Jessica Ward

Written Comment
Week 7
Three of the articles for this week (Lyall and Wilson, Krasner and Risse, Berman and
Maanock) are concerned with how international actors can shape the outcomes of civil conflict.
One article, Kalyvas and Balcells, discusses how international actors can shape civil conflict at
its start. Kalyvas and Balcells argue that the international system does have influence over civil
conflicts, specifically finding that the ending of cold war caused a decline in irregular wars. I
argue that the Cold War alone is not a thorough enough argument to fully explain the
international systems effect on civil conflict, but lessons could be drawn from it to form a more
extensive argument.
The Kalyvas and Balcells technology of war argument states that the structure of the
international system during the cold war led to an increase in in irregular wars because of
material support, revolutionary beliefs, and military doctrine supplied by superpowers. This
argument works because it is able to account for the increase in wars in some areas of the world
and decrease in others, and because it appears to fit well with the historical experience of proxy
wars such as Vietnam or the Afghan resistance to Soviet invasion. However, this argument could
be taken further. Why was the Cold War special? How else does the international system
influence civil war?
The first issue that needs to addressed is the establishment of a conception of the
international system. The Kalyvas and Balcells imagination of the system during the Cold War is
of two superpowers, the US and the USSR, and a large number of smaller states that are
susceptible to their influence. This is a good understanding of the basic structure of the
international system during their time period 1944-2004, but a more subtle understanding may be
useful. This period was also contained the height of the era of decolonization, the rise of the nonaligned movement, and third wave democracy. This time also saw the beginning of Chinas rise
into near-superpower status, the sunset of the British empire, the formation of the United
Nations, and the rise of Islamism in the governments of Iran and Afghanistan. Eight countries
became nuclear powers1. These other actors may not have had as great an effect on the world as
the United States and the USSR did, but they certainly had some effect. If we think of the
international system as a galaxy, the US and the USSR are dueling suns whos pull of gravity
causes planets to circle them. However, these planets also have a gravity of their own and can
have moons and satellites or their own, or even influence the orbit of their neighbors.
Proxy war is another concept which deserves further exploration. There are two examples
of proxy war that are similar to each other: Vietnam and Afghanistan. In Vietnam, communist
supported North Vietnamese fought against Americans and American supported South
Vietnamese, the North wished to establish a communist country, while the South opposed it, and
Americans just didnt want the first domino to fall in Southeast Asia. In Afghanistan, American
supported insurgents fought against Russian invaders. The Russians wished to extend their
territory and influence into Afghanistan while the Americans wanted to stop it, and in doing so
1

Nine if you include South Africa

supported a mujahideen movement that would become global. However, arguably, the Vietnam
war could have happened without outside American or communist intervention, but American
intervention in Afghanistan changed the actors involved in the insurgent movement- by choosing
to empower Islamist forces, they made the less radical Northern Alliance relatively weak in
comparison. it is also possible that without American intervention, Afghanistan would have been
a much shorter conflict, with Russians defeating Afghans easily. These two cases showcase one
effect of the international system that was not part of the Kalyvas and Balcells argument,
selection. By choosing to become involved in these two conflicts, the international system
shifted the course of the conflicts. Similarly, the US could have fought against Khmer Rouge in
Cambodia or the 1968 Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia. The selection of these conflicts
cannot be fully explained by the technology of war argument.
One way in which Kalyvas and Balcells could be expanded is by expanding the time
period. Is the Cold War a unique event? Is it possible to find a comparison case for the cold war
and see if the same effect is seen. Arguably, colonialism can be seen as a potential similar
because it is a case of states projecting their influence, albeit in a more direct way. Were the Boer
War or the French-Indian war analogous to proxy wars? This is a difficult comparison to make
because of the differences between Cold War era influence projection and the literal imperialism
of the colonial period, especially given the difference how long each lasted.
Similarly, if bi-polarity and its collapse had an identifiable effect on conflict, then the rise
and collapse of pre-World War I multi-polarity or post-Cold War unipolarity should also produce
effects. In the case of unipolarity, the decline of the stabilizing American influence and
willingness to intervene could be thought as one factor behind conflict in Syria and Ukraine.
Arguable then, it is the decline of the dominant power structure which introduces in increased
element of anarchy into the system and not something special about the Cold War which
influences conflict.
One result of the end of the Cold War was a decrease of conflict in Latin America and
Southeast Asia and an increase in Sub-Saharan Africa and Eurasia. Looking at the types of
conflict associated with these regions, proxy war in Southeast Asia and Latin America, and
conflict related to establishing new states in post Soviet Eurasia. This shows that conflict related
to international politics has varying causes. In the Latin American and Southeast Asian cases,
international actors chose to work within states which maintained their sovereign borders. In the
Eurasia case, international actors took that sovereignty away, which caused conflict in the
reestablishing of sovereignty.
Analysis of international politics at the regional level could be a further area for research.
Most work is done either on the domestic scale or the international system as a whole. Would it
be helpful to think of regions as separate systems? There are factors, such as regional hegemony,
which have a small effect on the international scale but a large effect on the regional scale. In this
case, it would be useful to know how things like military doctrine or material support flowed
through regions and how regional politics comes in to play.
One assumption of the technology of war argument is that the choice of irregular war is
the result of the inability to fight conventional war instead of a strategic choice. Despite the fact
that he had a large army to command, Mao choose guerrilla war tactics. If terrorism can be
considered to be a static choice, what about irregular war? Kalyvas and Balcells organize their

typologies of conflict based on military

Asymmetric
Symmetric
technology as the input and the
Conventional
?
Conventional
conventionality and symmetry of the
conflict being the output. What if this
Non-Conventional Irregular
Symmetric non-conventional
was reversed? Is military technology
Table 1: reversed typology?
the cause of the method of fight or the
result?
While Kalyvas as Balcells are certainly true in the fact that the international system does
have an effect on international conflict, there are several areas where this argument is weak or
ready for expansion. It is a frequent theme in international relations literature that domestic
politics effects international politics, so the reversal of this presents an interesting area for further
work.