How do wars end? A strategic perspective

We know very little about how civil wars end. Harrison Wagner has argued that negotiated settlements of civil wars are likely to break down because segments of power-sharing governments retain the capacity for resorting to civil war while victory destroys the losers' organization, making it very difficult to resume the war. An analysis of a data set of 91 post-1945 civil wars generally supports this hypothesis but only in wars over identity issues. Moreover, while military victories may be less likely to break down than negotiated settlements of identity civil wars, they are also more likely to be followed by acts of genocide. Outsiders concerned with minimizing violence thus face a dilemma. Show more