Settlement Of War Research Articles

To What Extent are State Immunity and Non-Justiciability Major Hurdles to Individuals' Claims for War Damages?

Claims for war damages that individuals bring before domestic courts against foreign states are usually rejected, either on account of lack of a substantive right conferred upon the individual by international law, or the exception of state immunity. In view of the uncertainties surrounding both arguments, the author maintains that the difficulty in tackling this issue is due instead to the question of non‐justiciability. Even if this argument is not always clearly articulated, domestic courts are aware that the complex issues of post war settlements exceed the scope of their jurisdiction and should therefore be left to governments, which are in a better position to reach overall satisfactory and internationally binding settlements. It does not, however, follow that states are free to waive any claim and to reach any settlement: they may not reciprocally condone violations of those rules of humanitarian law which belong to jus cogens. In such situations, individuals' claims, although dubiously founded in international law, could have the beneficial effect of spurring states to reach settlements consistent with international law.

Civil War Settlements and the Implementation of Military Power-Sharing Arrangements

This article considers the role that the implementation of peace agreements has on the prospects for fostering a durable peace following the negotiated resolution of civil wars. Focusing on the 16 peace agreements between 1980 and 1996 that have included provisions for the sharing or dividing of military power among former combatants, the authors find that the complete implementation of this aspect of settlements significantly improves the prospects for maintaining peace. They suggest that this proves to be the case because of the important and credible signals of conciliatory intent among former enemies that are made through the process of implementation. They find that implementation serves as a concrete signal of a genuine commitment to peace as signatories to an agreement prove willing to endure the costs associated with both compromising their original war aims and withstanding potential challenges from within their own groups. Based on these results, the authors offer policy recommendations focusing on the role that third-party actors and aid donors might play in facilitating the successful implementation of negotiated peace agreements.

Institutionalizing Peace: Power Sharing and Post‐Civil War Conflict Management

This article examines how power‐sharing institutions might best be designed to stabilize the transition to enduring peace among former adversaries following the negotiated settlement of civil wars. We identify four different forms of power sharing based on whether the intent of the policy is to share or divide power among rivals along its political, territorial, military, or economic dimension. Employing the statistical methodology of survival analysis to examine the 38 civil wars resolved via the process of negotiations between 1945 and 1998, we find that the more dimensions of power sharing among former combatants specified in a peace agreement the higher is the likelihood that peace will endure. We suggest that this relationship obtains because of the unique capacity of power‐sharing institutions to foster a sense of security among former enemies and encourage conditions conducive to a self‐enforcing peace.

Peacemaking by Democracies: The Effect of State Autonomy on the Post—World War Settlements

Peacemaking by Democracies: The Effect of State Autonomy on the Post—World War Settlements

Committing to peace: the successful settlement of civil wars

Committing to peace: the successful settlement of civil wars

Mannerheim: The Finnish Years by J. E. O. s> Screen (review)

