Anything new or more of the same? Wars and military interventions in the international system, 1946–2003

Abstract

In order systematically to trace the transformation of warfare on the global level, this article analyses the occurrence of different types of war in the contemporary international system. Starting from the hypothesis that change in the social institution of warfare is anything but new, the aim is threefold. In the first part the article examines our empirical knowledge about the changing patterns of violent conflict and critically discusses the assumption of a qualitative transformation from ‘old’ to ‘new’ wars. Secondly an actor-based classification is proposed, which avoids attractive simplifications and which includes the often overlooked dimensions of sub-state warfare and military interventions in current conflicts. Thirdly, based on the conceptual framework, the article analyses empirically the identified forms of collective violence (wars, military interventions) and changes among the types over time by application of a new data set, covering the period 1946–2003. One of the empirical results is that it would be premature to either ignore ‘old’ intra-state wars (anti-regime or secession wars) or even to regard inter-state wars as on the brink of extinction. Even though sub-state wars have clearly gained in importance over the past two decades, they have not become the dominant form of violence. Nevertheless, the proposed integration of a sub-state category draws our attention to similarities and dissimilarities across different classes of war and suggests an improved perspective for the analysis of their correlates and etiologies.

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Anything new or more of the same?
Wars and military interventions in the
international system, 1946–2003
Sven Chojnacki
Published online: 09 Aug 2006.
To cite this article: Sven Chojnacki (2006) Anything new or more of the same? Wars and
military interventions in the international system, 1946–2003, Global Society, 20:1, 25-46, DOI:
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Anything New or More of the Same? Wars and
Military Interventions in the International System,
1946–2003
SVEN CHOJNACKI
In order systematically to trace the transformation of warfare on the global level, this
article analyses the occurrence of different types of war in the contemporary inter-
national system. Starting from the hypothesis that change in the social institution of
warfare is anything but new, the aim is threefold. In the first part the article examines
our empirical knowledge about the changing patterns of violent conflict and critically
discusses the assumption of a qualitative transformation from ‘old’ to ‘new’ wars.
Secondly an actor-based classification is proposed, which avoids attractive simplifica-
tions and which includes the often overlooked dimensions of sub-state warfare and
military interventions in current conflicts. Thirdly, based on the conceptual framework,
the article analyses empirically the identified forms of collective violence (wars, military
interventions) and changes among the types over time by application of a new data set,
covering the period 1946–2003. One of the emp irical results is that it would be prema-
ture to either ignore ‘old’ intra-state wars (anti-regime or secession war s) or even to
regard inter-state wars as on the brink of extinction. Even though sub-state war s have
clearly gained in importance over the past two decades, they have not become the
dominant form of violence. Nevertheless, the proposed integration of a sub-state category
draws ou r attention to similarities and dissimilarities across different classes of war and
suggests an improved perspective for the analysis of their correlates and etiologies.
Introduction
1
In his introduction to Quincy Wright’s monumental Study of War, Karl Deutsch
wrote that “war, to be abolished, must be understood. To be understood, it
must be studied”.
2
In order to meet this challenge, analyses of collective violence
have for a long time almost exclusively focussed on the correlates and empirical
trends of wars between states. This was a consequence of the assumption that,
1. I thank Wolf-Dieter Eberwein for helpful comments and Nils Metternich for his research assist-
ance. The author also wishes to thank the ‘Berlin Research Group on the Scientific Study of War’ (Ber-
liner Forschungsgruppe Krieg, FORK) for discussions. This study is part of the project “New Forms of
Violence in the International System” and received funding from the ‘German Peace Research Foun-
dation’ (Deutsche Stiftung Friedensforschung, DSF).
2. Deutsch, Karl W., “Introduction”, in Quincy Wright, A Study of War,2
nd
Edition (Chicago: Univer-
sity of Chicago Press, 1965).
Global Society, Vol. 20, No. 1, Januar y, 2006
ISSN 1360-0826 print=ISSN 1469-798X online=06=010025-22 # 2006 University of Kent
DOI: 10.1080=13600820500405442
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bearing in mind the experiences of two disastrous world wars, inter-state wars
were the most pernicious perils to the stability of international order. This per-
spective was accompanied by the custom of defining and explaining war exclu-
sively with a focus on the behaviour of states.
3
Accordingly, even the explosive
eruption of intra-state conflicts in the wake of de-colonisation was explained at
least largely by reference to processes of belated state-building. Conflicts within
states, between the government and one or more rebel groups, were classified as
either anti-regime or secession wars – and thus explicitly linked to the idea of
the defence or the making of statehood.
4
In doing so, however, a central dimension of war, and thus of what must be
done to overcome it, was neglected, namely the transformation of war and its
possible repercussions on regional and international stability. The Cold War not
only shaped the structure of world politics but at the same time obscured the
deeper and longer-term changes of war in conflict studies. With the end of the
Cold War intra-state wars suddenly moved to the centre of political attention
(as the “Agenda for Peace” showed). Some scholars fell from the state-centred
model into the ‘new war’ extreme: The activities of non-state actors in regions
where state authority had collapsed, coupled with the emergence of war econom-
ies, were cited as proof of a far-reaching transformation of war in a globalised era.
Mary Kaldor
5
sought to grasp these complex changes by the simple distinction
into ‘old’ and ‘new’ wars. Others scholars have developed conceptualisations
such as “wars of the third kind”
6
or “network wars”.
7
They all agree, however,
that many of today’s wars do not fit the classifications and explanations which
are conventionally applied in war studies – and even that the Clausewitzian
understanding of war as a continuation of politics by other means seems to
have become obsolete.
In effect, there are two central problems. The first one is the vagueness of the
term ‘new wars’, and the second is the tendency to overrate the alleged transform-
ation of war due to the lack of empirical verification and reasonable classification.
The label ‘new’ is deluding not only because it suggests that wars can be neatly
qualified either as ‘old’ or ‘new’ and be clearly delimited in time. It is also meth-
odologically problematic because the criteria for identifying ‘new’ wars are highly
arbitrary, difficult to reproduce intersubjectively, and difficult to reconcile with
conflict theory. The empirical cases may well illustrate specific hypotheses, but
its evidence is neither sound nor does it enable us to identify global trends or
3. See Melvin Small and J. David Singer, Resort to Arms. International and Civil Wars, 1816–1980
(Beverly Hills: Sage, 1982); John A. Vasquez, The War Puzzle (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1993); Nils Petter Gleditsch, Peter Wallensteen, Mikael Eriksson, Margareta Sollenberg, and
Havard Strand. “Armed Conflict 1946–2001: A new dataset”, Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 39, No. 5
(2002), pp. 615–637.
4. See Charles Tilly, “War Making and State Making as Organized Crime”, in Peter B. Evans, Dietrich
Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol (eds.), Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1985), pp. 169– 191; David Keen, “Incentives and Disincentives for Violence”, in Mats Berdal and
David M. Malone (eds.), Greed and Grievances. Economic Agendas in Civil Wars (Boulder: Lynne
Rienner, 2000), pp. 19–41.
5. Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars. Organized Violence in a Global Era (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999).
6. Kalevi J. Holsti, The State, War, and the State of War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
7. Mark Duffield, Global Governance and New Wars. The Merging of Development and Security (London:
Zed Books, 2001).
26 S. Chojnacki
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central causal mechanisms of current wars.
8
A precise identification of change,
however, is of immediate relevance to the basic normative objective of conflict
research, i.e. the peaceful settlement of armed conflicts and the institutionalisation
of preventive measures.
It follows from this that we need to consider transformations of war theoreti-
cally and empirically much more than we have done hitherto – without,
however, drawing premature conclusions about the disappearance of specific
types of wars or the emergence of ‘new’ wars as long as we cannot rely on a
sound empirical data base. Hence, we need a classification of war which is suffi-
ciently comprehensive while at the same time avoiding attractive simplifications
such as ‘old’ versus ‘new’ war, and which do not exclude by definition the non-
state dimensions of war.
This problem is supplemented by another ingredient of change, which is often
overlooked in the scientific study of war: the increasing risk of military interven-
tion in order to contain continuing violence within failing or failed states and to
counter the spiral of state collapse, terrorism and gross war crimes. Since the
end of the Cold War military interventionism has become a prominent tool of
foreign policy. Bosnia, Kosovo or Afghanistan are striking examples. The
United States is not alone in using military intervention to shape world order.
