The Return of Victories?
The Growing Trend of Militancy in Ending Armed Conflicts
Mimmi Söderberg Kovacs
Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University
[email protected]
Isak Svensson
Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University
[email protected]
Abstract
Conflict resolution as a means and a method of ending civil wars is on the decline. In its place,
we are witnessing a growing trend of militancy in the perception of armed conflicts and a
changing international political climate where military victories have replaced negotiated
settlements as the means to reach an end to large-scale violence. Non-state armed actors are now
more likely to be labelled terrorists rather than rebel groups, mediation and peace talks have been
replaced with counter-insurgency tactics, and war termination has moved from the sphere of
diplomacy into the hand of military experts. Whereas the period following the end of the Cold
War saw a strong increase in the number of negotiated settlements in civil wars, this trend has
turned decisively downwards in the last few years, and we are now witnessing a negative decline
of peace agreements across the globe. In this paper, we address this relatively understudied and
potentially alarming trend by empirically underlining some of its key characteristics and discuss
some of its potential causes and consequences. We conclude by calling for the need to re-adjust
and update some of our key tools and methods for conflict resolution in civil wars.
Paper prepared for the 7th General Conference of the European Consortium for Political Research
(ECPR) at Science Po Bordeaux, Domaine Universitaire, 4–7 September 2013. Work in
progress–please do not quote or cite without the permission of the authors. All comments
welcome!
Introduction
In this paper we point to a dramatic paradigm shift in international relations.1 Conflict resolution
as a means and a method of ending civil wars is on the decline. In several of the armed conflicts
that have been in the focus of the international media in recent years, such as Afghanistan, Iraq,
Libya and Syria, many the key corner stones of traditional conflict resolution approaches –
inclusive peace processes, problem-solving, power-sharing, security guarantees and third party
mediation – have been largely missing from the agenda. Instead, we are witnessing a growing
trend of militancy in the perception of armed conflicts and changing international political
climate in where military victories are accepted as legitimate again. Non-state armed actors are
now more likely to be labelled terrorists rather than rebel groups, mediation and peace talks have
been replaced with counter-insurgency tactics, and war termination has moved from the sphere
of diplomacy into the hand of military experts. The growth of strong human rights agenda has
also has inadvertely decreased the room for diplomatic solutions, and prevents local and
international peacemakers to explore peaceful options. Whereas the period following the end of
the Cold War saw a strong increase in the number of negotiated settlements in civil wars, this
trend has decisively turned downwards in the last few years, and we are now witnessing a
negative decline of peace agreements across the globe.
There are at least three reasons why this trend should be disconcerting for us. First,
conflict resolution represents a peaceful way of managing and resolving armed conflicts. This is
in sharp contrast to war termination strategies aiming for military victory where the use of force
is the main tool used to accomplish peace. Second, negotiated settlements lead to more stable
and durable peace than military victories. While previous research has argued that military
victories outperform peace agreements in leading to durable peace, there are some important and
non-trivial research design problems associated with the empirical studies underpinning this
argument. Utilizing better data, we are able to show that the empirical pattern is rather in support
of the opposite: civil wars ending through peace deals are less likely to reoccur than military
victories. Hence, the decline of conflict resolution may indicate a less secure and stable peace
down the road. Third, military victories are problematic from a democratic perspective. Efforts
to win militarily encourage authoritarian strategies both during and after the war.
Although this development is both dramatic and potentially alarming, it has so far
been accompanied with surprisingly little discussion in the scholarly literature. The purpose of
We gratefully acknowledge research assistance provided by Sophia Hatz at the Department of Peace and Conflict
Research at Uppsala University.
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this paper is to address this gap by empirically underlining some of the key characteristics of this
trend and discuss some of its potential causes and consequences.
The paper is structured into three key parts. First, we present some brief data from
the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) that shows the global decline of negotiated
settlements as a way to end civil wars. Thereafter, we discuss some of the key changes that have
taken place in recent years, which have contributed to the growth and establishment of a new
political climate which has effective replaced the political consensus for conflict resolution that
characterised the early post-Cold War era. This is followed by a discussion on the potentially
negative consequences of military victories, focusing on the scholarly debate on the relationship
between different war endings and durable peace. On a concluding note, we argue for the need to
re-claim lost insight in the conflict resolution literature and launch a new generation of conflict
resolution research.
