the impact that strong perceptions of threat can have on language maintenance and societal bilingualism. The paper explores the perceptions of threat associated with English in Puerto Rico and ultimately argues that the colonization practices and the on-going political environment have positioned English as a problem, which has consequently led to a primarily monolingual island.

The aim of this article is to explain the internal conditions of military security in a non-European context. It utilises securitisation as the theoretical perspective and investigates Iranian and Indonesian case studies to explore how the perception of internal threats and vulnerabilities determines the approaches to military security. It begins with a reiteration of securitisation theory assumptions, followed by clarifying the understanding of security in non-Western contexts. The case studies focus on the conditions which facilitate securitisation, including the nature of securitising actors, assumed concepts of security, and securitisation processes and their outcomes. The analysis indicates a necessity for several alterations in securitisation theory to realise its full potential. Civil–military relations in Asian states differ from those in the West, as both Iran and Indonesia show a high degree of military involvement in political affairs. Military security also becomes securitised as a result of internal political rivalries. The perception of threats is a tool in the struggle to extend the capabilities of security agencies or retain influences.

The post-Cold War period has seen the rise of international liberal peacebuilding, as an overarching framework for international interventions in intrastate conflicts. In contrast, the current period is marked by decline of liberal peacebuilding, and a simultaneous rise of domestic illiberal peacebuilding. This has created a gap between the predominant theoretical and policy framework and the actual form of peacebuilding in many conflict-ridden societies. The present article addresses this challenge through a contextual case study of illiberal peacebuilding in Myanmar. The case study shows how a dominant state actor – the military (Tatmadaw) – has used both coercion and co-optation to contain armed resistance against militarized and centralized statebuilding and thereby strengthen the state's territorial control and authority. While the SLORC/SPDC military junta (1988–2011) sought to contain ethnic armed organizations through military offensives, ceasefire agreements and illiberal peacebuilding, the military based USDP-government (2011–2015) institutionalized a hybrid regime as a framework for political transformation of EAOs, and tolerated a degree of dual territorial, administrative and resource control at the local scale. These clientelist measures failed to address the substantive issues behind Myanmar's multiple and protracted conflicts. They were also combined with military offensives against non-ceasefire groups and war by other means in ceasefire areas. Moreover, the case study demonstrates that the Tatmadaw used its tutelary power to obstructs substantive conflict resolution through negotiated state reforms. Myanmar's peace initiatives during the last three decades should thus be understood as illiberal strategies for containing ethnic armed organizations rather than attempts at substantive conflict resolution.