Other western democracies such as the United Kingdom, France or Germany
are involved in major military campaigns around the globe. Even though military
intervention is a common element of inter- and intrastate conflicts, there remains a
significant theoretical and empirical deficit.
9
On the one hand, the particular chal-
lenge arises from the explicit claim of democratic states to enforce human rights
universally and spread democracy in the international system. On the other
hand, states collapse and the resource trap creates opportunity structures for col-
lective action by neighbouring states, extra-regional powers or international
organisations (see, for example, the political and economic logics of violence in
Sierra Leone and Liberia in West Africa or the internationalised war in the
Congo Region).
In order to trace the transformation of warfare and the related risks of military
interventions systematically, our empirical knowledge about the changing land-
scape of war in the contemporary international system will be put to a test. Sub-
sequently, putting aside simplifications, the response of prominent research
projects to the challenges of change and whether non-state forms of war can be
integrated into existing typologies will be evaluated. The issue is linked to the
question of whether military interventions in current wars should be an integral
part of a war typology. Most notably, this section will provide suggestions on
how to adapt the existing typology of war to new phenomena. What this entails
in terms of research strategy, is an empirical analysis of the identified forms of col-
lective violence and changes among war types over time by using the “New List of
Wars” covering the period 1946–2003. This will allow us to assess how the
different types of wars have evolved over time and whether we can indeed
witness the transformation from ‘old’ to ‘new’ wars during the past decades.
Theoretically, the analysis builds on the idea that constructing a typology of
8. Michael Brzoska, “‘New Wars’ Discourse in Germany”, Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 41, No. 1
(2004), pp. 107–117.
9. Jeffrey Pickering, “Give me Shelter. Reexamining Military Intervention and the Monadic
Democratic Peace”, International Interactions, Vol. 28 (2002), p. 294.
Anything New or More of the Same? 27
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war is both conceptually useful in explaining findings and in estimating dimen-
sions of change.
10
The function of such a modified typology is to allow for
greater precision of the empirical domain, to identify commonalities and differ-
ences among the different types and their correlates, and to come up with ade-
quate explanations.
What Do We Know About Changing Forms of War?
Irrespective of theoretical and methodological differences, there is a widespread
and empirically supported consensus among scholars that the character of war
is changing. First and foremost, this consensus applies to the fact that the relation
between inter-state and intra-state wars has changed. Violence within states has
been the dominant form of conflict throughout the post-Second World War
period.
11
Nonetheless we should keep in mind that the prevalence of intra-state
war is not a particularly new phenomenon. Even in the 19
th
century, most
forms of political violence were not inter-state wars. The data of the Correlates of
War project about actual wars for each single decade since 1816 shows that
intra-state wars have always dominated, the only exception being the 1930–39
period.
12
However, their proportion has risen sharply in the second half of the
20
th
century. Non-international forms of violence now occur eight times as fre-
quently as wars between states.
13
Second, war statistics produced by the leading research projects also reveal that,
besides their frequency, the intensity and duration of intra-state wars has changed
in comparison with inter-state wars. For one thing, violent conflicts within states
lead to much higher casualties than conflicts between states.
14
Fearon and Laitin
15
estimate, that the total number of people killed as a direct result of civil wars
between 1945 and 1999 is five times higher than the inter-state death toll. More-
over, wars within states contain a higher risk of violence perpetuating itself.
Empirical studies confirm this proposition: compared with the period before
1980, the prospective duration of intra-state wars has more than doubled over
the last two decades.
16
Frequently, peace settlements after the end of the East-
West conflict remained fragile and did not lead to the expected success.
17
In
10. Vasquez, The War Puzzle, op. cit., p. 59.
11. Gleditsch et al., op. cit.; Monty G. Marshal and Ted Robert Gurr, Peace and Conflict 2003. A Global
Survey of Armed Conflict, Self-Determination Movements, and Democracy (College Park, MD: CIDCM,
2003).
12. Jack S. Levy and Thomas C. Walker, Martin S. Edwards, “Continuity and Change in the
Evolution of Warfare”, in Maoz, Zeev and Azar Gat (eds.), War in a Changing World (Ann Arbor, MI:
University of Michigan Press, 2001), pp. 15–48; Meredith Reid Sarkees, Frank Whelon Wayman, and
J. David Singer, “Inter-State, Intra-State, and Extra-State Wars: A Comprehensive Look at Their Distri-
bution over Time, 1816–1997”, International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 47 (2003), pp. 49–70.
13. Ibid., p. 61; see also Gleditsch, op. cit.; Marshall and Gurr, op. cit.
14. Sarkees et al., “Inter-State, Intra-State, and Extra-State Wars: A Comprehensive Look at Their
Distribution over Time, 1816 –1997”, op. cit., p. 65.
15. James D. Fearon, and David D. Laitin, “Ethnicity, insurgency, and civil war”, American Political
Science Review, Vol. 97, No. 1 (2003), p. 75.
16. Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, Nicholas Sambanis, “On the Duration of Civil War”, Journal of
Peace Research, Vol. 41, No. 3 (2003), pp. 253–273.
17. The durable or recurring conflicts in Sudan, Angola, Myanmar, or Colombia are paradigmatic
for this.
28 S. Chojnacki
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contrast, even in the absence of support from the superpowers or neighbouring
states, rebel groups were able to develop political and commercial strategies to
continue fighting. Upheavals last for a particularly long time when rebel forces
operate in the periphery of states and have access to precious resources.
18
Third, numerous empirical studies come to the conclusion that the increasing
number of intra-state conflicts reinforces the trend of current wars to produce
increasingly more civilian victims. It is repeatedly pointed out that, in statistical
terms, the proportion of civilians among the total number of war victims rose
step by step from roughly 10 per cent at the beginning of the 20
th
century to 80
to 90 per cent in the 1990s.
19
This is seen as being connected with the failure of pol-
itical institutions in the zones of turmoil, as well as with the perpetuation of logics
of violence and altered warfare strategies against societal groups and the social
infrastructure.
20
The hypothesis of a general trend in the relative proportions of
civilian and military victims, however, rests on a questionable database or con-
tents itself with illustrations from single cases. Conversely, the only study
known to analyse this relation in an historically systematic manner over a
longer period of time concludes that the proportion of civilians among war
victims has constantly remained at about 50 per cent since the 18
th
century.
21
Pat-
terns of deliberate civilian victimisation have been a feature of all wars.
22
Never-
theless, there is some indication that today’s wars cost more civilian lives and that
the targeting of civilians is now frequently adopted as military strategy by states
to combat powerful guerrilla insurgencies.
23
Alternatively, where the institutions
of the state such as the army, police and administrative authorities are especially
contested or even collapse and where private actors develop particular motives
for terrorising the civilian population and weakening their military opponents
then this also leads to these mass killings.
24
In this regard, the spectrum ranges
from strategies of looting and terror, the strategic inclusion of civilians in actual
warfare (e.g. as buffer zones), to extreme strategies of displacement or even geno-
cide. It is established empirically that the total figure of refugees has dramatically
18. James D. Fearon, “Why some civil wars last so much longer than others?”, Journal of Peace
Research, Vol. 41, No. 3 (2004), pp. 275–301.
19. Edmund Cairns, A Safer Future: Reducing the Human Costs of War (Oxford: Oxfam Publications,
1997); Paul Collier, Lani Elliot, Ha
˚
vard Hegre, Anke Hoeffler, Marta Reynal-Querol, and Nicholas Sam-
banis, Breaking the Conflict Trap. Civil War and Development Policy (Washington, DC.: World Bank and
Oxford University Press, 2003a) p. 17; Holsti, The State, War, and the State of War, op. cit., p 37; Kaldor,
New and Old Wars. Organized Violence in a Global Era, op. cit., p. 100.
20. Mary Kaldor, “New Types of Conflict”, in Ruth Stanley (ed.), Gewalt und Konflikt in einer globali-
sierten Welt (Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag, 2001), pp. 24–50; Bernhard Zangl and Michael Zu
¨
rn,
Frieden und Krieg. Sicherheit in der nationalen und postnationalen Konstellation [Peace and War. Security
in the National and Post-National Constellation] (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2003), p. 183.
21. William Eckhardt, “Civilian Deaths in Wartime”, Bulletin of Peace Proposals, Vol. 20, No. 1 (1989),
p. 90.
