Book

Description

International Relations was born as an official academic field of inquiry in 1919 with the founding of the first IR professorship in Wales. Its main directive was to find out why states go to war. In the begining war was simply between different states and was somewhat clear cut. However, over the passage of time new forms of sovereignty came to be. With them the concept of war also became much more complex than what it used to be. Civil war is one of these newer forms where instead of attacks from the outside, two or more factions inside a state start attacking one another. At the moment, Yemen and Syria are actually wresetling with this issue. instead of being a united front against outside threats, as it should be, they have divided into factions and attack each other from the inside. In such situations, the civilians including women and children are the ones who pay the heaviest price. What makes it worse is that such volatile states make greate candidates for a field for proxy wars. Each faction is receiving (un)official support from a foreign power. In other words, while Civil War is a lose- lose game for the factions in the front lines, it is a win-lose game for the foreign intervening parties. Therefore, unless these factions come to terms with one another, the war will go on. This book is an attempt to provide evidence for this argument using historical data and the basics of game theory. War is a nasty business but Civil war is much nastier. In war soldeirs fight and there is a winner and a loser (even thouhg sometimes everyone is a loser). In Civil War, however, there are never any winners.