REVIEWS 569 Screen,J. E. 0. Mannerheim: TheFinnishYears. C. Hurst &Company, London, 2000. x + 288 pp. Illustrations.Maps. Notes. Bibliographicalreferences. Index. ?20o00. FEW men have had such an impact on their native country as Gustav Mannerheim (i 867-I 95I). He dominated the historyof independent Finland from its creation in I9I8 to his death. Having escaped the chaos that was Russia in I9I8 Mannerheim developed a lifelong loathing of Communism. Once back in Finland he rapidly built an army, disarmed the remaining Russian troops, defeated the Communists and avoided dependence on Germany. As Regent he was acclaimed for his adroit militaryleadershipand unusual political wisdom. Rejected at the polls when he stood for President, he remained a central figure, and returned to office as Chairman of the Defence Council in the I930S, preparing for a Soviet attack. When Stalin demanded frontier modifications in I 939 to improve the defences of Leningrad, Mannerheim recognized the seriousness of the situation, and advised concession. The civilian ministersrejectedhis advice and allowed the negotiations to collapse. When the Winter War of 1939-40 began he was Commanderin Chief, and organizedthe stubbornresistancethatwon Finland international sympathy. He also knew when to give way, negotiating peace while his army was still intact. Joining the Continuation War, alongside Germany, in 194I was a mistake,one that Mannerheim soon recognized. He ignored German pressureto attackLeningrad, aware that such an act would earn Finland the undying hostility of any Russian regime. Having recovered the land lost in I940 he waited. In 1944 the Soviets attacked, on a massive scale, and Mannerheim knew that militarydefeat would lead to occupation. After a major Finnish defensive victory, the Soviets had to shift their forces back to the German front. He used the breathing space to extend peace feelers, and took office as Presidentto push the process through. He was now the only man in Finland who the people trusted. His handling of the negotiations demonstrated political realism, and steely determination. The militaryand diplomaticactionsof the 1944 settlementsavedFinlandfromthe fate of occupied Eastern Europe. No sooner was the peace secured than he was brushedaside, as he had been twenty-fiveyearsbefore, by the politicians. He resigned office in late I 945, and spent his last years coordinating the writingof his memoirs. Yet Mannerheim was a curious patriot. He was no man of the people, remaining an austere outsider, cut off by his past, his culture and his politics from the majority of the countrymen. Mannerheim was an aristocrat, and delighted in the symbolsof royaland Imperialdistinction;his museum is filled with ordersand decorations.He had servedthe oppressor,spokethe minority language of Swedish as his native tongue, and while fluent in French and Russian, as well as competent in English, could not speak the majority language of his native country in I9I8. In the firstvolume of this critically acclaimed biography, TheYears ofPreparation (London, I970), J. E. 0. Screen examined Mannerheim's life in the Imperial Russian Army. As this volume demonstratesMannerheim remained an ImperialRussianGeneral to the day he died. Petersburg/Petrograd/Leningrad was the centre of his world, for 570 SEER, 8o, 3, 2002 good or ill from i 887, when he first arrived there as a cadet. In I9I8 he planned to follow up the liberation of Finland by liberating Petrogradfrom the Bolsheviks, in concert with the White Russians. Despite their obvious need, the White leaders would not recognize Finnish independence. The strategicagenda for all Russian leadersfrom Peterto Stalinwas to extend the defensive outer-works of the city as far as possible. It was for this reason Finland became a Russian Grand Duchy in I809. An independent Finland would be a threat, and the regime that made such a concession would be admitting their own weakness. Stalin's war in I939-40, and the post war settlement were all conditioned by strategicissues. Mannerheim's secret was his recognition of the primacy of strategic concerns in the Russian view of Finland. Screen waited a long time to complete thisstudy,but accessto key archives and the development of Finnish historyhave made the wait worthwhile.The resultis in every way the equal of the firstinstalment, and completes the best study of Mannerheim available in English, or any other language. Screen writesclearlyand persuasively,while...

Gömbös Gyula by Jenő Gergely (review)

