II. The Regionalization of Conflict
It has become commonplace among scholars and policy-
makers to assert that the latter half of the 20th century
witnessed a decline in the incidence of interstate war and
a rise in the frequency of intrastate war. Certainly in the
post-Cold War era the international community has
directed its attention and resources toward peacefully
resolving what have been typically understood as civil
wars – achieving considerable success in some cases
while seemingly inexplicably failing in others. However,
as knowledge, policy, and practice inevitably lag behind
real world events, an important reason for failure within
these interventions can often be traced back to fuzzy
assumptions made about the nature of conflict itself. For
example, while the apparently “civil” wars in regions
such as West Africa exacerbated one another through
prominent regional dimensions such as transborder war
economies, the regionalization of conflict has until
recently attracted scant attention among academic and
policymaking communities. As this section strongly
implies, getting the analysis right is a necessary precursor
for effective intervention.
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