22. Edward Newman, “The ‘New Wars’ Debate: A Historical Perspective is Needed”, Security Dia-
logue, Vol. 35, No. 2 (2004), p. 181.
23. Benjamin Valentino and Paul Huth, Dylan Balch-Lindsay, “Draining the Sea: Mass Killing and
Guerrilla Warfare”, International Organization, Vol. 58 (2004), pp. 375–407.
24. See Newman, op. cit.; With respect to African civil wars, Jean-Paul Azam and Anke Hoeffler,
“Violence Against Civilians in Civil Wars: Looting or Terror”, Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 39, No. 4
(2002), pp. 461–485, have analysed a two-step game-theoretic model that supports the hypothesis
that violence against civilians is motivated by military objectives, namely to terrorise civilian popu-
lations and to trigger migration.
Anything New or More of the Same? 29
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increased since the mid-1970s and that displacement dynamics have altered.
25
Frequently, refugee flows are not only side effects of armed conflicts, but central
to the objectives and strategies of the armed groups.
26
Internal displacement
and cross-border refugee movements themselves cause further social and political
quarrels which can escalate to violent conflicts or lead to renewed hostilities. Very
often the geographical and temporal linkage of extreme events leads to an
increasingly complex interconnectedness of man-made and natural disasters,
thus reducing the degree of human security and affecting the extent of humanitar-
ian aid required.
Fourth, war has predominantly moved to the zones of turmoil outside the
OECD world. To be sure, Europe is still a scene of intra-state war (e.g. Cyprus,
Northern Ireland, Moldavia, Georgia, and former Yugoslavia). But most violent
conflicts take place in sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and on the Indian sub-con-
tinent, as well as in South-East Asia – even though there are enormous variations
with respect to types of conflict behaviour.
27
At the same time, clusters of intra-
state violence have emerged in many regions.
28
The wars in the Balkan area, in
the Mano River region of West Africa or in the Great Lakes region are indicators
for the emergence of complex systems of conflict which evolve due to common
historical, cultural or political conditions or through the spread of violence. Theor-
etically, neighbouring states can themselves be victims of intra-state violence and
its consequences (bearing the main burden of refugees), originators of violence or
strategic partners or rivals of war parties (through logistic support or the pro-
vision of safe havens). Due to military intervention by other states or international
peace missions, systems of conflict such as the regional war over power and
natural resources in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) or the wars in
Western Africa (Liberia, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast) are highly internationalised.
It would thus be misleading to rate those conflicts and their correlates as purely
internal wars.
The growth of internal violence in the international system has gone statistically
hand in hand with the decrease in inter-state wars, especially with wars between
great powers. Whereas 22 wars between the great powers were fought in the 16
th
century, this figure went down to only six in the 20
th
.
29
This development notwith-
standing, the intensity of this type of conflict, measured by the number of victims,
has grown significantly, climaxing in the two World Wars. Thereafter, and over the
last 50 years, no conflict between great powers escalated into a war. In addition,
classic inter-state wars have become less frequent. In the last 15 years, no more
than four inter-state wars broke out.
30
Nevertheless, we also know that there
are still many military conflicts below the level of full-scale warfare. The data of
Militarised Interstate Disputes (MIDs) collected by the COW project confirm that
25. Collier et al., Breaking the Conflict Trap. Civil War and Development Policy, op. cit., p. 18 and pp. 35ff;
UNHCR, The State of the World’s Refugees: In Search of Solutions, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000),
pp. 276–280.
26. Ibid., p. 282.
27. See Mikael Eriksson and Peter Wallensteen, Margareta Sollenberg, “Armed Conflict, 1989– 2002”,
Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 40, No. 5 (2003), pp. 593–607.
28. Collier et al., Breaking the Conflict Trap. Civil War and Development Policy, op. cit., p. 40.
29. Levy et al., op. cit., p. 17.
30. These were the Second and Third Gulf War (1991, 2003), the Kargil war between India and Paki-
stan (1999), and the war between Ethiopia and Eritrea (1998–2000).
30 S. Chojnacki
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the majority of international conflicts since 1816 remained limited to the intensity
levels threat of force, display of force, and limited use of force.
31
Actually, the
absolute number of MIDs has clearly grown in the post-Second World War
period.
32
Normalised by the number of states in the international system,
however, the risks of the occurrence and duration of MIDs have remained rela-
tively constant since 1816.
33
Besides our extensive knowledge about weaker forms of inter-state violence
(MIDs), we also know that democracies, while not going to war with each
other, also fight against non-democratic regimes and, just as the latter, can be
involved simultaneously in several wars.
34
More recently a new trend has
emerged: the disposition of democracies to intervene militarily. To be sure,
outside intervention in continuing conflicts is not a new phenomenon as the
Korean (1950–53) and Vietnam (1965–75) wars reveal. But since the end of the
East-West conflict, a specific pattern of conflict behaviour and the legitimisation
and explanation of the use of violence by democratic states has emerged: wars
and intervention fought in the name of human rights and democratisation.
These are justified normatively by the proposition that the global spread of
democracies fosters international peace.
35
They are justified as measures to end
intra-state wars or to combat terrorist threats.
36
From a security perspective, the
premise is that authoritarian regimes, ‘rough states’, and failing statehood must
be regarded as perils for a liberal international order.
37
At the end of the day, the findings do not warrant the conclusion that violence
between states is obsolete. The persisting reality of international war, the high
amount of MIDs, the continuing nuclear programmes of some potentially perilous
states (North Korea, Iran) and the risk of escalation between some problematic
dyads (India v Pakistan), together with the interventionism of democracies motiv-
ated by issues of international order and global stability, raise some doubt about
31. A “militarized interstate dispute” is defined as a set of interactions between states involving
explicit threats to resort to military force, displays of military force or actual uses of military force
Charles S. Gochman and Zeev Maoz, “Militarized Interstate Disputes, 1816–1976. Procedures, Patterns,
and Insights”, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 28. No. 4 (1984), pp. 585–616; Daniel M. Jones, Stuart
S. Bremer, and David J. Singer, “Militarized Interstate Disputes, 1812–1992, Conflict Management and
Peace Science, Vol. 15, No. 2 (1996), pp. 163–213.
32. Jones et al., op. cit., p. 184.
33. Gochman and Maoz, cit. op.: p. 594. On the basis of the MID data, it can also be shown that several
dyads such as Greece-Turkey or India-Pakistan have over decades been involved in enduring or stra-
tegic rivalries (see, among others, Paul Diehl and Gray Goertz, War and Peace in International Rivalry
(Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2000); William Thompson, “Identifying rivals and
rivalries in world politics”, International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 45, No. 4 (2001), pp. 557 –587; John
A. Vasquez, “Distinguishing Rivals That Go to aposWar from Those That Do Not, A Quantitative
Comparative Case Study of the Two Paths to War”, International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 40, No. 4
(1996), pp. 531–558.
34. See, among others, Errol A. Henderson, Democracy and War. The End of an Illusion? (Boulder:
Lynne Rienner, 2002); Harald Mu
¨
ller, “The Antinomy of Democratic Peace”, Paper prepared for Pres-
entation at the ECPR Meeting in Marburg, Germany, September 2003 (forthcoming in International
Politics).
35. Mark Peceny, and Jeffrey Pickering, “Military Interventions, Peacekeeping, and the Promotion of
Democracy”, Paper prepared for the Annual Convention of the International Studies Association, New
Orleans, LA, March 24 –27, 2002.
36. Zangl and Zu
¨
rn, op. cit., p. 195.
37. Jeffrey Pickering, op. cit.; Edward Rhodes, “The Imperial Logic of Bush’s Liberal Agenda”,
Survival, Vol. 45, No. 1 (2003), pp. 131–154.
Anything New or More of the Same? 31
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this hypothesis. Thus, any conclusion about the fading away of inter-state violence
and the risks of war is overhasty and based on questionable evidence. What we
know with certainty is that intra-state wars have become prevalent in the post-
Second World War period.
In Search for a Contemporary Typology of War
Besides the well-known dimensions of change, the study of war is haunted by the
fact that the definition of war is still tied to the conception of state-sanctioned vio-
lence in a Westphalian state system. As a rule, the two major research projects on
the scientific study of war still proceed from a basic focus on sovereign statehood
as a specific type of social organisation and as the definitional criterion for the
compilation of war events.
