Violent Interstate Conflict Research Articles

Implications of Russia- Ukraine War on World Peace and Security

The lingering tension between Ukraine and Russia have been visible since Ukraine gained its independence in 1991 not until 20 February, 2014 following the Ukraine’s revolution of dignity, and in February 2022 Russia lunched a full scale invasion of Ukraine. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the most violent interstate conflict in the world since the second invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan in 2003 and 2001 respectively by the United States of America. The paper examined the nature and causes of this war, and consequences of the war. The Qualitative method of data analysis through the use of Secondary sources of data was used in achieving the said objectives. The paper adopts the power theory as theoretical framework in investigating the nature of the war, remote and immediate causes of the war. The paper found out that the war is hybrid in nature and there are remote causes such as Ukraine’s sense of national identity, idiosyncrasy of the leaders’ involved and immediate causes such as Ukraine’s sovereignty, and status of Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk, international alliances, that triggered the occupation of Ukraine by Russia in February of 2022. The paper recommends that respect for a state’s sovereignty as enshrined in international law and United Nation’s charter should be a thing of national concern of both countries, that referendum should be considered especially with issues surrounding the status of Crimea. Also the paper recommends mutual tolerance and respect for international law, to avert plunging the world into avoidable crises of unimaginable proportion

Why West African states do not go to war with each other: ‘Pan-West Africanism’ and constructivist international relations

ABSTRACT Realism and liberalism theories have had the most significant influence on the analyses for international relations. While the theories have proven useful in enriching understanding of complex situations at the regional level, both are insufficient in explaining the absence of violent inter-state conflicts in West Africa. This article argues that realism and liberalism cannot explain the absence of inter-state conflicts in West Africa. Instead, constructivism offers a more useful explanation by focusing on the values that define state relations. The principle of non-aggression and peaceful settlement of disputes appear more pronounced among the states and define their relations. Adherence to these norms has led to the emergence of a collective identity and a security community among the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) states. The common identity and non-violent approach of the states towards each other is founded on the values of ‘Pan-West Africanism’ that advocates West African unity, brotherliness and solidarity. Pan-West Africanism reinforces a consciousness of a commonly shared colonial history and the construction of a post-colonial victim identity and oppressed members of the international community that requires mutual cooperation devoid of violence.

Explaining Arctic peace: a human heritage perspective

The Arctic is on fire. Warmed by the world’s soaring greenhouse gases, its ice cap is melting, and it is heating twice as fast as the rest of the planet, deepening the earth’s climate crisis. As its ice thaws, buried resources, trade routes, and new tourist opportunities are suddenly accessible. The borders of the earth’s two largest nuclear rivals, the US and Russia are less than 3 miles apart in the Arctic region and their hostility is growing. Seeking new trade routes and investment opportunities and rapidly rising above its rank as the earth’s third most powerful country, China, has declared itself a ‘near Arctic state’ and is exercising a voice in Arctic affairs. Russia and Arctic NATO members have expanded their military presence in the far North. Despite potential tensions and rapidly melting ice, there is no effective overarching governing regime in the region that can mitigate the climate crisis or manage conflicts were they to arise. Nonetheless, the Arctic remains free of interstate violence. The explanation for the absence of violent conflict cannot be found in traditional International Relations (IR) Theories. Looking below the radar of IR theory and expanding the Human Heritage approach, I show that the region contains a web of overlapping local, regional, national, and pan-Arctic institutions and agreements, built on both traditional and Western knowledge and often steered by indigenous knowledge holders in Arctic governance. This informal web of governing regimes manages Arctic resources to protect human heritage and guard human security. In doing so, it creates a cooperative environment which guides dispute settlement among Arctic states. It is the power of these networks, their normative commitments, and the knowledge that informs them that help to explain the absence of violent interstate conflict in the region.

Kantian fractionalization predicts the conflict propensity of the international system

Network science has spurred a reexamination of relational phenomena in political science, including the study of international conflict. We introduce a new direction to the study of conflict by showing that the multiplex fractionalization of the international system along three key dimensions is a powerful predictor of the propensity for violent interstate conflict. Even after controlling for well-established conflict indicators, our new measure contributes more to model fit for interstate conflict than all of the previously established measures combined. Moreover, joint democracy plays little, if any, role in predicting system stability, thus challenging perhaps the major empirical finding of the international relations literature. Lastly, the temporal variability of our measure with conflict is consistent with a causal relationship. Our results have real-world policy implications as changes in our fractionalization measure substantially aid the prediction of conflict up to 10 years into the future, allowing it to serve as an early warning sign of international instability.