570 SEER, 8o, 3, 2002 good or ill from i 887, when he first arrived there as a cadet. In I9I8 he planned to follow up the liberation of Finland by liberating Petrogradfrom the Bolsheviks, in concert with the White Russians. Despite their obvious need, the White leaders would not recognize Finnish independence. The strategicagenda for all Russian leadersfrom Peterto Stalinwas to extend the defensive outer-works of the city as far as possible. It was for this reason Finland became a Russian Grand Duchy in I809. An independent Finland would be a threat, and the regime that made such a concession would be admitting their own weakness. Stalin's war in I939-40, and the post war settlement were all conditioned by strategicissues. Mannerheim's secret was his recognition of the primacy of strategic concerns in the Russian view of Finland. Screen waited a long time to complete thisstudy,but accessto key archives and the development of Finnish historyhave made the wait worthwhile.The resultis in every way the equal of the firstinstalment, and completes the best study of Mannerheim available in English, or any other language. Screen writesclearlyand persuasively,while his masteryof evidence, skilfulhandling of sourcesand deep insight,make this a profound text. Mannerheim emerges as a servant of the state, and a man with a deep rooted love of his country. The pridehe took in his achievementswas only human. Department of WarStudies A. D. LAMBERT King's College, London Gergely, Jen6. Gdmbds Gyula.Vince Kiad6, Budapest, 2001. 352 pp. Photographs .Notes. Bibliography.Index. HFT 2495. IT is a clear indicationof the extent to which the historyof inter-warHungary has been neglected that this should be the firstbiography of Gyula Gomb6s, primeministerof Hungaryfrom I932-36, to be publishedsince 1942. We can discount an earlier, and rather unsubstantial, effort by the same author, published in I999, which he himself described as merely an 'outline' (vazlat). This presentbiographyis an altogethermore seriouswork.It makesthe case, if case was needed, that Gombos was one of the most importantpoliticiansin inter-warHungary. The author argues that Gombos was a key player in the i9I9 'counterrevolution ' againstBela Kun's Rdterepublik, and also that he was instrumental in the (re)creationof a 'governingparty'that would rule Hungary until 1944. He is portrayed as the leading proponent of the emerging radical right-wing (fijv&d6) ideology throughout the I920S both from within the governing party and during his spell in opposition from I923-I928. As state secretary and then head of the defence ministry from 1928-36 he is credited with the expansion and modernization of the army. Finally as prime minister the author regards him as having succeeded in revitalizing the economy, introducing a degree of social reform, reshaping the governing party in his own image, and placing Hungarian foreign policy firmlyon a pro-German, pro-Italian course that would ultimately result in a successfulrevision of the Trianon peace treaty. REVIEWS 571 Not only a reconsiderationof Gombos's importanceis, however, at stakein this work.The author is also at pains to show that earliercharacterizationsof Gombos as a pompous proto-fascistarewide of the mark.Whilstseveraltimes denying that his is a revisionistapproach, the author neverthelessarguesthat Gombos was a skilfulpolitician who from the late I920S quietly abandoned his earlier radicalism,instead focusing on practical solutions to the very real problems that beset Hungary throughout the inter-war period. The author argues that Gombos's policies as prime minister were also shaped by a cautious assessmentof the damage that any radical changes might do to the constitutional and social fabric. Overall these points are well argued, and serve at the very least to focus the reader's attention on the complex and changing elements of Gombos'spolitical ideology. These argumentsdo, however, lose something due to the lack of context in which they are presented. This is a work that focuses almost exclusively on Gombos, and deals with wider events only so far as they had a direct impact on his own ideas and policies. Not only is there no comparativeconsideration of other (east) European politicians on the radical right, but even leading Hungarian politicians such as Istvan Bethlen and the regent Miklos Horthy are only mentioned when they have an immediate impact...

Civil war characteristics, mediators, and resolution

AbstractIt has been assumed that mediators of civil strife are more likely to experience success if they are both separate and neutral (that is, “outsider‐impartial”) with respect to the conflict at hand. Recently, though, theorists have posed an “insider‐partial” model of the trusted regionally accepted mediator as being more effective. This article tests these contrasting assumptions. According to Roy Licklider, there have been only fourteen cases of successfully negotiated settlement of a civil war since 1945. We therefore derive a sample of seven successful cases and contrast them with seven that were not successfully negotiated, for the 1960‐1994 period. We look for mediator and conflict characteristics predicting successor failure, using a combination of quantitative and qualitative analyses. Results indicate that the relationship is a complex one including various interactive effects where the type of mediator can make a difference. The ability to bring parties to agreement, however, comes most often through repeated attempts and in the presence of some form of external military intervention and major power action, but particular circumstances can be complicated by the nature of civil war itself.