38
The first is the Correlates of War project (COW)
which is not only the oldest but also the most renowned internationally for its
data collection and analyses of violent conflicts. The second is the Uppsala Conflict
Data Project (UCDP) which presents its data annually in the Journal of Peace
Research and thus constitutes a comprehensive data set on armed conflicts for
the post-Second World War period.
39
The COW project has developed operational criteria which are widely accepted
among scholars. Accordingly, war is generally connected with the precondition
that at least one of the parties is a member of the international state system. As
such, nationally constituted units have commonly been accepted which have a
population of more than 500,000 and which have either attained membership in
a global intergovernmental organisation (League of Nations or United Nations)
or have been recognised by at least two major powers.
40
The assumption that war occurs only where states act violently in the absence of
a centralised global authority produces two core types of armed conflicts in the
international system: first, wars between two or more members of the state
system and, second, intra-state wars in which regular forces combat internal
non-state challengers.
41
COW, as other research projects, deduces a third type of
war from the processes of colonisation and de-colonisation: the historical specific
type of conflict between differently organised and recognised parties. This means
conflict between a member of the international system and a unit which is not
recognised as a sovereign state. These colonial or imperial wars are defined as
‘extra-systemic wars’. These three core classes of war have for long dominated
the research agenda on the scientific study of war.
However, this conceptualisation excludes by definition conflicts whose parties
are not recognised as legitimate members of the international system, so that such
conflicts are either omitted from the data collection or classified as ordinary intra-
state wars. In order to overcome this shortcoming, members of the COW project
began to modify this classification in the late 1990s and to reorganise their
38. Small and Singer, op. cit.; Gleditsch et al., cit. op.; see, critically, Wolf-Dieter Eberwein, and Sven
Chojnacki 2001: Scientific Necessity and Political Utility. A Comparison of Data on Violent Conflicts,
Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin P 01–304.
39. Gleditsch et al., op. cit.
40. Small and Singer, op. cit. The UCDP for its part has not generally questioned this basic principle
and applied it itself in a modified form (Gleditsch et al., cit. op.; Harvard Strand, Lars Wilhelmsen, and
Nils Petter, Armed Conflict Dataset Codebook, Version 1.1, 2002.
41. Small and Singer, op. cit., pp. 203–222.
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database, thus giving rise to the construction of a ‘master typology’ of armed con-
flicts.
42
This typological modification and expansion by the COW project has led
to six types of war
43
While inter-state wars were not affected by this modification
and extra-systemic conflicts were simply reformulated to constitute extra-state
wars and recorded in two sub-categories,
44
wars between state and non-state
actors were differentiated in more detail. Intra-state wars are divided into two
sub-types, namely those where fighting occurs for central control and those
where fighting is about local issues on the one hand. On the other, ‘intercommunal
wars’ between non-state actors inside one state cannot be subsumed under the
conventional state-centric perspective. By building the revised typology on differ-
ently organised constellations of actors, the COW project meets the challenge to
keep its classification open enough to allow for the integration of new phenom-
ena.
45
Operationally, however, COW adheres to the established and widely
accepted rule that war is an extreme type of the use of military force which oper-
ationally means that it must involve at least 1,000 battle deaths.
46
Nevertheless, at least three aspects of the modified COW typology remain pro-
blematic. First, the two sub-classes of intra-state wars follow a different logic: they
do not proceed from the type of actors but from the type of issue under contention
(central control v local concerns).
47
In addition, considerable problems of distinc-
tion between ‘intra-state wars for local issues’ and ‘inter-communal wars’ arise.
Unresolved as well is the basic problem with respect to the operational definition
of war: if one measures only battle deaths then a bias favouring classical, state-
sanctioned forms of violence is likely to arise.
Integrating Sub-state Wars
Even though the COW typology is not unproblematic it offers a good point of
departure for further refinements. Without having to re-invent the wheel, a theor-
etically useful simplification is suggested in order to avoid the risk of a prolifer-
ation of war typologies. The presented typology therefore proceeds from the
type of political organisation, i.e. from the political status of the protagonists,
and from territorial expansion. Four core types of war result from this.
42. Meredith Reid Sarkees and J. David Singer, “Armed Conflict & Future: A Master Typology?”,
Paper prepared for presentation at the conference “Identifying Wars: Systemic Conflict Research and
its Utility in Conflict Resolution and Prevention”, 8–9 June 2001, Uppsala, Sweden.
43. Ibid., p. 15; Sarkees et al., op. cit., p. 60.
44. The COW sub-categories of extra-state wars are a) “state vs. independent non-state actor” and b)
“state vs. dependent non-state actor” (Sarkees and Singer, op. cit., p. 26).
45. Ibid., p. 24.
46. See Ibid.; Vasquez, The War Puzzle, op. cit.
47. This problem also exists with a view to UCDP which ties armed conflicts by definition to the dis-
tinction between those over territory and those over authority. On the one hand, the logic and benefit of
this inclusion in a definition of armed conflict and war is questionable. On the other hand, the restric-
tion to two “contested incompatibilities” is unsatisfactory and, moreover, unjustifiable theoretically. In
its present form, the issue-area-related coding rule leads to the awkward situation that a number of
wars reported by COW are missing in the Uppsala data collection (among others Nigeria 1980/81
and Jordan 1970). Moreover, it unnecessarily restricts the openness of this definition for further
changes in the types of issues.
Anything New or More of the Same? 33
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1. Inter-state wars (between at least two sovereign states),
2. Extra-state wars (between a state and one or more non-state groups outside its
territorial boundaries),
3. Intra-state wars (between a government and one or more non-state parties
within the boundaries of an internationally recognised state), and
4. Sub-state wars (between mostly non-state actors within or across borders).
The fourth type of war reflects the debate about the changing patterns of
conflict in the post-Second World War period and follows the underlying rule
that a classification of war is best arranged according to the political status of
the protagonists.
48
At the same time it avoids introducing an additional category
of war which is completely ‘new’. This is achieved by adding only a missing part
to the possible combinations of state and non-state actors. In consequence, wars
between private armed groups can be made accessible for both empirical and
systematic analyses (concerning their occurrence, duration, and correlates) and
for comparative purposes (in relation, for example, to intra-state and inter-state
wars).
49
The degree of differentiation is sufficient in order to obtain mutually
exclusive categories which allow the comparative study of wars. At the same
time, it is simple enough to retain a level of generalisation and usefulness
required for further theory-building. Last but not least, the classification is as
precise and comprehensive by capturing all wars on the global level – without
inflating the hypothesis of ‘new’ wars up to the claim that we have now entered
a new era.
Some fundamental issues of operationalisation follow, such as civilian deaths,
the political units, and the temporal domain, the first being undeniably the tough-
est. If civilians are often the strategic targets of sustained combat, then a focus on
battle deaths (COW) or battle-related deaths (UCDP) – involving official military
contingents only – is not very effective and satisfactory in order to measure high
intensity conflicts.
50
Thus, this factor must be included in the definition of war –
even more so because the civilian population is more than a residual category for
our understanding of the dynamics of the escalation of intra-state and sub-state
wars.
51
As a solution we propose to extend the criteria of 1,000 deaths to patterns
of deliberate civilian victimisation and by including actors who represent organ-
ised units of combatants but which are not sufficiently separable from the civilian
population. Such an amendment would do justice to the character of the so-called
‘new’ wars while excluding civilians who lost their life due to the consequences of
war (such as refugee crises or natural disasters).
The second issue that must be considered applies to the operationalisation of
the political units affected by the collapse of state authority. Here, important cri-
teria are the lack of military control, the substantial failure of political institutions,
48. See, similarly, Sarkees and Singer, op. cit.
49. This definition of sub-state wars also allows for the registration of some critical cases which by
now were allocated to other categories or completely fell outside registration altogether. This applies
not only to events after the end of the Cold War, but to developments after World War II in general
(e.g. Lebanon, Afghanistan).
50. See Nicholas Sambanis, “A Note on the Death Threshold in Coding Civil War Events”, Unpub-
lished Paper (2001).
51. See Nicholas Sambanis, “What is Civil War? Conceptual and empirical complexities of an
operational definition”, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 48, No. 6 (2004), pp. 814–858 for an extended
discussion.
34 S. Chojnacki
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and the absence of horizontal and vertical legitimacy.
