The More Things Change...: Recognizing and Responding to Trends in Armed Conflict

It is becoming increasingly fashionable to argue that conflict patterns today are fundamentally different from patterns in past historical eras. If correct, this argument could call into question the future value of decades of scientific research on the sources and consequences of interstate conflict. This paper reviews several prominent differences that have been proposed, and examines major conflict-related data sets for evidence related to these explanations. It appears that intrastate conflict is currently more frequent and bloodier than interstate conflict, as many analysts have argued, but that this has been the case for most of the past two centuries. Similarly, while analysts claim that future conflict will revolve around ethnic or cultural issues rather than territorial or ideological questions, the available evidence is mixed. I conclude with several suggestions for future research on militarized conflict, focusing on three themes: non-state actors, subwar intrastate conflict, and (both interstate and intrastate) contentious issues and issue management. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the conference on "The Study of Future War and the Future Study of War", State College, PA, March 2001. The author wishes to thank Sara McLaughlin Mitchell and the participants at that conference for their feedback, while accepting the blame for any errors and for all recommendations and interpretations expressed herein. The More Things Change...: Recognizing and Responding to Trends in Armed Conflict In a recent analysis of conflict patterns, Wallensteen and Sollenberg (1999, 2000, 2001) note that most conflict since the end of the Cold War appears to be internal in nature. They identify 108 armed conflicts, each of which resulted in at least 25 battle deaths during at least one calendar year between 1989-1998. Of these armed conflicts, only seven -two of which were active in 1998 -were primarily interstate in nature. Nine others were intrastate conflicts with foreign intervention, and the remaining 92 were intrastate in nature. Wallensteen and Sollenberg's observation suggests a very disturbing implication. Despite more than three decades of systematic, data-based research on militarized conflict, relatively little work has examined intrastate conflict; the vast majority of data collection and data-based research has focused on conflict between sovereign nation-states. Yet according to Wallensteen and Sollenberg's research, primarily interstate conflict accounts for less than seven percent of all armed conflict in the decade since the Cold War, and interstate intervention into intrastate conflict accounts for only an additional eight percent. As a result, at least eighty-five percent of all armed conflict in the past decade lies beyond the scope of most data-based research on conflict -meaning that the future study of war must undergo fundamental change, or else risk an inability to account for the vast majority of future war. This paper examines the increasingly fashionable argument that militarized conflict is fundamentally different today than it was in earlier times, with the goal of improving the future study of conflict. The argument about fundamental changes in the nature of conflict has often been made without much systematic data-based analysis, and almost accepted by assumption. I evaluate the central themes of this argument using prominent data sets on both interstate and intrastate conflict over the past two centuries, and find only mixed support for the expectations of many analysts. I then discuss the implications of this analysis, offering several suggestions to improve both the study of future conflict and the future study of conflict. Fundamental Changes in Conflict? A variety of writers from academic, military, and policymaking backgrounds have suggested that patterns of armed conflict are currently undergoing (or have recently undergone) fundamental