Committing to Peace: The Successful Settlement of Civil Wars

List of Figures ix List of Tables xi Acknowledgments xiii PART ONE: THEORY 1 1. Introduction 3 2. Theory and Hypotheses 19 PART TWO: DATA AND QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS 45 3. Measuring the Variables 47 4. Quantitative Tests 70 5. A Closer Look at the Findings 92 PART THREE: CASE STUDIES 109 6. Negotiating for Security Guarantees: The Civil War in Zimbabwe 113 7. The Breakdown of Rwanda's Peace Process 143 8. Explaining the Resolution of Civil Wars 160 Appendix 1 169 Appendix 2 171 Bibliography 177 Index 193

French Intelligence-Gathering in the Syrian Mandate, 1920-40

In the inter-war French Levant political stability proved elusive. Relations between the ruling power, reluctant client governments and the civilian population were always fraught. In French Syria that most misleading of imperial terms, 'pacification', was a more or less constant feature of mandatory rule. It signified a dependence on military force to impose a thin veneer of political and social control. Beneath this, disruptive economic pressures, ethnic rivalries and political violence were endemic. The French high commission in Beirut exercised limited imperial power, lacking the popular consent or the economic wherewithal to consolidate its local authority.' In the Syrian mandate, central themes of factionalized urban nationalist politics, Hashemite-Saudi monarchical rivalry, popular protest and communal rebellion confirmed that French control was never secure. These issues have dominated the historiography of the mandate period. For over 25 years, historians of the inter-war Middle East have debated the origins of Arab nationalism in Syria and neighbouring mandated territories. Until recently, this work has tended to focus on urban Arab elites, the emerging groups of effendiyya functionaries in major administrative centres, and the nature of the intra-Arab conflicts between former Ottoman officials, radical nationalists, tribal shaykhs and the wider urban population. Underlying this debate has been the attempt to trace the ideological distinctiveness of pan-Arabism within Fertile Crescent territories arbitrarily divided into national units by the First World War settlement. Understandably, the bulk of this work has drawn on Arab sources and the papers of the mandatory administrations concerned. A 'missing dimension' within this has been intelligence material gathered by the security agencies of the mandatory powers.2 As explained below, recent French archival releases allow us to fill in this gap. This article draws on these sources to reassess the French image of its political opponents within Syria, and the efforts made to contain them. The essential dichotomy of mandate governance lay between a theoretical long-term commitment to cultivate indigenous government and

Protecting the People: Public Security Choices After Civil Wars

Analysts of civil war settlements have devoted significant attention to how the security of warring parties can be enhanced to reduce their mutual vulnerabilities and foster peace. Less work has been done, however, on another serious challenge of postwar settings: the security of the general population. Once safe from the crossfire of warring armies, civilians often face new threats from violent criminals, excombatants, rioters, vigilantes, or members of other ethnic groups with whom they are to cohabit under a peace agreement. In the aftermath of virtually all the civil wars of the 1980s and 1990s, civilians perceived greater insecurity, often as a result of documented increases in violent crime. Ironically, in places like El Salvador and South Africa, civilians faced greater risk of violent death or serious injury after the end of the conflict than during it. [1] Even in cases where the end of civil wars has incontrovertibly reduced the dangers to civilians, postwar crime waves have been common, as have civil disturbances of various kinds. postwar public security situation is not entirely bleak: some aspects of peace settlements foster perceived and real improvements for the security of the general population. These include enhanced human rights protections, punishment for past human rights violations, and provisions to disarm combatants and civilians after wars. As compared to these various measures, reform of security institutions may have somewhat less impact on societies like Rwanda, where large portions of the populace are implicated in ethnic hatred and violence. Nevertheless, security reforms remain one of the most important mechanisms for preventing political violence and common crime in many postwar settings. As police scholar David Bayley puts it, The police are to government as the edge is to the knife. [2] Where police are repressive or politically biased, formal democratic rules and equality before the law can mean little in practice. Where the police are dominated by one ethnic group, members of excluded groups will likely turn to alternative, ethnically based mechanisms to provide security. And where no public security provisions are made, organized crime can assume such proportions as to produce corrupt mafia states, possibly with the complicity of international actors. Conversely, police who are effective in protecting individuals from criminal threats, who respect individuals' rights, and who protect vulnerable groups regardless of ethnicity or political orientation can create a positive climate even when broader political arrangements are uncertain or less than democratic. [3] Despite the myriad dangers for public security after conflict, relatively few civil war settlements explicitly set forth a road map for restructuring security forces in ways that reorient public safety toward protecting citizens rather than the regime. Of eighteen recent cases, minimal police reforms were included in twelve agreements (see Table 1). In most of these cases, few specifics were stipulated beyond the inclusion of former enemies into police forces and brief commitments to human rights standards and professionalization. general neglect of public security provisions in peace accords reflects the logic of peacemaking; the parties, and outside mediators, tend to focus on the post-settlement security of the civil war adversaries themselves, since this is what will make or break a peace process in the short run. Indeed, inattention to public security issues has seldom, if ever, caused renewed civil war. It has, however, contributed to extreme hardships and undermined longer-term prospects for both peace and democracy. Most civil war peace accords in the post-Cold War period have depended to some extent on liberal political institutions, including elections with at least two competing parties, constitutional systems with checks and balances, and minimum political and civic rights. …

