A preventive strike or war is not without its drawbacks. To begin with, it is an act of war and thus represents a calculation that such a blow to order is preferable to the threat to order that would develop if a rival’s rise or acquisition of a new military capability were allowed to continue. But such a calculation is impossible to make with precision, because there is no way to know in advance exactly how the country attacked will respond or how it would act if it were not attacked and allowed to grow stronger. Assuming the worst about a country’s intentions can all too easily bring about the worst in outcomes. There are also alternatives to mounting a preventive strike, including sanctions, deterrence, improving defenses, and diplomacy designed to curb the quality and quantity of a capability.
Preventive war is also potentially destabilizing in a more general sense, in that threat is in the eyes of the beholder and a world in which preventive strikes became commonplace would become a world of nonstop violence. It is for this reason that preventive war has little or no standing in international law and little or no political backing.
A preemptive strike or war is something quite different. Whereas a preventive use of force targets a gathering threat, a preemptive action targets an imminent threat. Preemptive attacks are the equivalent of throwing the first punch as the other side is about to punch you. As a result, it is widely considered legitimate and lawful, something understood as an anticipatory act of self-defense. Israel’s attack on Egyptian forces at the start of what became the June 1967 Middle East war is judged by some to be a preemptive strike. Unfortunately, the terms “preventive” and “preemptive” are often confused and used interchangeably when in fact they are very different in their legal basis and in their implications for order. The United States termed its attack on Iraq in 2003 a preemptive war when in reality it was preventive. This difference helps to explain just why it was so controversial to many around the world.
Obviously, those undertaking preemptive action must be able to demonstrate that the target possesses such means and is about to use them. This is easier said than done because intelligence is rarely so clear. And even genuine preemptive strikes are not risk-free, because just like preventive strikes they can lead to retaliation, including actions that use the very systems that were attacked but managed to survive.
PREVALENCE OF WAR AND LOOKING AHEAD
Wars between countries have become less common in recent decades. There are no great-power conflicts at the moment, something that marks a welcome departure from previous centuries, in particular the last one. But there are a good many wars (or conflicts as they are often called) all the same, including those going on in Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Libya, Ukraine, and Sudan. The absence of wars among the great powers should not be taken to mean the major powers are on the sidelines, because the United States has been heavily involved in Afghanistan for nearly two decades and Russian forces have directly intervened in both Ukraine and Syria. In addition, these wars may not involve one major power pitted against another, but they are costly all the same; the conflict in Syria alone has claimed some 500,000 lives and displaced more than half the country’s population since it began in 2011.
MOST WARS ARE CIVIL WARS
Number of conflicts
Note: Only includes civil and interstate conflicts in which at least one side was the government of a country. Civil conflicts may include foreign state intervention.
Source: UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset version 19.1; Pettersson, Therese, Stina Högbladh, and Magnus Öberg, 2019. “Organized violence, 1989–2018 and Peace Agreements,” Journal of Peace Research 56, no. 4; Gleditsch, Nils Petter, Peter Wallensteen, Mikael Eriksson, Margareta Sollenberg, and Håvard Strand (2002). “Armed Conflict 1946–2001: A New Dataset,” Journal of Peace Research 39, no. 5.
And even though the major powers are not at war with one another, military spending continues to increase. In other words, nations continue to prepare for potentially large wars. The world spends slightly less than $2 trillion each year on maintaining and arming militaries. One-third is spent by the United States alone, a number that is larger than the combined defense spending of the next seven countries but reflects America’s unique set of global interests. Other major military spenders include China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, India, France, the U.K., Japan, and Germany.
Thus it is not clear whether the absence of wars involving the great powers is an enduring trend or something of an aberration. Some judge this trend as likely to last, arguing wars between countries have become less common because actual or potential costs have gone up, especially in those instances in which nuclear weapons could be introduced. Other themes raised by those who argue that war has become less frequent include the prevalence of democratic societies disinclined to bear such costs. Leaders of these countries are accountable to voters and the substantial economic interdependence between nations raises the indirect costs of war because trade and investments will be hampered.
I am less sanguine and believe that wars between countries have become less common only because policies that have prevented them were adopted, including creating robust alliances and maintaining conditions of credible deterrence. If these policies were neglected or altered, wars could occur with greater frequency. In addition, the outbreak of World War I suggests the need to be skeptical that commerce can be a trustworthy bulwark against wars. And as was the case in the run-up to both World War I and World War II, neither democratic societies nor those ruled by authoritarian leaders are immune to the passions of nationalism that could lead to war. Despite hopes to the contrary, there is little reason to believe that war is a relic of the past. It is all too easy to imagine a war between the United States and China triggered over events involving Taiwan, between NATO and Russia caused by the latter’s aggression in Europe, between the United States and either North Korea or Iran as a result of their nuclear programs, between India and Pakistan, or between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Human nature has not changed, and the motives that have led rulers and peoples to undertake wars have not disappeared.
