The State of Research on Internal War

This paper evaluates our current knowledge about the nature of internal war and some of the research being undertaken to increase this knowledge. There were 380 conflicts in the world in the 19 years following World War II, involving 101 (81 percent) of the 123 independent countries in the world. During this period, there were from 13 to 30 new conflicts each year and an average of 13.6 on-going conflicts each month, but there was no formal declaration of war in any conflict. Statistical analyses of data on conflict in many nations identify such common factors as revolution, subversion, and turmoil in internal conflict and war, diplomatic moves, and belligerency in foreign conflict, but with little replication among studies. < Typologies of internal war emphasize such characteristics as the target of revolutionary activity, identity of the revolutionaries, revolutionary goals, how the conflict started (i.e., spontaneous or calculated), whether or not the military activity was conventional in nature, and the involvement of other nations and of Communists. The crucial conceptual issues about internal war are still in the pretheoretical stage. New research on internal war should examine the interaction of the antagonists on a time-line basis, utilize reliable attitudinal data, and examine what happens after hostilities are over, since the real impact of a revolution seems to occur after rather than during the period of active combat.