Stabilizing the Peace After Civil War: An Investigation of Some Key Variables

In the wake of negotiated settlements to civil wars, one critical problem involves reassuring people who have been killing one another that conflict is not about to break out again, endangering people's lives. Those concerned with the success of negotiated settlements have debated how best to enhance the prospects of a stable peace. We address this question by exploring variables that may explain the longevity of negotiated peace settlements. These variables are divided into two categories—one tapping into the potential effects of the environment in which settlements are negotiated and another focusing on the impact of settlement arrangements. On the basis of our analysis of thirty-eight civil war settlements negotiated between 1945 and 1998 we identify the environmental factors and institutional choices that affect the short-term stability of the peace following civil war.

Arms control, civil war and peace settlements

Arms control has undoubtedly a role to play in conflict resolution. It can enhance stability through deterrence in the case of settlements based on partition, or it can support the military transformation process for national reconciliation. The problem with arms control in conflict resolution is that there neither exists conceptual clarity‐especially in relation to classical arms control‐nor has norm‐building in this area been very successful. Moreover, the short life cycles of most post‐conflict arms control arrangements raise questions about sustainability. This study argues that these deficiencies could be effectively addressed by embracing ‘generic best practices’ and by strengthening the interface of peace implementation with multilateral frameworks of politico‐military cooperation.

No Spark of Malice The Murder of Martin Begnaud , and: Whisper to the Black Candle Voodoo, Murder, and the Case of Anjette Lyles (review)