Internal Instability and War Within Countries
Developments within countries can also pose a threat to world order. A lack of order can provide space for terrorists to train, prepare for, and carry out their attacks. It can also create conditions where infectious diseases break out on their way to going global. Civil wars can generate large flows of refugees that can in turn cause instability in neighboring countries. Internal instability within a given country can also be a magnet for regional and global powers that seek advantage in promoting a particular outcome. Although a good deal of history is the result of the behavior of strong countries, it is clear, too, that weak, failing, and failed countries—countries where the government is unable or unwilling to perform the tasks expected of it, above all maintaining internal security—can cause serious problems for order beyond their borders.
There is no evidence suggesting that wars within countries are becoming obsolete; there has been an average of twenty internal conflicts a year around the world since the end of the Cold War in 1989. Many countries at some point in their histories face a challenge from secessionist movements that seek to break away and establish a country of their own. What these secessionists seek is not an alternative to sovereignty but rather a sovereign country of their own. South Sudan broke away from Sudan in 2011, and there is an effort in the Catalonia region of Spain to create a new country for those living in that area. Meanwhile, some governments are facing challenges from terrorist organizations, drug cartels, and pirates whose goal is not so much a country of their own as the ability to ignore the government and carry out activities that advance their own political or financial agendas. Violent internal struggles that involve a country’s own forces, as well as militias, terrorist groups, and armed forces from both neighboring nations and farther afield, have become something of a staple in the Middle East and to a lesser extent in other parts of the world. Internal c
onflicts are far more common than conflicts between countries. They also tend to last longer and, after they conclude, are more likely to flare up again.
It is essential here to distinguish between one country being in a position of relative weakness vis-à-vis another and a situation in which a country finds itself in a position of absolute weakness. What makes a country weak in absolute terms (also commonly referred to as a fragile state) is its inability to control what takes place within its borders or to make available to its citizens what they require to lead a normal life. This is not an isolated phenomenon: more than one in five people in the world—on the order of 1.5 billion—live in fragile states. While such a state may have a seat at the United Nations, sign international treaties, and maintain embassies abroad, it is unable to perform the basic duties of what we expect from governments, be it maintaining internal security, collecting taxes, issuing and supporting a viable currency, building infrastructure, offering a basic education, regulating food and product safety, or providing the basics for retirement and health care.
Weak states often lead to the emergence of large areas of territory (sometimes called ungoverned spaces) that are outside the effective control of the government. What separates a weak state from a failed state is a matter of degree, with failed states simply describing a weak government that has lost control over most of its territory and stands little or no chance of regaining it. In other words, weak states are salvageable so long as they receive and make good use of some external assistance, while failed states would require enormous effort spanning years or even decades before they are able to effectively govern their territory. Somalia is the prototypical failed state, with little chance of becoming a functioning country anytime soon. The same holds true for Yemen, and perhaps Syria and Venezuela. Pakistan and Mexico are examples of present-day weak states.
CAUSES OF INTERNAL INSTABILITY AND STATE FAILURE
What conditions are most associated with a state’s weakening or collapse? Vulnerable countries tend to be those that lack a commitment to the rule of law, whether because of corruption, leaders with too much power, or some combination of the two. This in turn reduces incentives to own private property or invest in the country, which stymies economic growth. After all, why would someone buy property, create a company, or build a factory in a place where the government may one day arbitrarily decide to take it? Discrimination tends to be high in weak states, usually blocking the way forward for minorities and women, leading to poor economic performance. Public services such as education and mass transportation are inadequate.
On the political side, countries ripe for internal instability tend to be characterized by high concentrations of power in merely a few hands. There tends to be little oversight of these leaders and little inclination on their part to learn from mistakes. The government may be seen as having lost its legitimacy and right to rule by a significant share of the population. Constitutions—and checks and balances on the arbitrary exercise of power—either are inadequate or are inadequately enforced. On the economic side, countries that are primed to fail often suffer from rampant corruption, which impedes economic growth by forcing people to spend time and money making payoffs rather than focusing on their businesses. Government capacity is low, so taxes are rarely collected, and when they are, they are collected unevenly. Police forces and courts are too weak or too corrupt to enforce the law. Inequality is high, and upward mobility is limited or nonexistent. Elites tend to perpetuate themselves; special interests dominate anything associated with the general interest.