The Empirical Trend of Peace Agreements
The general trend of peace agreement is relatively well established. During the Cold War, peace
agreements were seldom reached as a way of peacefully ending armed conflicts. Instead, military
victories were the predominant outcome of civil wars. During the period 1975–1989, only very
few peace agreements were reached each year, most often ranging from 0 to a maximum of 2
agreements signed per year (Högbladh 2012, 49). Following the end of the Cold War, the number
of peace agreements rose dramatically, with two remarkable peaks in 1990 and 1993 respectively.
From mid-1990s however, a continual downward trend was recorded, although a relatively stable
number of peace agreements were signed each year and “not one single year in the period 1990–
2008 recorded less than 5 peace agreements” (Högbladh 2012, 9). From 2009, however, there
was a dramatic decline in peace agreements, dropping down to the same levels as recorded during
the Cold War. Importantly, during the same time period, the number of armed conflicts has been
stable or rising. Hence, ”this implies that the decline in peace-making is real and not caused by a
decline in the number of conflicts” (Högbladh 2012, 9). The year 2012 saw a slight increase in
negotiated settlement, with a total of four agreements singed in four conflicts, one in Central
African Republic (CAR), one in the Philippines, one in South Sudan and one between South
Sudan and Sudan (Themnér and Wallensteen 2013).
3
Table 1. PEACE AGREEMENTS 1975–2011 (From Högbladh 2012, 50).2
From Pax Americana to Major Power Rivalry
One key factor which signals the changing political climate in the field of war termination has
been the global power-shift away from a largely American-dominated international community
concerned with the global spread of peace and democracy to a more diverse and competitive
global power structure. The end of the Cold War and by extension, the new role that both the
United Nations (particularly its Security Council) and some key countries were able to play as
international peace mediators, interveners, and security guarantors, led to the development of a
climate of international cooperation which enabled the significant rise in the number of peace
agreements in the early 1990s. Notably, the United States took something of a lead role in this
new world order, sometimes referred to as a Pax Americana, characterised by an international
community which placed the concern for international peace and the spread of democracy high
on the global agenda (Wallensteen 2007). Consequently, the 1990s saw a virtual boom of
In the UCDP data, a peace agreement is defined as ”an agreement between two or more primary warring parties in
a conflict, which addresses the disputed incompatibility, either by settling all or parts of it, or by clearly outlining a
process for how the warring parties plan to regulate the incompatibility” (Högbladh 2012, 42). Three categories of
agreements are identified: comprehensive agreements, partial agreements and peace process agreements, depending
on how much of the stated incompatibility is regulated and if all or some of the warring parties are signatories to the
agreement. For further information, see the UCDP webside: http://www.pcr.uu.se/research/ucdp/datasets/.
2
4
peacemaking and peacebuilding initiatives by international agencies, donor governments, and
non-governmental organisations, and an upsurge of international peacekeeping operations. Most
of our major conflict resolution theories in the field build on the experiences of those early
successes (Namibia, El Salvador, Mozambique), as well as some of the notable and failures
(Rwanda, Somalia).
25 years down the road, we have witnessed the rise and emergence of a new world
order, characterised by a new international power balance where other interests and values have
rose to prominence on the international agenda. Just like the new world order after the end of the
Cold War did not emerge over the day, but developed “in a piecemeal and pragmatic way”
(Wallensteen 2007, 279), the new world order has slowly yet gradually come to establish itself,
although the events of 11 September 2001 represent a key watershed moment in this respect. The
time period since then has seen the return of strategic considerations based on national security
interest in international politics and the return of major power rivalry between the United States
and its growing set of competitors, notably Russia and China. As the United States has
withdrawn, burdened with both an economic regression and politically and militarily costly
operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, the competitors have move forward. As a result, the climate
of international cooperation that was established following the end of the Cold War and enabled
the ending of a large set of civil wars fuelled by super power rivalry has significantly crumbled.
Instead, major power rivalry yet again constitutes a major hurdle for international peacemaking
activities in major armed conflicts. Syria is only the latest example of such a political deadlock.
The post-9/11 world order has also been characterised by a different political
approach regarding how to deal with threats to international peace and security. Roger Cohen
argues in a column in The New York Times (21 January 2013) under the dramatic headline
“Diplomacy is Dead” that diplomacy as a means to manage or resolve international conflicts
have come to an end. The sort of political approach required to end major conflicts, building on
realist statesmanship and characterised by patience, discretion and a willingness to talk to the
enemy for the sake of peace, has been largely lost. In fact, Cohen argues, the very word
diplomacy has come out of fashion at the Capitol Hill in Washington D.C., where US politicians
instead “prefer beating the post-9/11 drums of confrontation, toughness and inflexibility....”.