No Spark of Malice The Murder ofMartin Begnaud By William Arceneaux Louisiana State University Press, 1999 360 pp. Cloth $34.95 Whisper to the Black Candle Voodoo, Murder, and the Case of Anjette Lyles ByJaclyn Weldon White Mercer University Press, 1999 192 pp. Cloth $22.95 Reviewed by Frank Q. Queen, a Waynesville, North Carolina, lawyer whose only criminal trial ended in a hung jury twenty-two years ago, after which he retired from trial work—undefeated. He also is die uncredited author of "A Style Manual for die North Carolina Rules ofAppellate Procedure," published by the North Carolina Bar Association, 1999. Whoever said crime doesn't pay hasn't been in a bookstore lately. By the pink you know you're in the Barbie section at Toys R Us and by the black and red covers you know you're in the bookstore crime section. But Lord, who reads this stuff? Well—right now, I do. Crime is my life. I'm a lawyer. (All right, I'm a realestate lawyer—so we don't use guns, O.K.?) In No Spark ofMalice, William Arceneaux has appropriated the true-crime form to give us a historylesson. In Whisperto theBlack Candle,]adynWeldon White provides a simple and gruesome story, fascinating in its own way. Arceneaux has the better of it, perhaps because it is his family's story. He tells of the 1896 murder of Martin Begnaud (his great-great-uncle on his mother's side) at Scott Station, Lafayette Parish, Louisiana.Just asJohn McPhee lifts a pebble and speaks of mountains, Arceneaux quickly sets the stage, produces the body—and then figuratively asks: "What is this French-speaking man, his people from cold, distant Canada, doing in this suspect terrain?" The whodunit keeps us involved as he tells the story of the settlement of French farmers in Nova Scotia, beginningin 1604. They called itAcadia, after the Greek mythological paradise. They were seeking decent farmland, and they found mosdy bad weather. Over the next hundred and fifty years the Acadians comprised a visible (but not very profitable) French outpost in the new world. Eventually their territory Reviews 77 was ceded to the English as part ofa war settlement and they became, politically at least, English subjects. In spite of their new status they retained their language and insisted that they would remain neutral in conflicts between England and France. When the French and Indian War broke out in 1754, the Acadian neutrality and stubbornness provided all the excuse the English governor needed to order the wholesale destruction of the Acadian towns, farms, and livestock. The residents were rounded up and transported, mosdy to France and England. Martin Begnaud's people were in France when Spanish land promoters came through, promising free land and better weather in Louisiana, then Spanish territory . They eventually settled—exhausted, one imagines—in the Attakapas Prairie , the cowboy country ofwest-central Louisiana. They became farmers, cattlemen and ranchers in "New Acadia." They had been living in Louisiana a hundred years when Begnaud was killed. The murder was first blamed on a local toughguy and a traveling "Italian" grifter (who was actually French). They were jailed and tortured. In spite of one having his fingernails pulled out and both being half-starved, they inconveniendy refused to admit anything. There wasn't much to connect them to it, and, as the months passed, the sheriff's investigation was going nowhere. Disgusted, the family hired a sharp young lawyer to help the authorities. He questioned the family members in detail and one recalled that a pair of teenage brothers, French farm laborers, had left town shortly after the murder. Unsuspecting , these two returned to Scott Station on their own, nine months after the murder. Within a day, the family's lawyer tricked diem bom into confessions. (The initial suspects, incidentally, were released with a warm handshake from the sheriff, though one "was never the same.") The central mystery from this point is whether the prisoners are going to see the government's hangman or be lynched in die meantime. The sheriff, a stubborn man whose intention was to have the first legal hanging in Lafayette Parish, kept getting word...

“Let's Argue!”: Communicative Action in World Politics

This article introduces a mode of social action and interaction that has so far been largely overlooked in the U.S.-dominated international relations debate between rational choice and social constructivism that focuses mainly on the differences between instrumental rationality and norm-guided behavior. Drawing on insights from a theoretical debate within the Germanspeaking international relations community, I suggest that actors have a third mode of social action at their disposal: arguing and deliberating about the validity claims inherent in any communicative statement about identities, interests, and the state of the world. Arguing and truth-seeking behavior presuppose that actors no longer hold fixed interests during their communicative interaction but are open to persuasion, challenges, and counterchallenges geared toward reaching a reasoned consensus. The preconditions for argumentative rationality, particularly a “common lifeworld” and the mutual recognition of speakers as equals in a nonhierarchical relationship, are more common in international relations than is usually assumed. Arguing processes are more likely to occur the more actors are uncertain about their interests and even identities, the less they know about the situation in which they find themselves and the underlying “rules of the game,” and the more apparently irreconcilable differences prevent them from reaching an optimal rather than a merely satisfactory solution for a widely perceived problem (“problem solving”). Moreover, arguing is likely to increase the influence of the materially less powerful, be it small states or nonstate actors such as INGOs. I illustrate these claims empirically with two plausibility probes. The first concerns the East–West talks leading to a negotiated settlement of the Cold War in Europe and German unification within NATO. The second case focuses on the implementation of international human rights norms into domestic practices of Third World states.