Civil wars are another source of instability within countries. These wars are most often wars of secession in which part of the population with a common identity or geography seeks to break away and form a country of its own. This was the case with the American Civil War. Following the end of the Cold War, a number of wars of secession were waged amid the weakening of central control in what was Yugoslavia.
A different sort of internal war is better understood as a war of succession, in that the goal is to oust the current ruling authority and replace it with another that would rule in a very different way over the country’s entire territory. This is the case with revolutionary wars and wars of national liberation; it may well characterize the winner-take-all war in Afghanistan between the government and the Taliban. Either way, what ensues is a conflict between internal forces not controlled by the government (or ruling authority) and government forces.
Internal conflicts can break out for any number of reasons. After World War II, such struggles were relatively commonplace as colonies sought independence. In recent years, they have become common in the Middle East, often breaking out for internal reasons (for instance, disputes between a minority or a political movement and the government) but continuing in part because other governments intervene directly or indirectly on behalf of one or more of the protagonists. Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Libya to varying degrees reflect this pattern. Also adding fuel to the fire are recruits and arms entering from outside the country.
Not surprisingly, civil wars are more frequent in societies that are not homogeneous but rather contain one or more sizable minorities. Such conflicts are less likely when there is a robust democracy, which protects minorities and grants large degrees of political and cultural autonomy, thereby diluting any enthusiasm for total separation. Nations governed by something close to a dictatorship may also be insulated from internal conflict, because there is little opportunity to start or maintain effective resistance. Instead, it is in situations that fall in between these two extremes where civil wars are most likely.
Other traits that suggest a greater likelihood of civil war breaking out include low education levels (especially for boys and men), lower levels of GDP per capita, and an outsized economic reliance on a resource like oil, which tends to lead to corruption and few real jobs. The phenomenon of the “oil curse,” where countries “blessed” with large amounts of oil tend to fail to develop a diverse economy and a middle class, is often observed.
POLICY RESPONSES
There is a range of tools available for dealing with challenges to order within borders. Some of these tools can best be understood as preventive, in that they are designed to reduce the odds countries will grow weak or become venues of civil war. Such tools include diplomacy to resolve disputes and various forms of aid to promote economic growth and increase a country’s ability to cope with military and physical threats to order. Economic incentives can be offered and sanctions threatened to influence behavior. Peacekeeping forces can help maintain or restore stability, but as the term suggests, there must first be a peace in place to keep. Such a peace also needs to be widely supported if peacekeeping forces are not to be overwhelmed. When no such peace exists, far larger and more capable military forces are required to carry out a mission of peace-making.
If prevention fails, reactive tools include diplomacy, sanctions to penalize bad behavior, and military intervention—be it to attack those working against order (as NATO aircraft did when they bombed Serbian targets in 1999 to stop government attacks on civilian populations seeking to escape Serbian rule) or to provide protection until the country does so on its own. U.S. forces did precisely this for the Kurds in northern Iraq starting in 1991 when they were threatened by the central government.
There is no magic bullet for dealing with civil wars. What works in one context may fail in another. Negotiation can lead to a peace settlement, but successful negotiations require leaders both willing and able to compromise. And even successful negotiations can, over time, breed dissatisfaction with at least some elements of the population. Not surprisingly, civil wars ended by negotiation are the most prone to resuming. Often peacekeeping forces are required. Clear victories (or, from the opposing perspective, defeats) can sow the seeds of stability, but only if the winner is prepared to act with a degree of magnanimity and the losing side is prepared to accept the outcome.
There are, however
, several alternatives. Partition is one. People who cannot live together can sometimes live next to each other. This is the case for Cyprus, where peace has held now for nearly half a century following a political crisis in the early 1970s that led to the island being divided between Greek and Turkish Cypriots. The neat division of the island, however, only came about following large population shifts (favoring the Turkish Cypriot community at the expense of Greek Cypriots) and backed—to this day—by a Turkish military presence.
This is somewhat the case in Northern Ireland, where, after three decades of “the Troubles,” in which more than three thousand people lost their lives, there has been relative calm made possible by a capable British police and military presence, walls separating Protestant and Catholic neighborhoods that in turn have helped to perpetuate a largely segregated school system, and a political process that offered an alternative path forward for the Catholic minority that had been deprived of equal rights and protections. Partition, though, is not a cure-all. When the British left India in 1947, they partitioned the country, in the process creating what today is Pakistan. The relationship between India and Pakistan remains fraught; the two countries have fought multiple wars and developed nuclear weapons aimed at each other.
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