Another related reasons for why conflict resolution is turning out of fashion is
probably due to the ambiguous track record of many negotiated settlements signed in the PostCold War period. Following the euphoria of the signing of a large number of peace agreements in
the early 1990s, it was soon discovered that many of these peace deals did not hold. Signatories
to the peace settlement opted out of the peace process during the implementation phase and
5
returned to warfare, sometime because the peace deal failed to deliver what they had hoped,
sometimes over new contentious issues. In other cases, parties outside of the agreement
undermined the newly founded peace settlement. Well-known cases where violence resumed
after the peace agreement include Angola (1991, 1994), Cambodia (1991), Ivory Coast (2004),
Rwanda (1993) and Sierra Leone (1996) (Högbladh 2012, 52). Even in cases where the peace
agreement did not immediately break down, it gradually became clear that the implementation
phase was filled with challenges, and many peace provisions are never implemented (Högbladh
2012, 53). The most important negative example in this respect was probably the development
following the signing of the Oslo Accord between Israel and the Palestinians in 1993. Taken
together, these experiences have contributed to give peace agreements a bad name. In a way, this
trend resembles the situation throughout most of the Cold War when a strong aversion against
negotiated resolutions dominated the public and political memory (Wallensteen 2007, 4).
From Liberation Fighters to Terrorist Groups
Another clear trend in recent years is a changing perception of the nature of armed conflicts and
its key warring actors, compared to how the major armed conflicts that dominated the global
scene during the 1990s and early 2000s. In the immediate post-Cold War era, a large number of
armed conflicts that came to an end through negotiated settlements were post-colonial liberation
wars or other civil wars that had been fuelled by the global stand off between the West and the
East. With the ending of systemic tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, and
their disengagement from these armed conflicts, a window of opportunity for peaceful conflict
resolution opened up (Ohlson 1998). Notable examples include the peace agreements concluded
in El Salvador, Guatemala, Mozambique, Namibia, Angola, and Cambodia. Most of our theories
of conflict resolution in civil wars, built on the experience emanating out of these peace
processes.
Many of these armed conflicts were characterised by complex social contestations,
but did put either an ethnic group with territorial aspirations against the government of state
dominated by another ethnicity, or alternatively a guerrilla with a socialist-leftist political
programme against a right-wing dominated government, or both. Hence, nationalism or socialism
were for long the major ideological mobilisation forces in the world and most conflicts could be
seen as either a tension between East and West, or a tension between North and South (decolonialisation or territorial conflicts following its wake). Several conflicts had elements of both
of those two lines of confrontations. Many of these conflicts were also associated with
considerable sympathy from the outside world as outsiders saw a underdog rising up against an
6
oppressive regime, and the use of arms were normatively motivated since that was perceived as a
basic way of achieving greater justice.
Since 9/11, our global map of armed conflict around the world has been re-drawn
in many important respects. For example, armed groups who fight for an incompatibility related
to political Islam has increased proportionally. Although the frequency of these conflicts since
the mid-1990s has been relatively stable, the decline in other types of conflicts (non-religious
conflicts) have led to the situation where conflicts with a religious incompatibility make up a
larger share of active conflicts (Svensson 2012). Many contemporary conflicts also include a
greater number of armed actors, making these conflicts more complex to analyse, with
sometimes unclear or overlapping incompatibilities. The recent conflict in Mali is an illustrative
case in point.
More importantly, our perceptions of the nature and characters of the armed
conflicts and the warring parties active in these conflicts have changed. Many contemporary
armed conflicts include non-state armed opposition groups with alleged or proved ties to
international terrorist networks. Notable examples include the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, two
of the most severe and deadly conflicts in the post 9/11 period. Other groups engaged in ongoing armed conflicts that are designated and listed as terrorist organisations by the U.S.