The outbreak and settlement of civil war: Neorealism and the case of Tajikistan

This study applies neorealist insights to an analysis of the Tajik Civil War. Pointing to the collapse of central authority as the permissive cause of the conflict, it argues that the concept of the offence‐defence balance can successfully be employed to explain why in the spring of 1992 fighting broke out between government supporters and the opposition. On this background, it then offers a discussion of how civil wars can be ended and it demonstrates how in Tajikistan external involvement in particular was central to the settlement in 1997 of the conflict.

Conflict among Former Allies after Civil War Settlement: Sudan, Zimbabwe, Chad, and Lebanon

The interesting theoretical question about civil war in general is not why it begins (the possible reasons are surely too many to enumerate) or why it stops (all sorts of contingent explanations from simple fatigue to outside force may apply) but why it so often does not resume when it might. We need to comprehend this process of conflict transformation, whereby the conflict either becomes less important or is pursued without using mass violence. Understandably, most analyses and prescriptions for peacemakers focus on relationships between former enemies and attempts to reduce incentives for them to take up arms again. However, a recent analysis of four negotiated settlements of civil wars (Sudan in 1972, Zimbabwe in 1980, Chad in 1987, and Lebanon in 1989) reveals that in all four cases the critical conflict was actually between former allies. The compromises required in negotiated settlements, combined with the other problems of post-civil war societies, make such conflicts likely. In some cases they led to violence; in Zimbabwe and Lebanon conflict again reached the level of civil war. However, the ironic results was that the countries that had experienced the most violence subsequently produced new settlements which essentially confirmed the original ones and appear to be holding. In Sudan, interallied violence was quite low, but the result was that the government changed its policy, the first settlement was undermined, and the original civil war began again. Outsiders should not assume either that wartime cooperation will continue in peace or that `normal' peacetime behavior will naturally appear of its own accord. Indeed, they should probably anticipate that ad hoc wartime alliances are likely to dissolve with the risk of renewed civil violence.