52
In this regard, the State
Failure Problem Set
53
offers a useful conceptual starting-point in that it contains
information about the scope of partial or complete collapse of authority – and
thus offers some clues to critical cases of state failure.
Thirdly, an important, but often underestimated, research question remains:
how should changes in the types of war be mapped over time? From a process
perspective, we frequently face the situation that a war starts as an intra-state
war (among others, Somalia, Tajikistan, or Afghanistan). Only over time is such
a conflict transformed into a sub-state war. Similarly, internal or sub-state conflicts
may be transformed to internationalised or regional disputes (a prototype is the
war in the DRC). Therefore, empirical knowledge about the transition from one
type to another is both a precondition for testing theoretical arguments about
the dynamics of warfare and as a consequence for the development of appropriate
preventive strategies. The easiest solution to grasp the dynamics of armed con-
flicts would be to scrutinise and record statistical changes in the types of war
on an annual basis. In addition, such a scientific approach creates the opportunity
for making the ‘linking-up’ between different classes of conflict and their
dynamics a stand alone research topic. In consequence, this would lead to two
basic types of warfare: wars which change only very little or even not at all
over time in qualitative terms, and wars which are marked by a change from
one type of war to another over the course of a conflict.
Military Intervention
Beyond the integration of sub-state conflicts into a typology of war and the appar-
ent operational challenges, a final problem is how to deal with military interven-
tion. Even though outside intervention in actual wars represents a frequent type of
behaviour which alters the course of conflicts, it is disputed whether it is useful to
integrate military intervention into a typology of war.
54
While the COW project
statistically records intervention only by adding the criterion of external partici-
pation, UDCP develops a stand alone category for internationalised internal
wars. This particular type of war is seen as similar to internal conflict, but
52. See Barry Buzan, People, States and Fear. An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Cold
War Era (2
nd
edn.) (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1991); Holsti, The State, War, and the State of War, op. cit.;
David Carment, “Assessing state failure: implications for theory and policy”, Third World Quarterly,
Vol. 24, No. 3 (2003), pp. 407–427.
53. The revised State Failure Problem Set dataset has been compiled at the Center for International
Development and Conflict Management (CIDCM), University of Maryland, under the direction of
Monty G. Marshall. It encompasses four distinct types of state failure events (Revolutionary Wars,
Ethnic Wars, Adverse Regime Changes, and Genocides or Politicides) and offers clues on annual mag-
nitude scales concerning patterns of organized violence in failed or collapsed states (i.e. failure of state
authority, number of rebel combatants or activists, annual number of fatalities related to fighting,
portion of country affected by fighting). For the State Failure Problem Set dataset and spreadsheets
see ,http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/inscr/stfail/..
54. Pickering, op. cit., p. 294. Few authors empirically and systematically address the problem of
military intervention, exceptions being Herbert K. Tillema, “Escalation and International War in the
Nuclear Age, Foreign Overt Military Interventions, 1945–1988”, Paper presented at the 1991 Annual
Meeting of the International Studies Association, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, March 19–
23, 1991; Pickering, op. cit., Peceny and Pickering, op. cit.; Patrick M. Regan, Civil Wars and Foreign
Powers. Outside Intervention in Intrastate Conflict (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000).
Anything New or More of the Same? 35
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where the government, the opposition or both sides receive support from other
governments.
55
For theoretical reasons, however, and with a view to producing a sound classi-
fication, the strict distinction introduced by UCDP between internal and interna-
tionalised conflicts is problematic. When outside interventions occur, wars which
obviously share similar internal causes and conditions will fall into different cat-
egories. In addition, it is unclear why other war types are not also being con-
sidered by UCDP. Obviously, military intervention can take place in a variety of
war settings. This is clearly the case when considering the Korean War (an
inter-state war) or the conflict in Liberia in the 1990s (a sub-state war). Therefore,
and in contrast to UCDP, unilateral or multilateral intervention should not be
treated as a type of war in its own right but rather as a particular form of external
conflict behaviour which can then be related to the respective types of war. By
incorporating military intervention into the scientific study of war in this
manner, it would allow for an assessment of qualitative transformations of vio-
lence over time, thus rendering a theoretically and practically important point
of departure for clarifying the relation between external intervention and war
dynamics.
Operational Criteria
In the following the operational criteria of the ‘New List of Wars’ will be
presented which in its current form encompasses all wars and military interven-
tion between 1946 and 2003.
56
The point of departure was a comparison of data on
violent conflicts, conducted by Eberwein and Chojnacki.
57
The key finding was
that the data-gathering projects analysed showed different ‘worlds’ or ‘visions’
of violence irrespective of whether they were based on either qualitative or quan-
titative operational criteria: “The world is as violent as the dataset one uses. But
we do not know which of the ‘war worlds’ the different datasets inform us
about is the correct one”.
58
In terms of research strategy, the identifiable differ-
ences led to a new categorisation of wars which considers occurrence, duration
and termination of violence by non-state actors, as well as military intervention
in actual conflicts.
In conceptual terms, war is defined as an extreme type of military violence
between at least two politically organised groups.
59
From an actor-centred per-
spective, this leads to a distinction between four types of war: inter-state wars,
extra-state wars, intra-state wars and sub-state wars. In accordance with the
basic COW definition, inter-state war involves conflict between one or more
55. Gleditsch et al., op. cit.
56. The dataset and the coding manual will be made available: <http://www.fork-berlin.org/
data.html> or <http://www.polwiss.fu-berlin/frieden/data.html>.
57. Eberwein and Chojnacki, op. cit.
58. Ibid., p. 27. The following projects were included in the data analysis: Correlates of War Project,
Uppsala Conflict Data Project, Arbeitsgemeinschaft Kriegsursachenforschung (AKUF) at the University of
Hamburg (Germany), the Heidelberg Institute for International Conflict Research (HIIK) and the State
Failure Problem Set.
59. This conceptual definition of war refers to Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society, A Study of Order in
World Politics (London: Macmillan, 1977), p. 184; Jack S. Levy, War in the Modern Great Power System,
1495–1975, op. cit., pp. 51–53, Levy et al., op. cit., p. 16; Vasquez, The War Puzzle, op. cit., pp. 21–29).
36 S. Chojnacki
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internationally recognised states.
60
Extra-state war occurs between one member of
the state system and one or more non-state groups outside its own territorial
boundaries. Intra-state war involves armed hostilities between the government
of a recognised state and armed opposition groups within that state’s boundaries.
Sub-state war, in contrast, occurs between non-state or non recognised quasi-state
groups, whether within or across formal state boundaries. In such cases, a func-
tioning monopoly of violence in the affected state(s) either does not exist, is
restricted to the capital or narrowly confined territories, or is not enforced in
the conflict region. Besides the types of war, the dataset also includes outside
intervention in current conflicts. Military intervention is defined as active
violent interference (involving military personnel) in an actual war from the
outside by at least one member of the state system.
61
In order to define operationally the intensity of violence, the idea of a quanti-
tative threshold is retained. If war is the most severe level of organised violence,
then one cannot evade fixing intensity thresholds and measuring the number
of deaths.
62
The specified threshold has both significant implications for the
analysis of onset, duration and termination of wars
63
as well as for the arrange-
ment of conflict stages. The latter issue, however, raises the basic problem of
how to integrate weaker forms of armed conflict which are of importance for
our general understanding of conflict dynamics but beyond the scope of this
analysis.
64
Operationally, the following quantitative criteria are applied to determine wars:
With regard to inter-state wars, the COW threshold of 1,000 “battle deaths” for the
whole conflict among military personnel only is followed.
65
However, a differen-
tiation is introduced in order to grasp the specific character of extra-state, intra-
state, and sub-state wars: These conflicts resulted in at least 1,000 military or civi-
lian – attacked by state or rebel forces – deaths over their entire duration. In order
to rule out massacres, sporadic violence and terrorist attacks the conflict
accounted for at least 100 deaths per year on both sides. The beginning year is
the first year in which at least 100 people were killed. A war is rated as having
ended only if the intensity of conflict has remained below the threshold of 100
deaths for at least two years, if actors give up violence or if an effective peace
agreement is concluded. If a main party to the conflict drops out, but the fighting
continues, a new war start is coded (for instance, Somalia in 1991 when Siad
60. Small and Singer, op. cit., pp. 39–43; Sarkees et al., op. cit., p. 58; see also Gleditsch et al., op. cit.,
p. 619.