Department of State and many other states, include Abu Sayyaf Group in the Philippines
(Mindanao), Al Shabaab in Somalia, Hamas in Israel (Palestine), PKK in Turkey (Kurdistan),
FARC in Colombia, JEM in Sudan, AQIM in Algeria and Mauretania and AQAP in Yemen.3
Such labelling denotes a shift in the perception of, and attitude towards non-state armed groups,
from armed actors who pursue a specific (legitimate) political goal with military means to a group
of illegal armed bandits who launches unjustified attacks against a government or innocent
civilians.
One consequence of this development is that the perceptions of the means that are
the most appropriate to end violence caused by such actors has also changed, with the emphasis
shifting from politics and talks to military means and the use of armed force for the purpose of
defeat. The argument is often voiced that because these groups are largely driven by religious
reasons or identity, political negotiations are neither desirable nor realistic. They are also
potentially politically costly, and may be accompanied with significant audience costs domestically
and internationally. The primary purpose of many so-called peace enforcement operations by
international and regional organisations is no longer to seek a negotiated resolution with the
3
For all armed conflict active in 2011, see Themnér and Wallensteen 2012. For the U.S. Department of State listing
of “Foreign Terrorist Organizations, see http://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/other/des/123085.htm (last accessed 201308-19).
7
armed actors but to engage in counter-insurgency. Again, the military offensive in northern Mali
is a good example. Another direct consequences of the frequent usage of terrorist listings is that
it becomes unlawful for any party or organisation to seek contact with these organisations, even if
the purpose is to convince them to end violence. The key avenue to seek a negotiated solution
with these groups is thus effectively closed off.
From State Sovereignty to Responsibility to Protect
The increasing primacy of the sword before the olive branch has been equally true in situations
of government repression. Following in the footstep of new international norms emphasising the
shift from the traditional view of security as a matter of protecting states from each other
(international security) to a more multi-facet picture of security as a matter of protecting the
rights of groups and individuals (human security), we have witnessed the emergence of new
paradigms for international engagements. Calls for the primacy of state sovereignty have been
replaced with calls for responsibility to protect. While this development can be perceived as a
positive trend, which signals a new international willingness to act against global injustices and
discrimination, it has also been accompanied with a new view of political conflicts, with a more
simplified distinction between “bad guys” and “good guys”. In this view, traditional conflict
resolution methods – mediation, diplomacy and peace agreements – are perceived as obsolete
tools with little applicability or usefulness. Instead, the focus is now increasingly on establishment
of regime change through the use of force and military pressure.
The armed conflict in Libya in 2011 in the aftermath of the Arab Spring is an
illustrative example. The UN-mandated military intervention, acting on the basis of the
international framework of the responsibility to protect, authorised member states to establish
and enforce a no-fly zone over Libya, and to use "all necessary measures" to prevent attacks on
civilians. Targeted sanctions were established against Gadaffi and his inner circle and the case was
referred to the International Criminal Court for investigation of human rights abuses.
Throughout the conflict, the opposition rejected government offers of a ceasefire and efforts by
the African Union to end the fighting through negotiations because the suggested plans did not
include the explicit removal of Gaddafi from government power. The rebel forces were
eventually successful in ousting the regime from power through force, and the newly established
body the National Transitional Council was immediately recognised by the United Nations as the
legal representative of Libya.
In Syria, an international military intervention has been deadlocked due to
international political rivalry between on the one hand Russia and China, who have thrown their
8
support behind the regime of Bashar al-Assad and on the other hand the Anglo-French coalition
of France, Britain and the United States, who are openly supportive of the armed opposition
movement in the country. Following the escalation of the armed conflict during 2012, France and
Britain have all pushed for the removal of the EU arms embargo on Syria and the lifting of
sanctions on oil in rebel-controlled territories, while maintaining economic sanctions against
Assad's regime. The explicit aim has been the strengthening of the armed opposition for the
purpose of putting military pressure on the regime of President Bashar al-Assad to step down. In
the United States, the Obama administration is under growing pressure from Capitol Hill to arm
the rebels or institute a no-fly zone.
From Conflict Resolution to Conflict Revolution
In addition, in recent years we have seen the growth of non-violent movements seeking regime
change around the world. The purpose of these movements is conflict revolution rather than
conflict resolution. The aim is to bring down the existing government, albeit with peaceful means.
