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Abstract
The normative and practical success of the 1990s campaign on the right and responsibility to intervene to stop civil wars should be acknowledged so that policy and research can move on to the more pressing question of how we intervene and improve on currently inadequate results. This essay confronts a standard explanation, the failure to address the root causes of a conflict. It argues from academic research on three aspects – the knowledge on causes shaping current policies, the interests of those who matter in intervention, and the new research on civil war – that a focus on root causes would not improve outcomes and could even be counterproductive.
An early version of this essay was presented at the School of Advanced International Studies of The Johns Hopkins University, Washington, DC, on 31 October 2005, and is based on a larger project on the knowledge base for post-conflict statebuilding funded by The Carnegie Corporation of New York and a second on state failure and the international security agenda funded by The Ford Foundation.
Notes
1. Continuing developments of this dataset are discussed regularly in the Journal of Peace Research.
2. Data are available on the website of the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko).
3. Data and details are available from: http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/dpko/home.htm.
4. Early warning research in Europe tended to be done instead by non-governmental organizations, such as the Forum for Early Warning and Response (FEWER) and International Alert.
5. This argument is developed in more detail in Woodward Citation2005a.
6. Those who form the far larger part of the commodity chain are then reminded of their ‘corporate social responsibility’.
7. See the website of papers and conferences organized by the Laboratory in Comparative Ethnic Processes (LiCEP) at: http://www.yale.edu/ycias/ocvprogram/LiCEP.
8. Research by Séverine Autessere (Citation2006) on eastern Congo demonstrates a direct link between an understanding of local sources of conflict and policies necessary to end a war, in contrast with the insistence of international actors on a national (or more accurately, capital-city) frame.
9. I argue this strongly on the Yugoslav cases in Woodward Citation1995.
10. I am grateful to Ed Rees for this information.