When and Whom to Join: The Expansion of Ongoing Violent Interstate Conflicts

The opportunity and willingness framework has received much attention in research on interstate conflict expansion. This framework is extended here by examining when and what side third parties join during ongoing conflicts. It is maintained that without examining both timing and side selection, understanding of conflict expansion is limited. The timing and side joined in interstate disputes between 1816 and 2001 are analysed using a competing risks duration model. The findings contribute novel insights into many key debates in conflict research such as balancing versus bandwagoning, as well as alliance reliability and the democratic peace. The results also indicate that relying on statistical models that do not distinguish between which side a third party can join may produce misleading results.

Beyond Economic Sanctions: Rethinking the North Korean Sanctions Regime

Introduction: The Ineffectiveness of the North Korean Sanctions RegimeThe fact that nuclear weapons capability can quickly and radically alter the strategic balance is well known.3 This quality of nuclear weapons has made their acquisition particularly valuable to North Korea.4 And for the very same reason, the community has tried to prevent the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) from acquiring nuclear weapons and missile-based delivery systems. Since at least 1994, concerted efforts have been made to halt Pyongyang's nuclear programs and state the community's opposition.5The major state players engaged in these efforts are the bordering states, grouped loosely in the so-called Six Party Talks (DPRK and South Korea, China, the United States, Russia, and Japan). The denial strategy employed by these actors has been a combination of diplomacy, negotiations, and coercion in the form of sanctions.6 By 2006/2009, however, it had become clear that these attempts had failed in their objective.7 In light of this and the worsening security situation on the Korean Peninsula today, the need for effective sanctions has arguably never been greater.Below, the argument is made that the instrument of sanctions imposed on North Korea has been reduced largely to sanctions, although statecraft and in particular public law conceptualizes it more broadly as economic and other sanctions.8 With sanctions understood too narrowly as essentially instruments of diplomacy, too much faith has been put in the assumption that economic costs will translate into political effects9 of the targeted state. With respect to North Korea, such an approach has remained ineffective.10 Therefore, the focus should be shifted to other, especially diplomatic sanctions in order to increase the effect of the sanctions regime on the DPRK.Diplomacy, Coercive Diplomacy, and SanctionsSanctions fall under the rubric of coercive diplomacy, which itself is a subspecies of general diplomacy. Diplomacy is meant to manage, limit, or prevent problems from deteriorating into crises and open conflict.11 The choice between diplomacy and the application of physical violence is, however, often more a dilemma than a choice. Crisis diplomacy without the threat of military force may be perceived as impotent; at the same time, the actual use of physical violence may be considered politically out of bounds and normatively unacceptable. Sanctions promise a middle ground between diplomatic negotiations and direct violence, making them an immensely relevant tool of statecraft in general, and probably the most common foreign policy tool democracies use to bring about policy or institutional changes in authoritarian regimes.12Combining Thomas Schelling's and Alexander George's work on the subject, compulsion is conceptualized here as using the threat of war to alter a situation proactively, coercion as applying the threat of force to reverse or stall a development, and deterrence as the threat of major military force if clearly communicated interests are violated.13 A sanctions regime, such as the one in place for North Korea, is coercion as part of coercive diplomacy. Coercive diplomacy employs the threat of force to provide the coercing state with leverage,14 but remains distinct from open, violent interstate conflict.15The common objective of any form of coercive diplomacy is to achieve a change in behavior by the targeted state. With respect to North Korea, the sanctions regime has been structured with the objective of altering North Korean policy towards its missile programs and nuclear armament. More specifically, the idea has been to use sanctions to create an unsustainable situation for North Korea, thus coercing it to adjust its military-political strategy.SanctionsAll too often sanctions are conceptualized narrowly as sanctions and an effort at international coercion. …

ECONOMIC GROWTH AND VIOLENT INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT: 1875–1999

Are states with growing economies more likely to become involved in violent interstate conflicts? This project examines whether economic growth increases international conflict using a global sample of states from 1875–1999. The theory argues that multi‐year economic growth increases the resolve of state leaders to reciprocate and escalate militarized interstate conflicts, thus increasing the occurrence of fatalities or war. The results show that economic growth, but not growth of military expenditures, raises the risk of violent interstate conflicts. The results do not support the proposition that economic slowdowns result in violent interstate conflicts.

