The Escalation and De-escalation of Irregular War: Setting Out the Problem

Abstract

The introduction sets out the theme of the special issue. It introduces the topic of escalation by discussing the current state of the art in the literature and it outlines the set up of the remainder of the issue.

Key Words:

• Escalation
• De-escalation
• Irregular War

Notes

This special issue is based partly on research that was funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research. The author/editor would like to thank all the participants of the ‘Escalation of Irregular War’ workshop held at Utrecht University, 17–18 September 2010, and the anonymous referees for helpful comments on earlier drafts of these arguments.

 ¹Chaim Kaufmann, ‘Possible and Impossible Solutions to Ethnic Civil War’, International Security 20/4 (1996), 136–75. Barry Posen, ‘The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict’, Survival 35/1 (1993), 27–47.

 ²Rajat Ganguly (ed.), Ethnic Conflict (London: Sage 2009). Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, ‘Greed and Grievance in Civil War’, Oxford Economic Papers 56/4 (2004), 563–95.

 ³Sidney Tarrow, ‘Inside Insurgencies; Politics and Violence in an Age of Civil War’, Perspectives on Politics, 5/3 (2007), 587–600.

 ⁴James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin, ‘Ethnicity, Insurgency and Civil War’, American Political Science Review 97/1 (2003), 75–90.

 ⁵Barbara Walter, Committing to Peace: The Successful Settlement of Civil Wars (Princeton UP 2002).

 ⁶Monica Toft, ‘Ending Civil Wars; A Case for Rebel Victory?’ International Security 34/4 (2010), 7–36. Paul Collier, Anke Hoeffler and Mans Soderbom, ‘Post Conflict Risks’, Paper, Centre for the Study of African Economies, Department of Economics, University of Oxford 2006, 5.

 ⁷Morton Deutsch, The Resolution of Conflict: Constructive and Destructive Processes (New Haven, CT: Yale UP 1973), 351.

 ⁸Herman Kahn, On Escalation; Metaphors and Scenarios (New York: Praeger 1965); Thomas Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven: Yale UP 1966); Richard Smoke, War; Controlling Escalation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP 1977); Thomas Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP 1980).

⁹Kahn, On Escalation 3.

¹⁰Kahn, On Escalation, 3, 289–90.

¹¹On the issue of definition see: Isabelle Duyvesteyn and Mario Fumerton, ‘Insurgency and Terrorism: Is There a Difference?’, in Caroline Holmqvist-Jonsater and Christopher Coker (eds), The Character of War in the 21st Century (London: Routledge 2009).

¹²Smoke, War, 35.

¹³Deutsch, The Resolution of Conflict, 352.

¹⁴Smoke, War, 242.

¹⁵Dean Pruitt and Jeffrey Rubin, Social Conflict: Escalation, Stalemate, and Settlement (New York: Random House 1986), 86.

¹⁶Deutsch, The Resolution of Conflict, 352.

¹⁷Ibid.

¹⁸Smoke, War, 242.

¹⁹Ibid., 260.

²⁰Deutsch, The Resolution of Conflict, 358.

²¹Smoke, War, 286, italics in original.

²²Ibid., 293.

²³Deutsch, The Resolution of Conflict, 358.

²⁴Ibid., 352.

²⁵Pruitt and Rubin, Social Conflict, 86.

²⁶Smoke, War, 289.

²⁷Ibid., 248.

²⁸Ibid., 251.

²⁹Ibid., 253.

³⁰Ibid., 256.

³¹Albert Wohlstetter and Roberta Wohlstetter, Controlling the Risks in Cuba (London: Institute for Strategic Studies 1965); Roberta Wohlstetter, Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision (Stanford UP 1962); Joseph de Rivera and James Rosenau, The Psychological Dimension of Foreign Policy (Columbus, OH: Merrill 1968); Robert Rothstein, Planning, Prediction and Policymaking in Foreign Affairs: Theory and Practice (Boston: Little Brown 1972); Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton UP 1976).

³²Tarrow, ‘Inside Insurgencies’, emphasis added. Also: Paul Collier and Nicholas Sambanis (eds), Understanding Civil War; Evidence and Analysis, Volume I and II, (Washington DC: World Bank 2005), Volume I, 318–19, Volume II, 314–15.

³³Christopher Daase, ‘Clausewitz and Small Wars’, in Hew Strachan and Andreas Herberg-Rothe (eds), Clausewitz in the Twenty-First Century (Oxford: OUP 2007), 182–95.

³⁴Anthony Oberschall, Social Movements, Ideologies, Interests, Identities (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers 1993), 104.

³⁵Peter R. Neumann and M.L.R. Smith, The Strategy of Terrorism: How it Works, and Why it Fails (London: Routledge 2008).

³⁶Neumann and Smith, Strategy of Terrorism, 80–6.

³⁷Ibid., 81.

³⁸Stathis Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War (New York: Cambridge UP 2006).

³⁹Claire Metelits, Inside Insurgency; Violence, Civilians and Revolutionary Group Behavior (New York: NYU Press 2009).