61. See Pickering, op. cit., p. 301.
62. See Small and Singer, op. cit.; Paul Collier and Hoeffler, “Data Issues in the Study of Conflict”,
Paper prepared for the Conference on ‘Data Collection on Armed Conflict’”, Uppsala, 8–9 June 2001.
63. Sambanis, op. cit.,p.2.
64. UCDP offers an approach for this in that it differentiates between three phases of intensity: minor
armed conflicts (“at least 25 battle related deaths per year and fewer than 1,000 deaths during the course
of conflict”), intermediate armed conflicts (“at least 25 deaths per year and an accumulated total of at least
1,000 deaths, but fewer than 1,000 per year”), and wars (“at least 1,000 battle-related deaths per year”).
This does not, however, solve all problems but even gives rise to new ones because the intermediate
category is essentially a “fake”. Thus, conflicts with identical death tolls in a given year were recorded
as either minor armed conflicts or as intermediate armed conflict, dependent of whether or not the threshold
of 1,000 deaths was surpassed for the whole period of conflict. And because, in principle, only two
thresholds were set, precise determinations with a view to changes in intensity are possible only to
a limited extent (see Collier and Hoeffler, op. cit., p. 6).
65. Small and Singer, op. cit., p. 55.
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Barre’s regime collapsed and inter-communal violence among former allies took
over). If fighting within a state occurs in distinct regions and between different
rebel groups, multiple wars are coded. From an annual perspective, a conflict
can over time move from one type to another given substantial changes in the
structural conditions of statehood and in the constellation of actors (for
example, the war in Tajikistan is coded as intra-state between 1992–94 and as
sub-state in 1995).
The criteria selected are obviously related to those stated by Doyle and Samba-
nis, Fearon and Laitin and Fearon.
66
They differ in one respect from the COW
project which has applied the stricter criterion of at least 1,000 battle deaths per
year
67
to extra-state, intra-state and inter-communal wars. In order to meet
the requirements of the character of most violent conflicts, a modification of the
COW threshold was as necessary as the consideration of civil fatalities. We
know from qualitative studies that intra-state and sub-state wars are normally
not characterised by huge decisive battles but much more frequently by small
skirmishes, focused attacks against civilian targets and by interruptions for
longer, seasonal periods.
68
Although specifications of starting and ending dates,
phases of war and of civilian and military deaths are much more difficult this
way, the definition adopted is as specific as possible, as operationally reasonable
and intersubjectively reproducible as necessary.
69
The independent parallel
coding procedure, conducted by members of the Forschungsgruppe Krieg Berlin
(Berlin Research Group on the Scientific Study of War), provides the necessary
inter-coder reliability of the data-set. Through clearly defined criteria of the oper-
ationalisation and coding procedure, replication and intersubjective verification of
the data is made possible.
70
Besides the types of war, the dataset also includes outside intervention in actual
conflicts. Military intervention is defined as active violent interference (involving
military personnel) in an actual war from outside by at least one member of the
state system.
71
Typically, they are convention breaking and authority targeted
affecting the balance of power between warring parties.
72
Not included are non-
combatant evacuation operations (humanitarian interventions), UN-mandated
peacekeeping or peace-enforcement efforts, military training and supplies as
66. Michael Doyle and Nicholas Sambanis, “International Peacebuilding: A Theoretical and Quanti-
tative Analysis”, American Political Science Review, Vol. 94, No. 4 (2000), pp. 779–801; Fearon and Laitin,
op. cit.; Fearon, op. cit.
67. Small and Singer, op. cit., p. 55.
68. Jeffrey Herbst, “Economic Incentives, Natural Resources and Conflict in Africa”, Journal of
African Economies, Vol. 9, No. 3 (2000), pp. 270–294; Newman, op. cit.
69. For recording annual figures of victims, the following data sets were used: the State Failure
Problem Set, the Uppsala Conflict Database, the Armed Conflict Database from the International Institutes
for Strategic Studies (IISS), the Armed Conflict Report from the Project Ploughshares, Keesing’s Record of
World Events and the Archiv der Gegenwart.
70. In a first step, the author has generated a candidate database and isolated critical cases on the
basis of a comparative analysis of available data sets. Next, these cases were scrutinised and cate-
gorised by the Berlin Research Group on the Scientific Study of War (FORK), In addition, qualitative ana-
lyses conducted by the research project “New Forms of Violence in the International System” were used
to record intra-state and non-state wars and to identify differentiating characteristics.
71. See Pickering, op. cit., p. 301.
72. James N. Rosenau, “Intervention as Scientific Concept”, Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 22
(1968), p. 167; Regan, op. cit.,p.9.
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well as actions (such as counterinsurgencies) that are exclusively directed or
assisted by intelligence services.
Empirical Insights: The Types of War Since 1946
The ensuing empirical analysis begins by comparing the occurrence of the respect-
ive forms of war and their average duration. Table 1 summarises the results. From
the sum total of 166 wars recorded by the new dataset between 1946 and 2003,
nearly two thirds are intra-state conflicts. Inter-state wars still rank second with
regard to the risk of the occurrence of war, however, their average duration is
only two years. Extra-state wars occur somewhat less frequently than inter-state
wars but last for a much longer period. This is mainly attributable to the specific
character of conflict structures in the context of decolonisation wars. Sub-state
wars are (as yet) relatively rare but their duration comes closer and closer to
that of intra-state wars.
The empirical results by no means indicate a dominance of ‘new’ sub-state wars
in the post-Second World War period. However, we should not underrate sub-
state wars as they are almost as frequent as inter-state and extra-state wars in
quantitative terms and are also marked by structures and dynamics of conflict
which pose particular theoretical challenges. Compared to ‘ordinary’ intra-state
wars (such as wars of secession, military coups, or anti-regime wars), the state
has lost its monopoly of the legitimate use of force in sub-state and inter-commu-
nal wars or is unwilling to enforce it effectively against combating local groups
(e.g. in Nigeria or parts of Pakistan).
73
In other sub-state wars, the monopoly of
violence has at least temporarily collapsed (Somalia, Lebanon) or is geographi-
cally restricted to the capital or confined regions (Chad, Afghanistan). In
exchange, non-state actors (warlords, local or ethnic militia) are able to establish
alternative, territorially restricted forms of centralised violence.
74
In these
instances, actor constellations can no longer be reduced to the state on the one
hand and more or less organised rebel groups which direct their political and
Table 1. Total Number of War Onsets, Mean Duration of Wars, and
Military Intervention, 1946–2003.
War Type War Onsets Mean Duration of
Wars (years)
Inter-state war 24 2,1
Extra-state war 17 8,0
Intra-state war 109 7,6
Sub-state war 16 6,5
Total 166 6,7
73. However, sub-state wars do not break out in all instances where the monopoly of violence is
fragile and rebel groups exert regional power. Thus, for example, the situation in Colombia displays
a number of factors in line with the concept of ‘new’ wars (paramilitary groups, growing importance
of economic motives, restriction of the range of the state’s monopoly of violence), but the conflict situ-
ation continues to be characterised by conflicts between the government and clearly structured rebel
organisations.
74. William Reno, Warlord Politics and African States (Boulder, Lynne Rienner: 1998); Duffield, op. cit.
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military strategy in accordance with the principle of statehood on the other.
Rather, multiple zones of military and political control emerge, giving rise to par-
tially overlapping loyalties and identities. The warlord systems in Western Africa
(Sierra Leone, Liberia) or Central Asia (Afghanistan) which came into existence in
the 1990s are paradigmatic for these rearrangements. Moreover, issues of conten-
tion shifted over time from political control of the capital (which is typical of mili-
tary coups or anti-regime wars) to economic control over strategic resources and
trade connections. Additionally, fixed military bases and clear lines of battle
between military forces are rare in sub-state conflicts.
75
While military victories
become less frequent and alliances among rebel groups ever more short-lived,
the risk that civilian targets will be affected by combat actions is increasing.
76
From a process perspective, warlords such as Charles Taylor in Liberia are oper-
ating not only at the local level but also affect conflict dynamics across state
boundaries (Sierra Leone, Guinea). Cross-border interaction thus leads to ‘trans-
boundary formations’ beyond state control.
77
In such cases, territorial sovereignty
constitutes nothing more than a theoretical fiction which has long eclipsed our
view on this type of war. At the end of the day, sub-state wars point to the fact
that wars are not static over time. In some countries, including Afghanistan and
Tajikistan, wars have started as ‘old-fashioned’ anti-regime conflicts and have
afterwards mutated into sub-state wars.
