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International Involvement in Intra-State Conflict: Prolongation and Profiteering Lily Lousada | Pitzer ‘14
This paper will address international actors’ involvement in intra-state conflicts. Specifically, it will examine the role of international actors in the perpetuation of conflicts examining both actors ostensibly working towards liberal peace and those profiting from the maintenance of conflict. This will consider the inter-linked process of the empowerment of competing sides through international humanitarian aid and extra-legal war profiteering. It will be grounded in the historical development of states and the origins of warfare; From the co-evolutionary process of state-making and war-making too the contemporary relationship between the nationstate and modern warfare. Inevitably, this necessitates a parallel history of the transformation of the global international economic order. Secondly, this paper will argue that the globalized nature of intra-state conflict influences the perpetuation of these conflicts. It must be noted that while recognizing the multi-faceted causality of conflict and the duration of conflict, for the purpose of specialization this paper will examine the international involvement in intra-state conflict. As Neil Cooper noted in his article Picking out the Pieces of the Liberal Peaces: Representations of Conflict Spring 2013 | Claremont Journal of International Relations
Economies and the Implications for Policy: …the focus on the factors inside the state essentially absolve (by simply taking them as given) the broader structure of the global economy and the role of hegemonic power in creating the conditions for under-development, state failure and conflict1.
This analysis hopes to provide an insight into the nature of the international political economy. Given this unipolar moment, the liberal political, social, and neoliberal economic philosophies prevalent in the US have global implications. We witness the prioritization of global peace from two predominant sources: solidarism and security2. The first is a socially driven rejection of violent conflict, finding moral qualms with most warfare and feeling solidarity with the ‘victim’. As Cooper noted: “the promotion of human rights, free speech, civil society (via effective application of the rule of law) have become staples of peace-building discourse and policy”3. From a constructivist standpoint, a social norm against the brutality of ‘unjust’ war has developed. The second is a more politically driven development that places concern on the global security ramifications of weak states. This manifests as support for international and humanitarian intervention as Cooper asserts: