Since the end of the Cold War and the immersion into our current globalization age, prevalent paradigms and assumptions of international relations have been challenged by new phenomena of international security that include intermestic (international + domestic) threats and issues, such as the recurrence of civil wars, the devolution of organized violence by states in favor of nonstate actors, and the proliferation of ungoverned spaces around and across the world. These three books offer novel, critical, and alternative ways to examine and discern new security issues and the way they affect the functioning (and malfunctioning) of nation-states. Contrary to the mainstream assumptions and the conventional wisdom about zero-sum relations between nation-states and other (nonstate) actors in the global arena, the authors of these books argue that these relations are complex and complicated, have mixed motivations, and should be assessed in their specific historical contexts. Moreover, the three books together contribute to the literature of international security by suggesting and clarifying new concepts, such as “ungoverned spaces,” “soft sovereignty,” “proxy warriors” (or “state-sponsored militias”), and “soft intervention” (in civil wars).
The volume edited by Anne L. Clunan and Harold A. Trinkunas examines the vast, universal, and multifaceted reality of “ungoverned spaces,” which the editors see as alternative governance structures to state authority in an age of globalization and “softened sovereignty.” The contributing authors sidestep the obvious question about threats to international security stemming from nonstate actors. Instead, following in the footsteps of James Scott's work, they aim to examine the conditions for the evolution of alternative governance structures in contested spaces. In empirical terms, the net cast by the authors is vast, including physical (territorial) and nonphysical (virtual) spaces; economically developed and underdeveloped economies; and a wide range of security issues, “ranging from flows of [weapons of mass destruction], narcotics, migrants, dirty money and cyberdata to terrorists, drug lords, warlords, insurgents, and radical Islamist groups to human privacy and security” (Clunan and Trinkunas, p. 7). The result is fascinating and overwhelming, but at the same time it is theoretically insufficient. Although the suggested aim of this edited volume is to highlight the conditions under which the concern about ungoverned spaces has emerged along with concomitant demands for authority and security, it is very hard to generalize across those different issue areas, ranging from tribal, sectarian, or clan-based governance in places like Waziristan in Pakistan to the regulation of the Internet and global finance.
The well-documented and argued chapters in Ungoverned Spaces take us on a universal tour: Starting with the relative failure of Al Qaeda in a weak and failed state (Somalia), the reader is then led to the criminal networks in Latin American cities, on to “subterranean” (alternative) forms of sovereignty in Johannesburg, South Africa, followed by illicit trafficking of goods and even nuclear materials in Afghanistan, the Caucasus, and Latin America. Later chapters confront the reader with virtual spaces, economic issues, and the regulation of cyberspace. The main argument of the book, which is empirically demonstrated throughout its diverse chapters, is that the emergence of these alternative spaces of governance is a result of states' deliberate policy choice, which are, in turn, linked to both international (external) and domestic (subnational, local) dynamics. Moreover, those ungoverned spaces are not necessarily sites of anarchy and chaos; instead, such spaces offer alternative governance structures (of relative order) to malfunctioning states. This argument echoes an ongoing research project conducted by Thomas Risse in Germany about “governance in areas of limited statehood.” Clunan and Trinkunas's book is a fascinating work on this important topic. At the same time, its presentation could have benefited from a tighter and more focused theoretical framework, to better make sense of this ecumenical phenomenon.
The very same idea of a mixed-motive relationship that includes both conflict and cooperation between nation-states and nonstate actors (in the form of militias) is addressed by Ariel I. Ahram in his book about the phenomenon of “proxy warriors.” Contemporary global politics in many different regions, especially in the Third World, is characterized by some form of devolution of state control over the monopoly of the use of violence to the benefit of nonstate actors, which are involved in both civil and international wars. Proxy Warriors focuses on three developing countries (Indonesia, Iraq, and Iran) and suggests a theory that aims to explain the variance of Third World military development “by situating generic mechanisms of institutional change in specific contextual space” (Ahram, p. 4).
The book offers two major arguments. The first is that the devolution of the state's use of violence in favor of militias depends on different legacies of decolonization, and in particular whether the decolonization process took the form of a violent insurrection or was conducted peacefully, through negotiations. For instance, if guerrillas were actively engaged around the time of decolonization, the new postcolonial states tended to transform them, after independence, from anticolonial insurgents into pro-state militias (as in the case of Indonesia).
The second argument refers to the impact of the international environment on the security situation following independence. For instance, if states face strong external competitors and an imminent threat of war (as in the case of several Middle Eastern countries, such as Iran and Iraq), then they are forced to prefer a centralized military format to avoid external predation. By contrast, if the international environment tends to be more peaceful (as in the Latin American case), either because of external great-power intervention or the relative impotence of potential rivals, then the persistence of state-sponsored militias is more likely. By combining both arguments, Ahram offers an elegant and persuasive theory that explains the paradoxical trade-offs between internal (domestic) and external (international) security, referring to the complex relationship between states and nonstate actors as one of simultaneous conflict and cooperation. Moreover, like Clunan and Trinkunas, Ahram also argues that those nonstate actors, who are usually implicated in atrocities, might play a more positive role by providing alternative forms of security and stability, against the background of failing or weak states.
To sum up, both books suggest a similar policy conclusion: that the dynamics of competition among various domestic and international forces provide incentives for nation-states to rely on nonstate actors (militias, guerrillas, even criminal gangs) instead of maximizing their control over violence, which seems an impossible endeavor anyway. The three empirical chapters in Ahram's book are rich and compelling, though I am not certain whether one could extrapolate from them the general conclusions offered in the first chapter. Moreover, in his search for a general regional pattern, the author offers sweeping and overstated generalizations about the Middle East and Latin America.
The aftermath of civil wars, an issue mentioned in passing in the aforementioned books, is the main theme of Matthew Hoddie and Caroline A. Hartzell's edited volume on the required conditions and alternative means by which third parties in the “international community” might help post–civil war societies to build vested interests in their fragile efforts to achieve peace. In this sense, the authors ask three major research questions: a) What are the interests of the local actors that have to be addressed in order to transform them into stakeholders of peace? b) What positive role can the international community play in creating stakeholders for a future stable peace? c) What are the policy implications that follow from those third-party actors?
Like the previous books reviewed, the editors of and contributors to Strengthening Peace in Post–Civil War States take a critical view that goes beyond a simple focus on peacekeeping and advocates two major tactics to transform the preferences of local actors: “restructuring institutions” and “soft intervention.” The chapters dealing with restructuring institutions offer interesting and perhaps “politically incorrect” insights, such as the preference for stability over a fast track to democracy, and the recognition that institutions might need to adapt and change as the peace process evolves and becomes rooted over time. Conversely, the chapters dealing with soft intervention focus on nonmilitary incentives and disincentives, such as economic statecraft, that are available to third parties in their quest to change the preferences of the local actors, whether they are the political elites, the civil society, or the local and prominent economic actors. At the end of the book there is a useful summary of the strategies needed to create and recreate “stakeholders” in the peace process in the aftermath of civil wars, relying on a combination of the restructuring of domestic political institutions and the use of soft-intervention tactics. The goal is to build a stable peace out of the wreckage of the civil war, and that goal might remain elusive, and so perhaps the parties should settle for a “negative” type of peace, which might be institutionalized later on.
What general conclusions can we draw from the reading of these three books? First, in our globalized age, we have to reject zero-sum thinking when discussing the relations between states and nonstate actors, in both developed and developing countries. Second, issues of international security nowadays combine domestic and international dimensions, which are inextricably related. Thus, third-party involvement and intervention is crucial for understanding the complex and sometimes symbiotic relations between states and nonstate military (or paramilitary) groups, as well as the fate of peace agreements in the aftermath of civil wars. Third, historical legacies and the international context remain crucial in making sense of these types of relationships. Fourth, strengthening states and advocating democracy are not panaceas that can easily overcome the threats posed by the “new” (nonconventional) security issues. Fifth, all of these books suggest a similar policy perspective that carries clear normative implications: States have to learn how to live—and even coexist, cooperate, and prosper—with alternative forms and spaces of governance, including actors that use power and violence, sometimes in connivance with states but sometimes in collusion and conflict with them. And finally, while nation-states—especially weak and failed ones—are major contributors to the problems of international security, they are also essential contributors to the most feasible solutions to these problems.