Even though sub-state wars are not a dominant type of war on the global level,
their relative importance has grown over the last three decades. Figure 1 displays
the development of wars fought in the international system – coded by type for
each single year. Accordingly, since the end of the Cold War, the proportion of
sub-state wars has increased from not even five percent (1971–80) up to
roughly a quarter, measured by the total number of wars per annum. Thus, this
war type has a somewhat superseded extra-state war which gradually decreased
in importance after the era of de-colonisation in the 1970s. Nevertheless, the con-
flict between Israel and Palestine and armed resistance within at least temporarily
dependent territories at the beginning of the 21
st
century (e.g. Kosovo, Iraq) gives
rise to the assumption that extra-state wars will not vanish completely. Rather the
chameleon of war is changing its appearance once again, in view of the metamor-
phoses of international norms and governance procedures. Similarly, inter-state
wars also remain a part of the reality of international politics, even though
more often than not at a low level. The ‘small upturn’ at the end of last century
is caused by the Kargil war between India and Pakistan (1999) and the war
between Ethiopia and Eritrea (1998–2000).
Another result, however, is more than conspicuous. Since the 1960s, wars inside
states clearly are in the majority, reaching a peak proportion between 1980 and the
mid-1990s. Since the end of the Cold War, the annual frequency of intra-state wars
has decreased slightly, but they nevertheless remain the dominant war phenom-
enon on the global scale. In view of the total sum of all types of war, the level of vio-
lence in the international system of today roughly matches that of the 1970s. And if
related to the total sum of all existing states, i.e. normalised by the number of all
75. Holsti, The State, War, and the State of War, op. cit., p. 36.
76. Kaldor, New and Old Wars. Organized Violence in a Global Era, op. cit. The extent to which the civi-
lian population can be affected is exemplified by the war in Sierra Leone where competing militia
sought revenge for each military victory or defeat by slaughtering civilians.
77. Duffield, op. cit.
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states in the international system, the risk that states participate in armed conflicts
has slightly decreased in the post-Cold War international order.
78
Besides changes in the types of war at the global level, external military interven-
tion in actual conflicts has changed in both quantitative and qualitative terms.
Figure 2 shows the probability that states take part in outside intervention in a
specific year (measured by the total number of existing states). The highest value
for the risk of a state’s participation in an actual war occurred shortly after the
end of the Second World War. This was largely due to the mobilisation of external
support in the Korean War (1950 –53). The upturn during the 1960s and early 1970s
is most of all attributable to military actions of former colonial powers (France,
Belgium) and to the Vietnam War, as well as to the repeated military forays in
neighbouring Laos and Cambodia. Subsequently, the level has decreased slightly,
but throughout the period of bloc confrontation, intervention remained a frequent
type of conflict behaviour. The end of the Cold War has brought about a temporal
decrease of the risk of intervention in the face of the growing number of states in the
international system, followed by a renewed upturn at the end of the 1990s. This is
largely due to the multilateral interventions in the Kosovo Crisis (1999) and the
Afghanistan War (2001) which led to increased participations in military oper-
ations. These developments are also well covered by the fourth polynomial as a
long-term trend line. Although the calculated trend does not encompass the
Korean War, it plausibly displays the slight downward trend which lasted until
the mid-1990s, as well as the increased risk of multilateral interventions thereafter.
As far as specific types of war are concerned, inter-state and extra-state wars are
likely candidates for external interventions. Since the Second World War, only
three external interferences in inter-state wars have occurred, and there is just
one case of an additional intervention in an extra-state war (Western Sahara).
Out of a total of 109 intra-state wars, by contrast, no less than one quarter has
been accompanied by military intervention (N ¼ 27). As for sub-state wars, the
Figure 1. Number of Wars by Type, All Years, 1946–2003.
78. Gleditsch et al., op. cit., p. 623.
Anything New or More of the Same? 41
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risk is even twice as high, surpassing 50 per cent (8 interventions, measured
against 16 wars). Taking this into account, the intervention in Liberia, Bosnia
and the DRC war thus indicated not only political and economic interests of exter-
nal actors but also a transnationalisation and an internationalisation of conflict
dynamics as well as the emergence of complex conflict systems. At the same
time, the interventions confirm the growing tendency since the end of the Cold
War to intervene militarily or to act preventively in the presence of gross
human rights violations and for combating regional or global security threats
(failing states, ‘war against terrorism’). Altered structures of opportunity for col-
lective action (disappearance of systemic bipolarity, normative change) brought
about a push for intervention justified by humanitarian concerns. Thereby, demo-
cratic intervention highlights the phenomenon that democracies intervene in
actual conflicts through alliances or coalitions. This form of multilateral interven-
tionism reached its apex at the turn of the century (Kosovo 1999, Afghanistan
2001). Not only were great powers (US, Britain, France) involved, but also the
younger democracies of Eastern Europe, such as Poland, the Czech Republic or
Hungary, participated as did democratic states, which had previously established
an anti-war norm as a core element of their foreign policy (Germany, Japan).
However, only a small number of democracies regularly intervene militarily.
Not surprisingly, the United States reaches the highest value, followed by
France and Britain
79
– indicating that military interventionalism is essentially a
great power concept. Conceptually, the enforcement of international norms
(human rights, democracy) is more and more related to the adoption of govern-
ance functions such as political and administrative control up to the establishment
of protectorates controlled by foreign powers or international organisations.
This trend towards military intervention is accompanied by strategic inno-
vation which favours new forms of intervention and alters the face of war. First,
the risks of offensive ground operations are sometimes conferred upon local
Figure 2. Probability of Military Interventions in Actual Wars, All Types, 1946–2003
(Annual Figures and Long-Term Trend Line).
79. Sven Chojnacki, Democratic Wars and Military Interventions, 1946–2002. The Monadic Level
Reconsidered, in Lothar Brock, Anna Geis and Harald Mu
¨
ller (eds.), Democratic Wars. Looking at the
Dark Side of the Democratic Peace (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).
42 S. Chojnacki
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ground troops such as those of the Northern Afghan warlords, thus temporally
granting them the status of cooperation partners. Second, partial privatisations
of war by employing Private Security Agencies (PSAs) occur.
80
In order to
improve their own military positions, both governments (top-down-approach)
and non-state actors (bottom-up-approach) make use of today’s mercenaries
which are driven by corporate profit, rather than individual gain.
81
From the
top-down-perspective, PSAs are used when states or international organisations
seek to minimise the risks of their own military casualties or when a military inter-
vention cannot be pushed through against political obstacles and the lack of stra-
tegic interests. Since the end of the Cold War, an increasing multiplicity of private
security and military companies are directly or consultatively active in zones of
military conflict. In operative terms, the spectrum of these groups’ activities
ranges from legal ones fully compatible with international law (logistic support
of peace missions, provision of security in humanitarian emergencies) to an unre-
gulated sector (military training, assignment of military experts) to clearly illegal
activities (participation in armed conflicts on the side of the war parties or in order
to secure the interests of external states or multinational corporations). In the
scope of strategic coalitions, PSAs are frequently paid with licenses for hauling
precious resources in intra-state wars and sub-state wars in exchange for their ser-
vices, thus not only taking part in the political economy of violence but at the same
time contributing to its perpetuation. Consequently, the involvement of such com-
mercial security providers influences military power relations, and, thus conflict
dynamics. Third, the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) gives rise to a techno-
logical transformation of warfare and creates new opportunities for military inter-
vention (long-distance high-technology air war, precision-guided munitions, and
special operation forces). Together these innovations improve military efficiency
and lower the risk for the troops deployed by intervening alliances, reducing
costs in both political and moral terms. However, in combination with the opti-
mism of democratic states concerning the chances of establishing a global
liberal order, these developments raise the risk of ‘democratic’ wars and interven-
tion by individual great powers or alliance systems. As a consequence of this, new
normative and structural opportunities for collective action emerge beyond
‘classical’ interstate warfare and below massive and direct military operations.