North Vietnamese Diplomatic Posture during the Vietnam War Carlyle A. Thayer (bio) According to Oriana Skylar Mastro, her book The Costs of Conversation: Obstacles to Peace Talks in Wartime "is designed to provide the first comprehensive framework for understanding when and how states incorporate talking with the enemy into their war-fighting strategies" (p. 6). The framework of analysis aims to explain "how states calculate the costs of conversation throughout a war" (p. 126). This framework is important, she argues, because the existing theoretical literature does not explain how and why adversaries transition from war or pure fighting to "talking while fighting" (p. 1) and "either ignores or gives a shallow treatment as to how states approach talking to the enemy" (p. 5). As a consequence, "states currently lack a framework for understanding an opponent's approach to wartime diplomacy and how to best shape it" (p. 1). The book argues that diplomacy and warfighting are integral and interactive parts of a state's wartime strategy rather than two separate behaviors (p. 3). Mastro develops several concepts in her analysis—diplomatic posture, strategic costs, and strategic capacity. It is necessary to provide a brief description of each concept in order to fully understand her thesis. Diplomatic posture is defined as a "belligerent's willingness to engage in direct talks with its enemy at a given point in a war" (p. 6). A state's diplomatic posture can be "either open or closed with the enemy at a given time" (p. 6) and can shift during war. According to Mastro, "when costs are considered high, [states] will choose a closed diplomatic posture. If a belligerent deems the costs low enough, it will shift to an open diplomatic posture" (p. 14). Strategic cost is defined as "the likelihood an adversary will infer weakness in the form of reduced war aims, degraded ability to fight, or waning resolve from an open diplomatic posture," and strategic capacity is understood as "the ability of the enemy to respond to such an inference by escalating, intensifying or prolonging the fighting" (p. 126). Mastro applies her framework to four case studies: Chinese diplomatic posture in the Korean War, Chinese diplomatic posture in the Sino-Indian War, Indian diplomatic posture in the Sino-Indian War, and North Vietnamese diplomatic posture in the Vietnam War. This review focuses [End Page 184] on the fourth case study, North Vietnamese diplomatic posture in the Vietnam War. This case study is copiously sourced, with reference to over two hundred Vietnamese Communist Party and government documents that the United States captured and translated during the war as well as interviews with party, diplomatic, and military officials in Hanoi (p. 103). These primary sources are supplemented with memoirs and the extant academic literature. The case study is confined to the three-year period from March 1965, when the United States commenced bombing North Vietnam and introduced ground troops in South Vietnam, to April 1968, when North Vietnam responded positively to President Lyndon Johnson's offer to seek a diplomatic solution to the Vietnam War. Almost immediately after the United States entered the Vietnam War in 1965, it adopted an open diplomatic posture toward North Vietnam. According to Mastro, the United States supported over two thousand attempts to open talks with North Vietnam without preconditions during the three-year period under review (p. 101). Washington adopted this open diplomatic posture because the costs of conversation were low and U.S. strategic capacity was immense. Indeed, the United States increased combat troop levels progressively from several thousand in late 1963 to 400,000 by 1966. It also expanded the air war over North Vietnam, flying over twice as many sorties and dropping more than two-and-half times the ordnance in 1966 than in the previous year. The United States targeted North Vietnam's petroleum, oil, and lubricant storage sites and bombed closer to urban areas than before. By contrast, throughout the three-year period, North Vietnam adopted a closed diplomatic posture and steadfastly rebuffed all U.S. and third-party efforts to open direct bilateral discussions without preconditions. The country signaled its diplomatic posture when it released its "Four Points" in April 1965 after the...

<p><em>It was reviewed the concept of the «</em><em>effective control»</em><em> in context of neo-institutional theory and practice of the European Court of Human Rights, through which the occupant manages the occupied territories. It was realized the comparative analysis of the three occupation regimes cases operating at the territories of North Cyprus, Transnistria and Nagorno-Karabakh. It was described the features of the effective control of occupant in classical military occupations and in occupations by proxy. It was considered the specificity of the occupation facts determination by the European Court of Human Rights: test for the effective territorial control, application of the normative model of occupation in accordance with the Hague Regulation of 1907, the use of special informational base to confirm the existence of occupation regimes at the respective territories. It was paid attention on the emphasis shifting in the modern occupation regimes from the military to the political aspect: from the direct territorial control of the occupant to the powers delegation by the puppet authorities of the local agency.</em></p> <p><em>The motive part of the article is based on the neo-institutional approach as the most optimal, methodological basis of the specific institutions study of the modern occupation regimes in the author’s opinion. This method allows to identify and characterize the institutional impact of the occupying state on the territories controlled by such state, as directly as through the system of the local puppet authorities. This method also allows to identify and systematize the military, economic, financial and political means of influence through which the occupant provides loyalty of the local political elites and  population of the occupied territories.</em></p> <p><em>In conclusion to this article it was defined definition of the effective control as a specific institute of modern occupation regimes with the appropriate formal and informal rules of "game" established and supported by the occupant and its agents.</em></p>

Global environmental impact of informal settlements and perceptions of local environmental threats: An empirical case study in Suva, Fiji

The perceived threat of victimization can impact an individual’s well-being in their neighborhood. For that reason, extensive research has investigated how the perceived threat of victimization is related to the characteristics of a neighborhood. The current article attempts to shed a new light on this relationship by employing cluster analysis to study (the co-occurrence of) cognitive (perceived risk) and affective (fear) threat perceptions. Using multinomial logistic regression analysis, we then test if these threat perception clusters can be explained by neighborhood characteristics. The analyses revealed several distinct threat perception clusters. Cluster membership is partly explained by neighborhood characteristics. We found that the degree of observed social disorder in the neighborhood differentiated all clusters, irrespective of threat severity, whereas other neighborhood characteristics distinguished only the clusters with the highest levels of perceived threat. These findings contribute to a more detailed understanding of (neighborhood effects on) threat perceptions and suggests ways in which policy interventions might be more targeted, in terms of neighborhood characteristics and target groups.

Reviewed by: Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the Twentieth Century Jessica Priselac (bio) Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the Twentieth Century, by Benjamin Valentino (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004) 317 pages. $29.95. Episodes of genocide in the 20th century have been blamed on many "root causes"—hatred among ethnic groups, unresolved historical grievances, the embrace of a radical ideology, etc. The international system's record in preventing or resolving these types of conflicts was abysmal. Unable to handle these conflicts in an effective manner, diplomats and leaders became defensive and began to blame their failures on the nature of the conflict itself. Describing the war in the former Yugoslavia in 1992, Acting Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger commented that "[t]his war is not rational. There is no rationality at all about ethnic conflict. It is gut, it is hatred; it's not for any set of values or purposes; it just goes on. And that kind of warfare is most difficult to bring to a halt."1 His comments reflected the view of a significant portion of the policy community—a view that leaves little hope that such atrocities can be prevented in the future. In his excellent book, Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the Twentieth Century, Benjamin A. Valentino, an assistant professor of Government at Dartmouth College, argues that the characteristics of a society do not, in fact, determine whether mass killing and genocide will occur within it. Instead, Valentino convincingly asserts that there is a "strategic logic" to mass killing and that it is used when powerful groups within a society believe that it is the best way to achieve their political or military objectives. In essence, Valentino believes that when leaders choose to embark on the path to genocide, they do so for reasons that are far from irrational. After defining mass killing as the intentional killing of noncombatants resulting in 50,000 or more deaths within a five-year period, Valentino examines a number of specific cases to explain his theory. In this "strategic approach" to assessing mass killing, Valentino divides his case studies into three types: Communist, ethnic and counter-guerrilla. He examines the communist regimes of Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot; mass killing based on ethnicity in Rwanda, Nazi Germany, and Turkey; and mass killings during counter-guerrilla operations in the Guatemalan civil war and under the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. One of Valentino's central arguments is that "characteristics of society at large, such as pre-existing cleaves, hatred and discrimination between groups and non-democratic forms of government, are of limited utility in distinguishing societies at high risk for mass killing." Valentino's strongest arguments in support of this statement are his comparative studies of regimes that committed mass killing with similar regimes that did not. Why did genocide take place [End Page 207] in racist Nazi Germany while it did not take place in South Africa? Why did mass killings occur in Communist Cambodia but not in Vietnam? His answers are compelling. Through his case studies, he presents evidence that, in each case, a concentrated group of leaders is generally responsible for formulating and organizing the mass killings after concluding that this is the best way for them to advance their own interests and solidify their power. Moreover, leaders do not need widespread support in order to conduct such policies; in each case, a relatively small group of people carried out the actual killings. In essence, Valentino argues that the overall characteristics of a society have little to do with whether or not it is at risk for genocide, because leaders who devise these plans are not responding to a society's calls for action, nor do they need a majority of society to support their actions for the results to be deadly. Despite the popular perception, these killings are not done for killing's sake—they are done with a specific goal in mind. Leaders take these actions after coming to believe that the alternative paths to their goals are either impractical or unfeasible. Valentino emphasizes that while mass killing can be seen as a strategic decision, this does not mean that...