¹ Drawing from the Brown volume, I define “internal war” as a violent dispute whose origins can be traced primarily to domestic rather than to systemic factors, and one in which armed violence occurs primarily within the borders of a single state. The terms internal war, civil war, and domestic conflict are used interchangeably throughout this essay.

² Eckstein, , ed., Internal War: Problems andApproaches (Glencoe, 111.: Free Press, 1964)Google Scholar; Modelski, , “International Settlement of Internal War,” in Rosenau, James N., ed., International Aspects of Civil Strife (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964)Google Scholar; and Huntington, , “Patterns of Violence in World Politics,” in Huntington, ed., Changing Patterns of Military Politics (New York: Free Press, 1962)Google Scholar.

³ There are several internal war data sets that demonstrate the steady increase in their number (and the absence of any surge after the cold war). They include Peter Wallensteen and Margareta Sollen-berg, “The End of International War? Armed Conflict, 1989–1995,” Journal ofPeace Research (August 1996); Ted Gurr, Robert, Minorities at Risk:A Global View ofEthnopolitical Conflict (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace, 1993)Google Scholar; Licklider, Roy, “The Consequences of Negotiated Settlements in Civil Wars, 1945–1993,” American Political Science Review 89 (September 1995), 688–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Brown, Michael E., “Introduction,” in Brown, ed., The International Dimensions of Internal Conflict (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996), 4–7Google Scholar.

⁴ The continuity of the nature of internal wars from the cold war period to the post-cold war era is best expressed by Gurr, Ted Robert, “Peoples against States: Ethnopolitical Conflict and the Changing World System,” International Studies Quarterly 38 (September 1994)Google Scholar.

⁵ This figure is calculated from Sivard, Ruth Leger, World Military and Social Expenditures, 1996 (Washington, D.C.: World Priorities, 1996), 18–19Google Scholar.

⁶ Wallensteen and Sollenberg (fn. 3), 353.

⁷ Margareta Sollenberg, ed., States in Armed Conflict, 1994, Report no. 39 (Uppsala: Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University, 1995), 9.

⁸ Two excellent surveys of the causes of internal war are Rule, James B. Theories of Civil Violence (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988)Google Scholar; and Gurr, Ted Robert, ed., Handbook of Political Conflict (New York: Free Press, 1980)Google Scholar.

⁹ Anderson, , Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread ofNationalism (London: Verso, 1983)Google Scholar; Horowitz, , Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985)Google Scholar; Greenfeld, , Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992)Google Scholar; Smith, and, National Identity (London: Penguin, 1991)Google Scholar.

¹⁰ For an explicit criticism of the neorealist approach for its failure to take into account social structures (in this case, regarding the amount of military power that can be generated by states from different cultures), see Rosen, Stephen Peter, “Military Effectiveness: Why Society Matters,” International Security 19 (Spring 1996)Google Scholar.

¹¹ The reversal of second and third images is found in the work of several scholars focusing on unstable states. See, for example, Jackson, Robert, Quasi-States: Sovereignty, International Relations and the Third World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990)Google Scholar; Buzan, Barry, People, States and Fear: The National Security Problem in International Relations (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983)Google Scholar; Ayoob, Mohammed, “Security in the Third World: The Worm about to Turn,” International Affairs 60 (Winter 1983–1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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¹³ The security dilemma comes from Jervis, Robert, “Cooperation under the Security Dilemma,” World Politics 30 (January 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁴ Ignatieff, , Blood and Belonging:Journeys into the New Nationalism (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1993), 42Google Scholar.

¹⁵ Posen (fn. 12), 103–11. For more on security dilemmas in internal wars, see also Kaufmann, Chaim, “Possible and Impossible Solutions to Ethnic Civil Wars,” International Security 20 (Spring 1996), 147–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁶ Hobbes, Thomas, Behemoth or the Long Parliament, ed. Tonnies, Ferdinand, 2d ed. (London: Frank Cass, 1969)Google Scholar; idem, Leviathan, ed. McPherson, C. B. (New York: Penguin, 1968)Google Scholar.

¹⁷ The creation of ethnically homogenous states is supported by Lind, Michael, “In Defense of Liberal Nationalism,” Foreign Affairs 73 (May—June 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For countries torn by ethnic strife, Chaim Kaufmann supports the separation of ethnic groups into defensible enclaves—though not necessarily into separate states. See Kaufmann (fn. 15), 161—65.

¹⁸ Mearsheimer and Van Evera, “When Peace Means War,” New Republic, December 18, 1995.