Tijuana Desenmascarada

Tijuana Desenmascarada Michael Dear and Gustavo Leclerc (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Tijuanan workers assembling electronics in a maquiladora. Photo from The New Tijuana (Frank Christopher, 1990). The principal trope in artistic, cultural, and intellectual representations of Tijuana is space: spaces of the border, spaces of xenophobia, and spaces of liminality. In a nineteen-thirties documentary film of a US border patrol around Tijuana, two policemen are seen driving their vehicle into the desert. They stop at a pure white column, resembling an Egyptian obelisk but inscribed with the words “US-Mexico Border.” They proceed to traverse the desert spaces on foot, occasionally dropping on one knee to inspect the sand for traces of illegales, mojados. They are like Indian scouts fleetingly the center of attention in a Western movie. Cut to a commercial silent movie, Licking the Greasers (also known as Shorty’s Trip to Mexico). Here, yanqui cowboys rescue Shorty’s (Mexican) girlfriend. As they hightail it for home, they pass by the same white, border-defining obelisk and they are safe once again. The famous monolith in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey could not be a more potent symbol of spatial order and fealty. Globalspace Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 2. Postcard: “Boundary Monument Between U.S. and Mexico, Tia Juana, Mexico. During the past 150 years, political and economic relations between the US and Mexico have been characterized by an ever-increasing integration. The nineteenth-century preindustrial period witnessed a border urbanization principally in centers that had been established under eighteenth-century Spanish rule, [End Page 211] including Ciudad Juárez and San Diego. The growth impetus later spread to nineteenth-century towns established as civil centers and forts under Mexican rule, including Tijuana in 1840. And finally, after the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hídalgo created the international boundary, it affected towns established as forts and supply stations (e.g. El Paso, Texas), and post-Civil War settlements such as Nogales (Arizona and Sonora), Tecate (Baja California) and San Ysidro (California). Between the 1900s and 1960, the US economy moved rapidly toward industrialization, and initial linkages with Mexico were based on agriculture and tourism. Industrial growth and urbanization in the South-West were rekindled after the Great Depression, and consolidated by the second World War. Another boom (this time in agricultural employment) was stimulated by the 1942 US Emergency Farm Labor Program, also known as the Bracero Program. At first, the program employed about 50,000 Mexican workers in US agriculture; by the time it ended (in 1964) over 4.6 million contracts had been issued. Entire neighborhoods sprang up in cities like Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez, based largely [End Page 212] on temporary residents. In the early fifties, Tijuana was reputedly the fastest growing city in Mexico. But in the recession following the Korean War, US unemployment rose and the government initiated “Operation Wetback” to return Mexican laborers to their homeland. Border cities grew at record levels as returning laborers resettled. In 1954 alone, over one million Mexican braceros were deported from the United States. During the sixties the global economy entered a period of economic restructuring, associated with international financial instability, the rise of competitive trading blocs, and the oil crises of 1973 and 1979. One of Mexico’s responses to high unemployment was to initiate the Border Industrialization Project (BIP) which authorized the establishment of maquiladoras (assembly plants) in specially-designated zones. By 1992, there were over 2,000 such plants in Mexico, employing about half a million workers. 1 Several drastic devaluations of the peso also affected the industrialization process, and Mexican wage levels tumbled relative to the US. The passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) simply confirmed what was obvious to most border mavens: the US and Mexican economies were increasingly being integrated and wired into the global economy. The spaces of the borderland became concrete manifestations of the emerging globalspace. Localspace Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 3. Postcard: “El Paso de Los Angeles ‘The Pathway of the Angels’” Globalization can be traced in Tijuana’s evolving urban form. The city’s five...

Is there still a frontier? The 1890 US census and the modern American West

An omnibus section in the 1890 Census, ‘Progress of the Nation’, analyzed the course of US settlement since the first Census in 1790. The essay concluded that the American frontier was fast diminishing as the post-Civil War settlement of the West expanded; and that the frontier was thus no longer worth measuring. Frederick Jackson Turner made the document the starting point for his famous 1893 essay on the significance of the frontier. Turner invoked ‘Progress of the Nation’ to declare that the frontier was gone. Researchers have neglected ‘Progress of the Nation’ as a primary source, exploring it mostly as it influenced Turner. Yet its main approach — tracking the distribution of population densities at decade intervals — yields a precise method for understanding low-density frontier settlement. We use the 1890 Census's density-based method to chart the frontier's historical and contemporary evolution. We show that a vast frontier endures. The frontier never closed; instead it changed. After spending nearly the entire 19th century shifting quickly west, the frontier gradually moved east, to the point where large stretches of the Great Plains have now reverted to frontier. We also demonstrate that the modern-day West owes its distinctive form to land-use and urbanization patterns that appeared as early as the 1840s and were evident in ‘Progress of the Nation’. The region, with its big cities enveloped by a huge frontier, embodies its own 150-year-old settlement tradition.

The Critical Barrier to Civil War Settlement

Unlike interstate wars, civil wars rarely end in negotiated settlements. Between 1940 and 1990 55 percent of interstate wars were resolved at the bargaining table, whereas only 20 percent of civil wars reached similar solutions. Instead, most internal wars ended with the extermination, expulsion, or capitulation of the losing side. In fact, groups fighting civil wars almost always chose to fight to the finish unless an outside power stepped in to guarantee a peace agreement. If a third party agreed to enforce the terms of a peace treaty, negotiations always succeeded regardless of the initial goals, ideology, or ethnicity of the participants. If a third party did not intervene, these talks usually failed.