Does aid cause conflict in Pakistan?

This study provides evidence from Pakistan on how the delegated task of achieving strategic objectives of the donor can lead to incompatibility of aid objectives which then generates perpetual and multidimensional domestic conflict in the recipient society. We use count data method to estimate the relationship between aid and conflict. At the aggregate level, social sector spending, regime change and youth bulge are positively and significantly related with conflict. However, aid per capita gives ambiguous results. It is significant with conflict count in the terrorism data-set and insignificant for data on armed conflict. Inclusion of youth bulge and unemployment rate confirms the marginalization hypothesis of conflict. Inflation rate and the tax variables are insignificant. This confirms that aid erodes fiscal capacity. At project-level data, conflict is strongly related with aid commitment and purpose. Discrepancy in aid allocation and commitment may accentuate conflict.     

North European security after the Ukraine conflict†

Russia’s illegal occupation and annexation of the Crimean peninsula in February–March 2014, and the country’s well-documented involvement in the separatist conflict in Eastern Ukraine, have led to a significant worsening of Russia’s relations with the West. Vladimir Putin’s move to redraw Russia’s southern borders through the use of military force and subversive measures has given rise to an uncertainty that goes well beyond the post-Soviet space. Since 2014, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has had to reassess many aspects of its relationship with Russia. The alliance has also initiated various measures to strengthen the military security of its eastern member states, particularly the Baltic states, Poland, and Romania. Further to the North, NATO’s northernmost member – Norway – is following developments in Russia with a heightened sense of awareness. The same goes for non-aligned Sweden and Finland, which are trying to adapt to the emerging, and increasingly complex, security environment in Northern Europe.     

Beyond balancing? Intrastate conflict and US grand strategy

Grand strategic theorists share an historical emphasis on interstate conflict, yet in contrast to the more frequent intrastate conflicts, these represent only 7 of the some 273 US military deployments since 1900. We argue that these intrastate conflicts limit the utility of regional balances of power in mitigating forms of conflict that the US may consider inimical to its national security interests. When considering potential changes to US force posture and grand strategy, American coercive statecraft should be theorised along a broader strategic continuum encompassing the full range of conflict.     

Why internal conflict deteriorates state capacity? Evidence from Colombian municipalities

Previous work has documented a negative correlation between internal conflict and state capacity. We attempt to shed light on mechanisms that underlie this relationship, using data for Colombian municipalities. We rely on identifying heterogeneous effects of different types of violent events on state capacity, taking advantage of variability across municipalities in the prevalence of specific manifestations of conflict and their intensity. Our findings suggest that events making civilians feel targeted affect the state’s capacity to collect taxes, while those reflecting a stronger military capacity of illegal armies, in particular their large-scale attacks, affect the state’s capacity to provide public goods.     

Turkey’s imperial legacy and the conflict potential in the Balkans

Turkey is the only Eurasian state surrounded in almost a full circle by acute hot or “frozen conflicts,” ranging from low-intensity violence, terrorism to fully fledged wars. The prevailing pattern of intercommunal and interethnic conflicts in the continental Balkans and on Cyprus has long been different from those in the rest of Europe and in the Near East. This difference is closely related to the fact that these lands had experienced in the past centuries-long rule by the Ottoman Empire, whose legal successor is the Republic of Turkey. The intercommunal conflict potential in the rest of Europe used to differ substantially, but the difference has been greatly reduced as Western Europe has, in one respect, become “balkanized.”     

Preventing conflict upstream: impunity and illicit governance across Colombia’s borders

This article explores how transnational borderlands matter for conflict prevention and, in particular, so-called upstream engagement, which aims to reduce threats to global stability and security that arise from the world’s increasing interconnectedness. Accounting for transnational borderlands in vulnerable regions is crucial for conflict prevention as pursued by the defence and security sector because borderlands are catalysts of the negative side of global interconnectedness: they are business hubs for transnational organised crime, sites of retreat for conflict actors, and safe havens for terrorists. The border areas’ proneness to impunity and the ability of violent non-state actors to govern these spaces illicitly contribute to the emergence of these characteristics. I therefore argue that upstream conflict prevention needs to do two things to address these risks: first, to overcome a national security approach centred on the borderline and instead acknowledge transnational security dynamics in borderlands on both sides of the border; second, to overcome the state-centred governance lens to also consider governance exerted by non-state actors. The article draws on empirical data from a six-year study including over a year of fieldwork in and on Colombia’s borderlands.     

How they joined? Militants and informers in the armed conflict in Donbas

ABSTRACT

The effectiveness of recruitment strategies is crucial for sustainability of any insurgent campaign. This paper identifies eight mechanisms used to encourage overt and covert participation in the armed conflict in Donbas and shows that they varied depending on the type of service expected from a recruit. It relies on the original dataset compiled from studying 798 court cases of insurgents and informers convicted in Ukrainian courts in the period from October 2014 to March 2017. The paper finds that militants were more responsive to contractual or hierarchical mechanisms of recruitment, while informers who provided cover support were more likely to join through ideological appeals or activation of prior social ties.     

War and rumours of war,do improvements in space technologies bring space conflict closer?

Combat in near-Earth orbit is emerging as a more realistic possibility. The argument here is that changes in space technologies combined with a sea change in political rhetoric is bringing the possibility of military conflict in space technologies. This movement reflects a generational shift as the original decisions regarding military conflict in space are now being reassessed by a generation who did not experience World War II or the Cold War. For these, the sanctuary approach to space activities is not as persuasive and new enhanced space technologies bring the possibility of victory or at least survival possible during a conflict in space.     

The danger of “hybrid warfare” from a sophisticated adversary: the Russian “hybridity” in the Ukrainian conflict

The term “hybrid warfare” is a new one that the West began to use to explain its failure to cope with asymmetric threats. Focusing on the war on global terrorism, the West temporarily withdrew its attention from traditional adversaries, such as Russia, which has used this gap and has audaciously returned to the stage as a global actor. Until the Russian annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and inflaming the Ukrainian crisis, most Western authors attributed “hybrid threats” mostly to non-state actors. But the Ukrainian scenario showed the true face of “hybridity” in the modern battlefield when practised by a powerful state actor. Russian “hybrid warfare” in Ukraine has already been seen as a combination of conventional and unconventional methods, that have been complemented with other instruments of national power – diplomatic, economic and information. The purpose of this article is, through an analysis of the Ukrainian scenario, to demonstrate that although the term “hybrid” is new, the concept itself is old and is a continuation of already seen doctrine from the Cold War era. Although “hybrid threats” can come both from state and non-state actors, the Russian interference in Ukraine is proof that they are especially dangerous for the West if, or when, they are initiated from a traditional, sophisticated adversary that has the capacity to use all forms of warfare.     

The Israel Defense Forces as an epistemic authority: An intellectual challenge in the reality of the Israeli – Palestinian conflict

The changes in the nature of warfare and its transformation toward Low Intensity Conflict (LIC) intrastate conflict have challenged the patterns of interaction between the political and the military echelons in Israel. It seems that the political echelon's superiority is maintained at the institutional and formal levels, but on the substantive level, which demands relying on knowledge and systematic staff work, the political echelon's position is weakened and loses its validity.

Introducing the military echelon in Israel as an epistemic authority regarding the violent confrontation and the main outlines of the military knowledge development process might clarify why the absence of the required dialogue between the echelons and the weakness of the intellectual effort increased the military's influence over the shaping of Israeli conflict-management strategy. The argument's validity and its explanatory power can be found relevant for other countries whose militaries are deeply involved in the management of LIC.