¹⁹ The value of creating an imbalance of power rather than letting a war stalemate is persuasively argued by Betts, , “The Delusion of Impartial Intervention,” Foreign Affairs 72 (November—December 1994)Google Scholar.

²⁰ The intensification of the Ethiopian war against Eritrea after the strengthening of the Mengistu regime is discussed in virtually all accounts of the conflict. See, for example, Legum, Colin and Lee, Bill, The Horn of Africa in Continuing Crisis (New York: Africana, 1979)Google Scholar; Ottaway, Marina, Soviet and American Influence in the Horn ofAfrica (New York: Praeger, 1983)Google Scholar; and Paul B. Henze, Russians and the Horn: Opportunism and the Long View, European-American Institute for Security Research, EAI Papers, no. 5 (Marina del Ray, Calif.: European-American Institute, 1983).

²¹ Enzensberger, , Civil War (London: Granta, 1994), 30Google Scholar.

²² For a fuller treatment of this view, see David, Steven R., “Explaining Third World Alignment,” World Politics 43 (January 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²³ Barry R. Posen makes the argument that states engender nationalism in order to enhance their ability to defend themselves from external threats; see Posen, , “Nationalism, the Mass Army and Military Power,” International Security 18 (Fall 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁴ Many have made the case that the war in the Balkans stems from Milosevic's desire to remain in power. See Gangon, V. P. Jr., “Ethnic Nationalism and International Conflict: The Case of Serbia,” International Security 19 (Winter 1994–1995)Google Scholar; Djilas, Alex, “A Profile of Slobodan Milosevic,” Foreign Affairs 72 (Summer 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Glenny, Misha, The Fall of Yugoslavia: The Third Balkan War (New York: Penguin, 1992)Google Scholar.

²⁵ See, for example, Davies, James, “Toward a Theory of Revolution,” American Sociological Review 27 (February 1962)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, “The J-Curve of Rising and Declining Satisfaction as a Cause of Revolution and Rebellion,” in Gurr, Ted and Davis, Hugh, eds., Violence inAmerica: Historicaland Comparative Perspectives (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1979)Google Scholar.

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²⁷ There is a large and growing literature on how to end internal wars, mostly focusing on negotiations. See, for example, Zartman, William, ed., Negotiating Internal Conflicts (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1993)Google Scholar; idem, Negotiating an End to Civil Wars (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1995)Google Scholar; Pillar, Paul R., Negotiating Peace: War Termination as a Bargaining Process (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Falk, Richard A., The International Law of Civil War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971)Google Scholar; Stedman, Stephen John, Peacemaking in Civil War (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1991)Google Scholar; and Barbara F. Walter, “The Resolution of Civil Wars: Why Incumbents and Insurgents Fail to Negotiate” (Ph.D. thesis, University of Chicago, 1994).

²⁸ Pillar (fn. 27), 25.

²⁹ Licklider (fn. 3), 681.

³⁰ Ibid., 687. The pessimism expressed by many regarding negotiated settlements is not completely unqualified. Stedman and Licklider both acknowledge that under the right conditions (for example, when the outside powers are willing to impose order), negotiated settlements can work. Moreover, there have been too few post-cold war cases to allow for any definitive conclusions regarding the efficacy of negotiations for ending civil conflict.

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³² Ayoob, , “The Security Problematic of the Third World,” World Politics 43 (January 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Ayoob focused on the difficulties encountered by Third World leaders in trying to undertake state building and nation building simultaneously, but his pessimistic outlook holds for new states outside the Third World as well.

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³⁴ This is a principal argument of Robert Jackson (fn. 11).

³⁵ Jeffrey Herbst makes these points with regard to Africa. See Herbst, , “War and the State in Africa,” International Security 14 (Spring 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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³⁸ For an exhaustive treatment of some of the problems the United States has had in attempting to intimidate (or remove) foreign leaders, see U.S. Congress, Senate, Hearings before the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, 94th Cong., 1st Sess., vol. 7, “Covert Action” (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1975); and AllegedAssassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, November 20,1975, Senate Intelligence Committee, Select Committee to Study Government Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, 94th Cong., 1st Sess., Senate Report 94–465, 13098—8. On Saddam Hussein, see Yossi Melman, “Why the Plot to Kill Hussein Failed,” Los Angeles Times, July 21, 1991, 1–2.

³⁹ On problems of bringing war criminals to justice, see Meron, Theodor, “Answering for War Crimes,” Foreign Affairs 76 (January-February 1997), 2–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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