Conclusions
Over the last five decades the forms of war have changed in both quantitative and
qualitative terms. Based on the empirical evidence of the trends at the global level,
80. The reasons for the increasing significance of PSAs (or Private Military Firms, PMFs) which take
on military or consultative functions in wars are, first, the incapacity of numerous states to perform
security functions effectively; second, technological changes in warfare which increase demand for
highly qualified expertise in terms of counselling, executive or logistic functions; and third, the emer-
gence of a private global market for highly qualified military officials and weaponry systems after the
end of the Cold War (David Shearer, “Private Armies and Military Intervention”, Adelphi Paper 316,
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); Peter W. Singer, Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized
Military Industry. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003); James Larry Taulbee, “Governing the Use of
Force: Modern Conflict and the Privatization of Violence”. Paper Prepared for the Annual Meeting of
the International Studies Association 24–27 March 2002, New Orleans.
81. Singer, Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry, op. cit.
Anything New or More of the Same? 43
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however, it would be premature to either ignore ‘old’ intra-state wars (anti-regime
or secession wars) or even to regard inter-state wars as disappearing. Even though
sub-state wars have clearly gained in importance over the past two decades, they
have not come to be the dominant form of violence, as has been suggested by
various studies.
82
Thus, we must not overrate the relevance of ‘new’ conflicts.
From the perspective of the scientific study of war, we should not neglect them
either. Critics such as Kalyvas
83
or Henderson and Singer
84
should not prema-
turely dismiss the obvious qualitative and quantitative changes in war and the
existence of the non-state war category. The proposed integration of a sub-state
war category, in contrast, draws our attention to similarities and dissimilarities
across different classes of war and suggests an improved perspective for the
analysis of their correlates and etiologies. Based upon the political status of
violent actors the different classes are defined as selectively and distinct as poss-
ible, thereby creating an opportunity for the inclusion of ‘new’ conflicts.
85
As far as
the policy implications are concerned, the modifications in the typology of war are
crucial for contributing to the objective of conflict prevention. Given the complex
amalgam of political, economic, identity and security dynamics, sub-state wars
require the invention and selection of appropriate preventive strategies to
resolve them.
Besides the global perspective, regional trends will have to be analysed in the
future in order to grasp the variations in the transformation of war. Methodologi-
cally, this also necessitates relying much more on qualitative research strategies in
the face of the changes in the structural dimensions and process dynamics of
organised violence. We need both analyses at the micro-level which help us to
understand the inherent behavioural logic and economic agenda in areas where
state authority has collapsed. We also need comparative studies of the conditions
of escalation and de-escalation, as well as of the inter-linkage between war,
politics, and economics. Quantitative and qualitative approaches thus stand in a
complementary relation
86
and should not per se be regarded as competing or
mutually exclusive scientific orientations.
Today, sub-state wars indicate that the relationship between war and the state is
much more complex than we have assumed. Wars not only ‘produce’ states nor
are states the only ones waging wars.
87
They occur also in the absence of state
control and can contribute to the collapse of the states’ monopoly of the legitimate
use of force. As the partial or even complete collapse of states is not a special and
rare phenomenon but a structural problem of the contemporary international
system,
88
we should not expect sub-state wars to lose their relevance in the
future. Extra-state wars and the regionally and temporally variable patterns of
intra-state violence can be regarded as impressive proof that neither the
constitutive units of the international system nor war itself have developed
82. Kaldor, New and Old Wars. Organized Violence in a Global Era, op. cit.;Mu
¨
nkler 2003 op. cit.
83. Kalyvas, op. cit.
84. Henderson and Singer, op. cit.
85. Sarkees and Singer, op. cit., p. 25.
86. See, for example, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, “Domestic Politics and International Relations”,
International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 46, No. 1 (2002), pp. 1–9.
87. Tilly, op. cit.
88. Duffield, op. cit.; Fearon and Laitin, op. cit.; Robert H. Jackson, Quasi-States, Sovereignty, Inter-
national Relations and the Third World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Reno, op. cit.
44 S. Chojnacki
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uniformly.
89
In general terms one could argue that the state system has only
temporarily corresponded with the Westphalian ideal. Structural conditions,
such as the institution of sovereignty and most prominently the principle of
non-intervention, have repeatedly been violated and can be better understood
as “organized hypocrisy”.
90
And just as the institution of sovereignty itself has
been transformed, strategies of rules, collective identities, and thus patterns of
social organisation have become ever more differentiated. The deviations from
the Westphalian ideal range from colonial proto-states and post-colonial quasi-
states
91
to de facto states which lack international recognition, such as the
Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus or the Republic of Somaliland
92
, to recent
areas of collapsing statehood.
93
Nevertheless, it now cannot be said that material statehood or its normative
content (i.e. internal and external sovereignty) are becoming obsolete. For the
majority of violent conflicts and actors, sovereign statehood still constitutes the
central frame of reference. At the same time, the state apparatus remains an
important element of power and control even if the monopoly of force is at
stake or has never been fully developed. Moreover, (fictitious) statehood and
sovereignty affect the behavioural options of warlords and rebel groups in that
they strengthen their inward actions and may give them an advantage over
their political rivals (in terms of recognition or access to international aid). Sover-
eignty as a bundle of constitutive and regulative norms in general is subject to
change but not doomed to irrelevance. The state’s capacity of survival should
not be underrated.
94
Considering the requirements of conflict management, the continuous
structural challenge of both sub-state and intra-state wars creates an apparently
paradoxical situation: Even though war has been normatively restricted in the
20
th
century, states and international organisations cannot exclude the possibility
of resorting to violence as a means of prevention in order to maintain relative stab-
ility or to protect civilians from the worst ravages of war and widespread human
rights abuses. This applies especially to democratic states and alliances which
justify and legitimise the use of violence with the aim of promoting democratisa-
tion and human rights, thus not only amplifying the risk of war (e.g. in Iraq) but
also increasing the probability of participation by particular democracies (e.g. in
Kosovo or Afghanistan). The terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, then, have
further added and strengthened justifications for military intervention. The
security rationale is that authoritarian regimes and defective statehood pose a
risk for a liberal international order.
95
Interference in domestic affairs today is
89. Holsti, The State, War, and the State of War, op. cit.; Georg Sørensen, “War and State-Making. Why
Doesn’t It Work in the Third World?”, Security Dialogue, Vol. 32, No. 3 (2001), pp. 341–354.
90. Stephen D. Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1999).
91. Jackson, op. cit.
92. Scott Pegg, De Facto States in the International System, Working Paper No. 21 (The University of
British Columbia: Institute of International Relations, 1998).
93. Reno, op. cit.; Robert I. Rotberg (ed.), State Failure and State Weakness in a Time of Terror
(Washington: World Peace Foundation, 2003)
94. Hans-Henrik Holm and Georg Sørensen, “International Relations Theory in a World of Vari-
ation”, in H.-H Holm and George Sørensen (eds.), Whose World Order? Uneven Globalization and the
End of the Cold War (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995), pp. 192ff; Newman, op. cit., pp. 186–187)
95. See, for example, Pickering, op. cit.; Rhodes, op. cit.
Anything New or More of the Same? 45
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thus considered to be a legitimate means for the maintenance or reestablishment
of international stability. New strategic innovations (PSAs, RMA) and the poten-
tial for unilateral action by the US coupled with the existing asymmetries in the
international system on the one hand, and the relevance of non-state actors to
international politics in an era of complex interdependence on the other, together
provide few reasons to assume that military intervention will lose its significance
in the years to come. However, the politics of military intervention would not only
confront states with incalculable security risks but also undermine their own
normative claims. At the end of the day, these developments pose new questions
concerning the relationship of war and democracies. As monadic-democratic-
peace research suggests not all democracies are the assumed doves of the inter-
national system.
96
As long as democracies face each other they indeed represent
the most peaceful entities of the international system.
97
But confronted with
non-democracies and new security challenges some can turn hawkish.
At the beginning of this article Karl W. Deutsch was quoted to the effect that
“war, to be abolished, must be understood. To be understood, it must be
studied”. But we can go further: to understand war, we must analyse it.
98
In
order to do this systematically, we need good time series and have to address
the problem of change. In the future much more weight must therefore be given
to the quantitative and qualitative dimensions of change as well as to the interplay
between organised violence (war, military intervention) and the structural trans-
formations of international order.
96. Pickering, op. cit., Henderson, op. cit.
97. Bruce Russett 1993. “Why democratic peace?”, in Bruce Russett (ed.), Grasping the democratic
peace: Principles for a post-cold-war world (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993).
98. Eberwein and Chojnacki, op. cit.,p.1.
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