The Role of External Support in Civil War Termination

Abstract

Many studies highlight the role that international intervention can play in prolonging civil wars. Yet, direct military intervention is just one way that external actors become involved in civil conflicts. In this article, a model is developed and analyzed that shows that when the government is unsure about how external support to the rebels will help rebel war-making capacity, it is the government that will continue fighting rather than settle the dispute. Different types of external support to rebels influence their fighting capacity differently, and some types of support create uncertainty about how new resources will translate into war-making ability. Specifically, more fungible sources of support (such as direct financial support) generate the most uncertainty for states as they attempt to estimate the effect of support to rebels on the conflict. Increased uncertainty inhibits bargained settlement, and disputes characterized by fungible external support are less likely to end than those where rebels receive different kinds of support. Empirical analyses demonstrate strong support for this argument; rebels that receive highly fungible external support (money and guns) are less likely to see conflict termination than rebels that do not.

Escalate to De-Escalate? External State Support and Governments’ Willingness to Negotiate

“…Furthermore, given the prevalence of ripeness theory, it is worthwhile evaluating if this is the most suitable framework in trying to understand civil war negotiations. The article also adds to the expanding research on the effects of external support on conflict processeswhich so far has been mostly concerned with conflict duration 19 or termination 20 while overlooking central conflict dynamics such as the initiation of talks.…”

Targeting and Resistance: Reassessing the Effect of External Support on the Duration and Outcome of Armed Conflict

“…However, neither of these studies differentiated external military support by content. The only other study to have made such a differentiation and use econometric techniques to demonstrate the utility of such a differentiation, Sawyer et al (2015), is discussed below.…”

“…However, there has been one major attempt at looking at support types with the UCDP External Support data. Sawyer et al (2015) argue that more fungible forms of support create uncertainty and prolong conflict by making settlements less attractive. Specifically, they argue that monetary funding and weaponry are the most fungible forms of support, and show that provision of these forms of support are associated with a decreased probability of conflict termination at a given point in time.…”

“…The small but significant effect could also indicate that ambiguous support simply has the effect found by the previous literature examining the effect of aggregate external support on conflict duration. The relative fungibility of monetary funding (included in ambiguous support) could also be leading the heightened uncertainty and increased conflict duration (Sawyer et al 2015). 13 If one were to look at only the results from the model with all support types aggregated together, they would conclude that external support for weak rebels prolongs conflict and support for strong rebels does not impact conflict duration.…”

External Intervention, Identity, and Civil War

“…These arguments about the likely impact of intervention on domestic con ‡ict have been developed mostly in the context of incomplete information environments and bargaining games. It has been shown that civil war can be prolonged as a result of uncertainty about the extent or likelihood of external intervention (Sawyer et al, 2015;Powell 2017); and that interventions that help establish power parity among domestic actors can make con ‡ict outbreaks more likely as they create uncertainty over the con…ct outcome (Bas and Schub 2016). The expectation of intervention on the side of rebels could escalate con ‡icts as rebel demands get progressively more expansive (Jenne 2004); by making the government take preemptive action (Poast 2015); or otherwise create bargaining failures (Grigoryan 2010, Cetinyan 2003.…”