The outside world has perceived these conflicts accordingly. During the Arab Spring, popular
uprisings against long-sitting despots were framed in black and white colours, with little room for
political compromise or even really negotiations. Even if these democratic nonviolent uprisings
were intertangled with intractable social divisions (religious sects in Syria, clans in Yemen and
Libya, ethnic groups in Bahrain), which were partly utilised for mobilisation purposed, they were
portrayed rather simplistically as the masses against the dictators. The debate on conflict
resolution (both in the political sphere and academic research) has generated a set of importance
lessons of how to best manage societies transforming from war to peace. In the (originally)
unarmed uprisings, however, these lessons have not been discussed or implemented. Hence,
concepts such as powersharing, third party security guarantees, peacekeeping and mediation have
been largely missing from the discussion during the Arab Spring. Notably, there have been no
peace agreements reaching between contesting groups during the Arab Spring.
From Pragmatism to Justice Puritanism
The post-Cold War era has also seen the growth of humanitarian concerns more generally and an
increased public and organisational focus on the promotion of human rights, enforcing
accountability for war crimes, and ending destructive cycles of impunity in post-war societies. In
particular, while the peace agreements concluded in the 1990s often stipulated amnesty to the
warring parties for war crimes and other human rights abuses conducted during the armed
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conflict, later agreement have more often included issues pertaining to the establishment of
transitional justice mechanisms (Wallensteen 2007, 142–143, Melander 2010, Check.).
The signing of the controversial peace deal in Lomé in 1999, aiming to end the
destructive civil war in Sierra Leone, became a critical turning point in this respect. While the
peace agreement itself granted blanket and unconditional amnesty to all the warring parties, the
UN representative at the negotiation table added a hand-written disclaimer to one of the copies
of the agreement during the actual singing ceremony without notifying any of the other parties in
advance. The UN had just adopted a new policy that prohibited the signing an agreement that
granted amnesty for serious international crimes, and the UN representative was trying to find a
way of this dilemma without diverting from the compromises made at the negotiation table and
preventing the signing of the agreement. The disclaimer stated that: “[t]he United Nations holds
the understanding that the amnesty and pardon in Article IX of the agreement shall not apply to
international crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and other serious
violations of international humanitarian law” (Hayner 2007, add page). Rebel leader Foday
Sankoh from the RUF signed the document before the UN Representative, and when he saw the
added note he was surprised and asked our aloud about its implications. Allegedly, no one
answered him, and the signing ceremony continued (Hayner 2007).
The consequences of the UN disclaimer became clear the following year, after the
rebels had returned to arms. In June 2000, President Kabbah turned to the United Nations to ask
them for assistance in setting up an international court to try the armed opposition for war
crimes and crime against humanity and a couple of years later, the Special Court for Sierra Leone
was established (Lamin 2003, 306–307). Hence, by the early 2000, it was clear that the tide had
decisively turned, and key actors in the international community was finding the granting of
amnesties less acceptable that previously. Consequently, many contemporary peace agreements
have provisions laying out the establishment of truth commissions, human rights commissions,
and investigations into past war crimes (Wallensteen, see above. Check.). In many ways it may be
argued that the quality of the peace agreements that are signed have been improved. Yet, at the
same time, it is also possible that the establishment of these norms, and their institutionalisations
into key policy documents, have prevented peace custodians from initiating talks and striking
political compromises with armed actors who have a reputation for human rights abuses.
Civil War Endings and Durable Peace
Why does this changing trend away from conflict resolution and towards an increasing reliance
on military means to settle intra-state armed conflict matter? One key consequence is the
potentially negative long-term effects of military victories on the likelihood of durable peace and
10
democracy. This question has been hotly debated in previous research. In this section, we outline
the main contributions to this debate, paying particular attention to the empirical findings that
this debate has generated.
The answers to the question of which civil war outcomes best reduce the risk of
civil war recurrence and are more likely to lead to sustainable peace and democracy, have
essentially divided the research community into two camps. On the one hand, there are those
that argue that military victories trump negotiated settlements in most of these respects. On the
other hand, there are a number of researchers that that have questioned these findings,
suggesting that they are vulnerable to a number of coding differences, and hence not very robust.
We contribute to the debate by empirically demonstrate the direct opposite effect: that negotiated
settlements are more conducive to stable peace.
One recent and often-cited proponent of the first argument is Toft (2010). She
finds that civil wars ended by military victory have a tendency to stay ended, compared to
negotiated settlements which are more likely to result in renewed violence (2010, 151). In
particular, rebel victories have a lower probability of war recurrence than government victories
(2010, 57). Toft argues that the key reason why military victories are more stable is because the
victor can credibly threaten the losing side with direct physical harm should violence resume.
Negotiated settlements, on the other hand, are fragile because they only offer benefits for
compliance and indirect harm. Rebel victories are also more likely to lead to more enduring peace
and encourage democratisation in post-war states, Toft argues. This is because in addition to
credibly threatening harm, rebel victories provide positive incentives for non-violence and
contribute to open up political space. However, according to her, military victories and peace
agreements can potentially be merged into the ultimate form of civil war ending if negotiated
settlements can incorporate the “promise of harm” of military victories through comprehensive
security sector reform.
Toft’s argument fall back on an academic tradition that have for a long time
suggested that military victories provide a better foundation for stable post-war environments
than negotiated settlements. The argument was first made in the famous article “Give war a
chance” (Luttwak 1999), in which the author argues that military victories produce a more stable
peace because they reduce the loser’s capacity to resume violence. The implication of this
argument is, according to Luttwak, that the international community should be allowing wars to
run their course in order to enhance the likelihood of durable peace and post-war reconstruction.
On a similar line of thought, Wagner (1993) argues that victories are more stable than negotiated
settlements because the loser’s capacity to reignite conflict is low. Likewise, Licklider (1995) finds
11
empirical support for the proposition that negotiated settlements are less likely to endure than
military victories, and Fortna (2004) finds that decisive military outcomes reduce the likelihood of
another armed conflict.4 Walter (2009) too finds that decisive military victories lead to longer
periods of peace, and explains this through a bargaining perspective. The more decisive the
outcome, the more information about relative capabilities rivals have, and the greater the
incentives to maintain peace. Negotiated settlements, on the other hand, leave combatants at risk
of information asymmetry, are difficult to craft in countries with weak political institutions, fixed
cleavages and changing social structures, and depend on credible third party guarantees.
Moreover, negotiated settlements signal government willingness to compromise with rebel
groups, encouraging future armed challenges. Hence, governments have incentives not to
negotiate in order to build a reputation for toughness, Walter argues.
Yet, these arguments and findings are not without its critics. In the second camp,
we find many prominent analyses of the effect of different civil war termination outcomes on the
probability of civil war recurrence that have found a much weaker relationship between military
victories and war recurrence, or even evidence of the opposite effect. Fearon and Laitin (2004)
find that 12 percent of the civil wars ended through victory fail to bring about stable peace,
compared to 9 percent of negotiated settlements. Doyle and Sambanis (2000) do find, just like
Toft, that military victories are less likely than negotiated settlement to re-occur, but the
difference is small: 17 percent of the military victories recur compared to 20 percent of the
negotiated settlements. In a later study (2006, 5), however, they find that certain types of peace
agreements actually trump military victories and have an even better success rate: comprehensive
peace agreements implemented through a peace operation. On a similar line, Quinn, Mason and
Gurses (2007) show support for the claim that negotiated agreements supported by peacekeeping
forces are less likely to breakdown than government victories.
Toft suggests that the difference in results between her study and that of Doyle and
Sambanis (2000) and Fearon and Laitin (2004) can be traced back to coding differences. In
particular, she point to four such key differences that explain their divergent results. First, these
previous studies do not include some failed negotiations. Second, unlike Toft’s study, they
include low-intensity conflicts below the threshold of 1,000 fatalities. Third, in contrast to Doyle
and Sambanis (2000), her study includes ten wars of independence, almost all won by rebels and
none of which recurred. Four and lastly, several armed conflicts coded as separate civil wars in
4
However, Licklider (1995) also finds that military victories in identity civil war may be more likely to be followed by
genocide, and that casualty patterns are similar across negotiated settlements and military victories.
12
both Doyle and Sambanis (2000) and Fearon and Laitin (2004) were coded as one and the same
civil war by Toft (2010, 57).5
This is an important explanation for the divergence in the results. Yet, at the same
time, and as pointed out by several authors in the field (e.g., Doyle and Sambanis 2004; Kreutz
2010; Nathan 2011), if coding differences with respect to conflict aggregation, onset, termination
and recurrence matter so much for inferences about the durability of peace, then Toft’s findings
cannot be considered very robust. Kreutz (2010) in particular have been able to demonstrate that
the determinants of civil war recurrence identified by Walter (2004) and Quinn, Mason and
Gurses (2007) are sensitive to different formulations of conflict termination data. Likewise,
Nathan’s (2011) re-coding of just four of Toft’s observations raised the recurrence rate of
military victories to 19 percent, close to that of negotiated settlements (2011, 203). Hence, these
coding differences are not insignificant and deserve greater attention.