Human Rights Rogues in Interstate Disputes, 1980–2001

Rogue states have typically been characterized as those states that consistently violate accepted international norms of behavior. While US foreign policymakers and policy analysts have identified rogue states as those violating a narrow set of international norms of external conduct, specifically terrorism sponsorship and illicit pursuit of banned weapons, this article proposes an alternative understanding of rogue state status that harks back to earlier notions of international pariah states, isolated from the rest of international society, owing to their egregious treatment of their own citizens. Building on Galtung's concept of structural violence and feminist insights concerning the interconnectedness of violence at all levels of human society, the authors develop a rogue state index to identify human rights rogues, based on ethnic and gender discrimination and the violation of personal integrity rights. An important part of the rogue state formula developed by policymakers over the recent decades is the expectation that such states represent dangers to international peace and stability. Focusing on the recognized international human rights norms of non-discrimination and security of person, and informed by the causal mechanisms inherent in the normative explanation for the democratic peace, this article tests whether human rights rogues are more likely to become involved in militarized interstate conflicts and violent interstate conflicts. The results of the analysis show that human rights rogues are more likely to become involved in militarized interstate disputes in general, and violent interstate disputes specifically, than other states during the period 1980–2001, suggesting that policymakers must keep a close watch on serial human rights abusers, while seeking to identify future threats to international security.

Measuring Interdependence and Its Pacific Benefits: A Reply to Gartzke & Li

Gartzke & Li’s ‘Measure for Measure’ usefully clarifies the mathematical relationships linking trade dependence, openness, and trade share. Oneal and Gartzke & Li agree on allmajor points: (1) high trade dependence, indicated by the lower bilateral trade-to-GDP ratio in each dyad, reduces the likelihood of violent interstate conflict; (2) openness, measured by the total trade-to-GDP ratio for the same state, also has important pacific benefits; and (3) trade share, the ratio of bilateral to total trade, is not a good measure of economic interdependence, because it does not capture the economic (and hence political) importance of states’ bilateral trade. The substantive benefits of both trade dependenceand opennesscan easily be shown. Oneal analyzes militarized interstate disputes using the best available data for trade and conflict and controls for duration dependence. With all dyads included, a one standard-deviation increase in dependencelowers the risk of a fatal dispute by 62%; such an increase in opennessreduces it by 25%. These results are consistent with more than 30 published or forthcoming studies that show that economic interdependence reduces the likelihood of interstate conflict.

Assessing the statistical rarity of wars between democracies

The ‘small numbers objection’ to the democratic peace claims that the relative rarity of militarized conflict between democracies is due to their small numbers coupled with the infrequency of violent interstate conflict, not to an alleged pacifying effect of democracy. This study assesses this objection directly by treating the number of militarized disputes between democracies as a random variable. Since the historical record provides only one observation for this variable, full estimation of its distributional characteristics requires repeated simulation of the process by which dyads are ‘selected’ for conflict We employ Monte Cario techniques to carry out this process. The simulation results indicate no support for the small numbers objection. The results remain stable when important control variables are introduced and when the analysis employs a weaker definition of democracy. Finally, the simulation enables a precise identification of the point within the 1816–1992 temporal domain when the democratic peace moved from an apparent statistical artifact to significant phenomenon.

KOSIMO: A Databank on Political Conflict

Despite the existence of a large amount of operationalized data on violent interstate conflict as one subset of political conflict, there are shortcomings in data on domestic and nonviolent conflict and growing inadequacies between the reality of political conflict and its conceptualization in quantitative conflict research. This is mainly due to fundamental changes in conflict patterns over the past few decades and an understandable fixation by researchers on violence as a central explanandum in conflict research. In response to these shortcomings, the authors propose an integrated and dynamic databank that contains nonviolent and violent as well as domestic and international political conflicts on a global scale between 1945 and 1998. The main hypothesis of the KOSIMO project states that the analysis of an integrated and dynamic databank of political conflict will lead to more accurate propositions about current and future trends of political conflict than conclusions drawn on the basis of databanks that contain exclusively violent conflicts.