Understanding Persistent Interventions in Civil Wars

• In Event: External Interventions in State Militaries and Domestic Security Forces

Abstract

Why do some international actors who intervene militarily in civil wars continue their military engagement after the war has ended, while other actors end their intervention and withdraw all military forces at the conclusion of the war? What explains the continuation of outside military intervention from wartime to peacetime, and why might this dimension of military intervention vary across conflicts? In analyzing this puzzle, this study introduces a new theoretical concept: persistent intervention. Defined as the continuation of an external state’s military intervention in a civil war after the war ends, the concept of persistent intervention sheds light on the connections between wartime and peacetime, or the post-conflict period.
Drawing on a new dataset on post-war interventions across the globe in countries experiencing civil wars that ended between 1957-2020, as well as detailed comparative case studies of four interventions from the Middle East and Africa, this paper finds the availability and access to political and economic gains of the intervention as the main driver of the decision to keep troops in peacetime. The domestic elites' desire to protect these predatory gains from the intervention leaves some interveners entangled in the civil war country, where leaving too soon might devalue and destabilize the investments. The primary factor undermining persistent interventions is found to be intervener domestic instability that disrupts this extractive mechanism. Findings also have implications for external involvement in peace agreements and peacekeeping operations.

Author

• Sevdenur Koru, Temple University