A theoretically-informed, critical account of the making of the international legal rules governing civil war.

As the threat of superpower confrontation diminishes in the post-cold war era, civil wars and their regional ramifications are emerging as the primary challenge to international peace and security. Notoriously difficult to resolve, these internal conflicts seem condemned to escalate with no end in sight. This book recognizes that internal dissidence is the legitimate result of the breakdown of normal politics and focuses on resolving conflict through negotiation rather than combat. Elusive Peace provides a revealing look at the nature of internal conflicts and explains why appropriate conditions for negotiation and useful solutions are so difficult to find. The authors offer a series of case studies of ongoing conflict in Angola, Mozambique, Eritrea, South Africa, Southern Sudan, Lebanon, Spain, Colombia, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, and the Philippines. They examine the characteristics of each confrontation, including past failed negotiations, and make suggestions for changes in negotiating strategies that could lead to a more successful outcome. The contributors, in addition to the editor, are Imtiaz Bokhari, Bilkent University, Ankara; Robert Clark, George Mason University; Marius Deeb and Marina Ottaway, Georgetown University; Mary Jane Deeb, American University; Francis Deng, Brookings; Daniel Druckman, National Academy of Sciences; Todd Eisenstadt, University of California, San Diego; Daniel Garcia, University of the Andes, Bogota; Justin Green, Villanova University; Carolyn Hartzell and Donald Rothchild, University of California, Davis; Ibrahim Msabaha, Center for Foreign Relations, Dar es-Salaam; and Howard Wriggins, Columbia University.

After a war breaks out, what factors influence the warring parties' decisions about whether to talk to their enemy, and when may their position on wartime diplomacy change? How do we get from only fighting to also talking? In The Costs of Conversation, Oriana Skylar Mastro argues that states are primarily concerned with the strategic costs of conversation, and these costs need to be low before combatants are willing to engage in direct talks with their enemy. Specifically, Mastro writes, leaders look to two factors when determining the probable strategic costs of demonstrating a willingness to talk: the likelihood the enemy will interpret openness to diplomacy as a sign of weakness, and how the enemy may change its strategy in response to such an interpretation. Only if a state thinks it has demonstrated adequate strength and resiliency to avoid the inference of weakness, and believes that its enemy has limited capacity to escalate or intensify the war, will it be open to talking with the enemy. Through four primary case studies—North Vietnamese diplomatic decisions during the Vietnam War, those of China in the Korean War and Sino-Indian War, and Indian diplomatic decision making in the latter conflict—The Costs of Conversation demonstrates that the costly conversations thesis best explains the timing and nature of countries' approach to wartime talks, and therefore when peace talks begin. As a result, Mastro's findings have significant theoretical and practical implications for war duration and termination, as well as for military strategy, diplomacy, and mediation.

This book evaluates the role of international mediators in bringing civil wars to an end and makes the case for ‘powerful peacemaking’ – using incentives and sanctions – to leverage parties into peace. As internal violence within countries is a hugely significant threat to international peace in the post-Cold War era, the question of how these wars end has become an urgent research and policy question. This volume explores a critical aspect of peacemaking that has yet to be sufficiently evaluated: the turbulent period beyond the onset of formal or open negotiations to end civil wars and the clinching of an initially sustainable negotiated settlement. The book argues that the transnational flow of weapons, resources, and ideas means that when civil wars today end, they are more likely to do so at the negotiating table than on the battlefield. It uses bargaining theory to develop an analytical framework to evaluate peace processes – moving from stalemate in wars to negotiated settlement – and it rigorously analyses the experiences of five cases of negotiated transitions from war and the role of international mediators: South Africa, Liberia, Burundi, Kashmir, and Sri Lanka.

Following the suggestion of the historian Peter Parish, these essays probe "the edges" of slavery and the sectional conflict. The authors seek to recover forgotten stories, exceptional cases and contested identities to reveal the forces that shaped America, in the era of "the Long Civil War," c.1830-1877. Offering an unparalleled scope, from the internal politics of southern households to trans-Atlantic propaganda battles, these essays address the fluidity and negotiability of racial and gendered identities, of criminal and transgressive behaviors, of contingent, shifting loyalties and of the hopes of freedom that found expression in refugee camps, court rooms and literary works.

Set against the backdrop of the collapsing Cold War world, this monograph draws on entirely new documentary evidence to chronicle almost two years worth of UN-led peace talks to end the civil war in El Salvador. Presented in 'moment-to-moment' fashion, hitherto private notes and interviews with the chief UN, American and Salvadoran negotiators demonstrate that the key to enduring peace was to restructure relations between the country's powerful entrepreneurs and the armed forces.

STOPPING THE KILLING travels from Latin America and the United States to Africa and the Middle East to grapple with the critical issue of civil wars and their powerful impact on the international scene.