In fact, replicating Toft’s empirical models using the UCDP Conflict Termination
Dataset, this study yields substantially different results. This is because Toft’s study builds on
coding of conflict outcomes that are not uncontroversial. In particular, it differs from how the
UCDP has coded the conflict as ended. There are good reasons to utilize the UCDP coding in
these instances, since (a) the UCDP data offers the most detailed information on conflict
termination 6 , and (b) UCDP coding of termination corresponds well with other prominent
termination datasets- MID for interstate conflict and Sambanis (2000) civil war termination
dataset. 25 cases differ when comparing the categorization of conflict outcome in Toft and
UCDP. 7 If we apply UCDP coding instead of Toft, the frequency of re-occurrence is the
opposite of what Toft describes in her study. Hence, after this recoding, the rate of return back
to war following negotiated settlements drops from 23% to 12%, and the recurrence rate of
military victory increases from 13% to 15.6%. Hence, in opposite of Toft’s finding, we find that
negotiated settlements are more likely, not less, to lead to durable peace following an end of an
armed conflicts.
Moreover, Toft’s threshold of 1,000 fatalities in order for a conflict to count as a
civil war and be included in her study is problematic both empirically and theoretically. As
pointed out by Kreutz (2010,) it makes her dataset sensitive to fluctuations in intensity. Many
civil wars show great variation in conflict intensity across time. Hence, in direct contrast to he
5
Toft does not explicitly explain how the third coding difference affects her result, or theirs.
The specific start and end dates, low-intensity conflicts and a broader range of outcomes.
7
We were able to match 62 of Toft’s 135 civil wars to UCDP conflict episodes using COW country codes and
conflict end year. We excluded 17 on-going conflicts and one conflict missing a value for ‘recurrence’. This left 117
cases, the same number of cases Toft includes in her analysis. Of the remaining 49 matched cases, the 25 cases listed
in the Appendix, differed in coding of termination type.
6
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ambition to focus on cases of mass violence, she risks excluding a number of important cases
where a high degree of violence has accumulated over time (Doyle and Sambanis 2004).8 Another
important consequence is that she will threat a number of cases as peaceful (i.e. not having
returned to war) in spite of the fact that they may display significant level of violence (Kreutz
2010, Nathan 2011). In a replication of Toft’s study, we implemented Toft’s coding choices9, but
utilized UCDP conflict data instead. Again, the results are almost the opposite of what Toft
finds: 12,5% of all the negotiated settlements recur and 20% of military victories do. Hence,
military victories overall tend to be associated with less, not more, durable peace.
Furthermore, according to Toft, rebel victories are more likely to encourage a
process of democratization because rebels have incentives to open the political space (Toft 2010,
47). However, this argument has been questioned in subsequent research, suggesting that military
victories rather decrease the size of the post-civil war governing coalition and victorious rebels
“have little incentive to expand the size of the government” (Joshi and Mason 2011, Joshi 2012).
Nilsson (2012), in sharp contrast to Toft, finds that negotiated settlements are more conducive to
democratisation than truces or military victories (Nilsson 2012).
In sum, the claim that negotiated settlements is less effective than military victories
in ending civil wars is contested at best. When more fine-grained and updated data is taken into
account, conflicts that end through military victories are in fact more likely to break down than
when parties end their conflicts through negotiated settlements.
Concluding Remarks: Reclaiming Lost Insights and the Need for Conflict Resolution 2.0
The end of the Cold War still represents the key watershed event in contemporary conflict
resolution theory and practice. The end of super power rivalry and the growth of a changing
world climate towards greater cooperation under American lead enabled the development of a
range of critical tools and methods for settling armed conflict with peaceful means. A virtual
boom of peacemaking and peacebuilding initiatives was launched, and many prolonged and
destructive civil wars came to an end through negotiated settlement facilitated by international
and local mediators. Most of our key concepts and theories in conflict resolution – such as
hurting stalemate, spoilers, power sharing, security guarantees – build on the experiences from
these early post-Cold War peace processes.
