Civil Wars and Interventions

4 Credits.

Why do countries experience civil wars? How can the international community act and try to prevent, or stop, such wars? The course revolves around these two basic but fundamental questions to understand international security nowadays. Civil wars have been a constant feature of the contemporary global security environment across different continents, and beginning with the end of the Cold War, there has a been a spike in international activism through UN mandated peacekeeping and peacebuilding missions. This story is fraught with some partial stories of success and failures. The course aims to address these themes and try to and respond to these questions:? What are civil wars, and why do they occur?? What strategies armed actors use in civil wars? Why do they often target civilians?? What tools does the international community has to prevent and stop civil wars?? How effective are international interventions in stopping wars?? What measures can international actors undertake to build a sustainable peace?The class is divided in 2 parts. Part 1 deals with conflict analysis and discusses what civil wars are, the major theories discussing the causes of civil wars and approaches to the study of civil wars’ dynamics (e.g., intensity and types of violence and wars’ duration). Part 2 deals with international interventions, addressing peacekeeping and peacebuilding as they evolved through the decades and assessing the factors that can explain success and failure of such activities. Through the two sections, different case studies – such as Bosnia, Colombia, Lebanon, the Sahel region and Syria, will be analyzed through both instructors’ lectures and brief students’ presentations.