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Great Powers, Weak States, and Insurgency

Author: Patrick W. Quirk

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-01-25

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 3319474197

This book offers an original and theoretically rich examination into the dynamics of alliances that great powers and weak states form to defeat threats, such as rebellion or insurgency, within the smaller state’s borders. The author examines contemporary examples of such “internal threat alliances,” including Russia’s collaboration with Syria’s Assad regime to defeat anti-government rebels and U.S. cooperation with Afghanistan’s ruling political elite to combat the Taliban. In each case, the weaker state’s leadership wanted to remain in power while the great power sought to safeguard its interests linked to the regime’s stability. The book adds to International Relations (IR) theory by presenting a distinct conceptual framework that explains why internal threat alliances form, why some are more cohesive than others, and why some are effective while others are not. It thus promises to be of interest to IR scholars and students working in the areas of security studies, alliance dynamics, political violence, and civil war, but also to policy-makers grappling with how to salvage interests, such as access to natural resources or regional stability, imperiled by violence in weak states.

Weak Links

Author: Stewart Patrick

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2011-05-23

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 019975151X

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Conventional wisdom among policymakers in both the US and Europe holds that weak and failing states are the source of the world's most pressing security threats today. However, as this book shows, our assumptions about the threats posed by failed and failing states are based on false premises.

Trends in Outside Support for Insurgent Movements

Author: Daniel Byman

Publisher: Rand Corporation

Published: 2001-11-20

Total Pages: 163

ISBN-13: 0833032321

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The most useful forms of outside support for an insurgent movement include safe havens, financial support, political backing, and direct military assistance. Because states are able to provide all of these types of assistance, their support has had a profound impact on the effectiveness of many rebel movements since the end of the Cold War. However, state support is no longer the only, or indeed necessarily the most important, game in town. Diasporas have played a particularly important role in sustaining several strong insurgencies. More rarely, refugees, guerrilla groups, or other types of non-state supporters play a significant role in creating or sustaining an insurgency, offering fighters, training, or other forms of assistance. This report assesses post-Cold War trends in external support for insurgent movements. It describes the frequency that states, diasporas, refugees, and other non-state actors back guerrilla movements. It also assesses the motivations of these actors and which types of support matter most. This book concludes by assessing the implications for analysts of insurgent movements.

Bad Strategies

Author: James S. Corum

Publisher: Quarto Publishing Group USA

Published: 2008-08-15

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 161673762X

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It is the new way of war: Everywhere our military tries to make inroads, insurgents flout us—and seem to get the better of the strategists making policy and battle plans. In this book, an expert with both scholarly and military experience in the field looks at cases of counterinsurgency gone wrong. By examining the failures of strategies against insurgents in Algeria, Cyprus, Vietnam, and Iraq, Lieutenant Colonel James S. Corum offers rare and much-needed insight into what can go wrong in such situations—and how these mistakes might be avoided. In each case, Corum shows how the conflict could have been won by the major power if its strategy had addressed the underlying causes of the insurgency it faced; not doing so wastes lives and weakens the power’s position in the world. Failures in counterinsurgency often proceed from common mistakes. Bad Strategies explores these at strategic, operational and tactical levels. Above all, Corum identifies poor civilian and military leadership as the primary cause for failure in successfully combating insurgencies. His book, with clear and practical prescriptions for success, shows how the lessons of the past might apply to our present disastrous confrontations with insurgents in Iraq.

When States Fail

Author: Robert I. Rotberg

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2010-07-28

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 1400835798

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Since 1990, more than 10 million people have been killed in the civil wars of failed states, and hundreds of millions more have been deprived of fundamental rights. The threat of terrorism has only heightened the problem posed by failed states. When States Fail is the first book to examine how and why states decay and what, if anything, can be done to prevent them from collapsing. It defines and categorizes strong, weak, failing, and collapsed nation-states according to political, social, and economic criteria. And it offers a comprehensive recipe for their reconstruction. The book comprises fourteen essays by leading scholars and practitioners who help structure this disparate field of research, provide useful empirical descriptions, and offer policy recommendations. Robert Rotberg's substantial opening chapter sets out a theory and taxonomy of state failure. It is followed by two sets of chapters, the first on the nature and correlates of failure, the second on methods of preventing state failure and reconstructing those states that do fail. Economic jump-starting, legal refurbishing, elections, the demobilizing of ex-combatants, and civil society are among the many topics discussed. All of the essays are previously unpublished. In addition to Rotberg, the contributors include David Carment, Christopher Clapham, Nat J. Colletta, Jeffrey Herbst, Nelson Kasfir, Michael T. Klare, Markus Kostner, Terrence Lyons, Jens Meierhenrich, Daniel N. Posner, Susan Rose-Ackerman, Donald R. Snodgrass, Nicolas van de Walle, Jennifer A. Widner, and Ingo Wiederhofer.

Weak States in the International System

Author: Michael I. Handel

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 1990

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 9780714640730

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This work defines weak states and their strengths and weaknesses. It examines why they are weak and their position in different international systems as well as their economic positions.

How Insurgency Begins

Author: Janet I. Lewis

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2020-09-03

Total Pages: 299

ISBN-13: 1108479669

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Why do only some incipient rebel groups become viable challengers to governments? Only those that control local rumor networks survive.

The Insurgent's Dilemma

Author: David H. Ucko

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2022-06-01

Total Pages: 496

ISBN-13: 0197655920

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Despite attracting headlines and hype, insurgents rarely win. Even when they claim territory and threaten governmental writ, they typically face a military backlash too powerful to withstand. States struggle with addressing the political roots of such movements, and their military efforts mostly just "mow the grass," yet, for the insurgent, the grass is nonetheless mowed-and the armed project must start over. This is the insurgent's dilemma: the difficulty of asserting oneself, of violently challenging authority, and of establishing sustainable power. In the face of this dilemma, some insurgents are learning new ways to ply their trade. With subversion, spin and disinformation claiming centre stage, insurgency is being reinvented, to exploit the vulnerabilities of our times and gain new strategic salience for tomorrow. As the most promising approaches are refined and repurposed, what we think of as counterinsurgency will also need to change. The Insurgent's Dilemma explores three particularly adaptive strategies and their implications for response. These emerging strategies target the state where it is weak and sap its power, sometimes without it noticing. There are options for response, but fresh thinking is urgently needed-about society, legitimacy and political violence itself.

Pillars of Prosperity

Author: Timothy Besley

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2013-02-24

Total Pages: 391

ISBN-13: 0691158150

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How nations can promote peace, prosperity, and stability through cohesive political institutions "Little else is required to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice; all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things." So wrote Adam Smith a quarter of a millennium ago. Using the tools of modern political economics and combining economic theory with a bird's-eye view of the data, this book reinterprets Smith's pillars of prosperity to explain the existence of development clusters—places that tend to combine effective state institutions, the absence of political violence, and high per-capita incomes. To achieve peace, the authors stress the avoidance of repressive government and civil conflict. Easy taxes, they argue, refers not to low taxes, but a tax system with widespread compliance that collects taxes at a reasonable cost from a broad base, like income. And a tolerable administration of justice is about legal infrastructure that can support the enforcement of contracts and property rights in line with the rule of law. The authors show that countries tend to enjoy all three pillars of prosperity when they have evolved cohesive political institutions that promote common interests, guaranteeing the provision of public goods. In line with much historical research, international conflict has also been an important force behind effective states by fostering common interests. The absence of common interests and/or cohesive political institutions can explain the existence of very different development clusters in fragile states that are plagued by poverty, violence, and weak state capacity.