Eschewing conflicts that reach 1,000 fatalities per year on average results in the dropping of several cases that have
reached a total of 1,000 fatalities in a single year, and have thus reached the commonly held (COW, UCDP) threshold
for “war”.
9
In particular, following Toft, we restricted the sample to only conflicts that reached 1,000 battle-related death on
average, we allowed for one year gap within an episode, and countries as defined by COW.
8
14
Since then, a number of key developments have taken place which together and
separately have contributed to draw a new world map in which many of the factors conducive to
the practice of conflict resolution as a means and method for ending civil wars have been
weakened or disappeared. Instead, we are now witnessing a trend where militancy – military
means to end armed conflicts – have come to dominate both policy discussions and practice in
the field of war termination. The events of 9/11 and the subsequent global war on terrorism
represent a new symbolic watershed event in this respect, although far from the only
development that may explain this important paradigm shift. In this paper, we have pointed to a
number of critical trends that together serves to paint a picture of a new world order in which
many traditional conflict resolution tools are perceived as obsolete. We believe that this trend is
potentially alarming. The reasons are many, but in this paper we have primarily pointed to one
such potentially negative consequences of the increasing reliance of military means to end armed
conflict: military victories are less likely than negotiated settlements to lead to stable peace in the
long-term perspective.
We suggest that this development warrants a comprehensive and profound
reinvigoration in the field of conflict resolution. There are little reasons to believe that our
traditional tools for conflict resolution are obsolete. On the contrary, the last decades of research
offers plenty of insights into how these civil wars can be resolved. However, in the light of
changes in the nature of armed conflicts – such as an increasing number of conflicts with
multiple armed groups, proportionally more conflicts where the incompatibility is framed in
religious terms and conflicts where the warring parties are listed as terrorist organisations – and in
our norms and perceptions pertaining to armed conflicts – such as an increasing human rights
agenda – does require that we need to update and adjust our traditional concepts and analytical
tools to this changing reality. In short, what we need is the launching of a new generation of
conflict resolution theories, a Conflict Resolution 2.0.
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16
Appendix 1: Cases that Differ in
Coding of Outcome
UState
TState
UYears
TYears
UOutcome
TOutcome
Angola
Angola
1975-1994
1975-1995
Low Activity
Angola
1998-2002
1998-2002
Congo
Brazzaville
1997-1997
1997-1999
Burundi
China
Ethiopia
Georgia
Burundi
China
Ethiopia
Georgia
1991-1991
1945-1949
1977-1978
1992-1993
1991-1992
1946-1949
1977-1978
1992-1993
Hyderabadh
India
Indonesia
Indonesia
Iran (Persia)
Iraq
Lebanon
India
India
Indonesia
Indonesia
Iran
Iraq
Lebanon
1948-1948
1982-1993
1958-1961
1965-1966
1981-1982
1991-1993
1958-1958
1947-1948
1983-1993
1958-1961
1965-1969
1979-1982
1991-1996
1958-1958
Negotiated Settlement
Negotiated Settlement
Low Activity
Other
Low Activity
Negotiated Settlement
Other
Low Activity
Low Activity
Low Activity
Low Activity
Low Activity
Victory
Negotiated Settlement
Ceasefire
Angola
Morocco
Nicaragua
Morocco
Nicaragua
1975-1991
1978-1990
1975-1989
1982-1990
Low Activity
Ceasefire
Pakistan
Peru
Philippines
Russia (Soviet
Union)
Sierra Leone
Pakistan
Peru
Philippines
Russia
1973-1977
1980-1999
1946-1954
1942-1950
1974-1977
1982-1999
1946-1954
1946-1950
Ceasefire
Ceasefire
Low Activity
Low Activity
Sierra Leone
1991-2002
1991-2000
Yemen (Arab Republic of Yemen)
Yugoslavia
Yemen Arab
public
Yugoslavia
1962-1970
1962-1970
1991-1995
1991-1991
Negotiated Settlement
Negotiated Settlement
Other
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia
1998-1999
1998-1999
Congo,
Democratic Republic of
(Zaire)
Zaire/Congo
1960-1965
1964-1965
Re-
Negotiated Settlement
Low Activity
Victory
Victory
Victory
Victory
Ceasefire
Victory
Victory
Victory
Victory
Victory
Victory
Negotiated Settlement
Ceasefire
Negotiated Settlement
Victory
Victory
Victory
Victory
Victory
Victory
Negotiated Settlement
Victory
Victory
17