Course Description:
All wars end, but they rarely end as expected. This course will examine the dynamics and challenges of war termination and post-conflict environments specifically with an eye towards informing national security policymaking.
While appreciating the enormous human suffering brought about by war, this class will begin with a short discussion of theoretical literature on why wars begin and survey the various factors, which shape the duration, lethality, and termination of civil and international wars. Next, we investigate the transition from conflict to post-conflict. During this part of the course, we discuss the conditions under which belligerents agree to terminate a conflict and examine the role of third-party actors. In doing so, we consider the complete spectrum of conflict terminations, including military victories by governments or rebels, negotiated settlements, stalemates, and ceasefires, and we explore empirical cases of recent post-conflict environments across multiple types of armed conflicts, from major global wars and regional struggles to civil wars and insurgencies.
Even short, decisive wars can produce post-conflict environments bloodier than the war itself, and the end of one war is frequently the beginning of another. Violence in post-conflict environments unfolds over a range of complex, often evolving motives that can be indirectly related, or even unrelated, to the original rationale for war. In the second part of the course, we examine the unique features of post-war violence, the politics and economics of reconstruction, and the challenges of rebuilding political institutions, civil society, and a durable peace. In this part of the course, we also discuss the role of various actors present in post-conflict environments, such as refugees and internally displaced peoples, the United Nations and NGOs, former combatants, and external states.
We conclude the course with an exploration of U.S. experiences in managing post-conflict environments from 1865 to the present. We then look abroad to analyze the post-Soviet Russo-Chechen Wars, discussing the trajectories of war and peace and how the ripple effects of these conflicts diffused to Syria and Ukraine, before turning to an exploration of the challenges and foreign policy instruments available to decisionmakers working to secure peace in contemporary conflicts in places like Columbia, Ukraine, Yemen, Libya, Mali, Somalia, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and elsewhere.