Kimberly Marten

Warlordism in Comparative Perspective

Warlordism creates significant problems in failed states: it impedes the development of stable and secure societies, thwarts economic growth, and creates new threats to international security. Through a comparative study of four seemingly disparate casesmedieval Europe, Republican China, and Somalia and Afghanistan in the mid-2000sit is possible to develop an inductive, generalizable definition of warlordism. Warlordism emerges when armed men seize small slices of territory in disintegrating states for their own benefit, using charisma and patronage ties to cement their local authority, and disrupting commerce and investment through their fragmentary rule. Two causal factors were necessary for the demise of warlordism in medieval Europe and Republican China: the presence of a powerful and aggrieved economic interest group, and the appearance of a transformative idea from outside the existing system that supported the interest groups actions. If this same causal relationship holds true today, then warlordism will be more quickly eliminated in Somalia than in Afghanistan. The international community can take action to help eliminate warlordism, but change ultimately depends on domestic factors and will likely be violent.

Base Motives The Political Economy of Okinawa’s Antimilitarism

The Japanese prefecture of Okinawa has witnessed a great deal of protest activity against the U.S. military bases on the island. Antibase sentiment is regularly expressed by the local press and the local cultural and educational institutions. A brutal 1995 crime committed by U.S. military personnel on the island inflamed public opinion against the bases. Yet the U.S. base presence endures, and the antibase activity of the late 1990s was defused rather quickly into tacit continuing acceptance by Okinawans of the base presence, even as U.S. bases elsewhere in the world closed in response to protest activity. What explains this puzzle? The authors argue that the Japanese government’s unique system of “burden payments” provides incentives to Okinawans both to highlight the negative effects of the U.S. presence and to support the continuation of the bases for economic reasons. The trilateral base-bargaining relationship serves the interests of Washington, Tokyo, and a politically critical majority of Okinawans themselves

Statebuilding and Force: The Proper Role of Foreign Militaries

Abstract Recent military interventions, both peace operations authorized by the United Nations and actions by individual countries, have aimed at helping build new or reconstituted states. The legitimacy and success of these state-building interventions are often contested by local actors. Yet state-like structures are needed to ensure the rule of law and economic growth. This paper argues for a new approach: to direct the use of foreign force toward roles that helped states emerge as the most successful governance structures in historical Europe, by defending populations from outside attack, protecting them from banditry and violence, and enforcing predictable rules for commerce and civil life (while training local forces to assume these duties). This approach focuses attention on the practical need to prepare military forces for both traditional defence and police-like roles.

Defending against Anarchy: From War to Peacekeeping in Afghanistan

If Washington does not reevaluate its current approach, Afghanistans postwar stability might prove short‐lived. Heres a look at what kind of peacekeeping force is needed in Afghanistan, how it would best operate, and why the United States should lead it.

Putin's Choices: Explaining Russian Foreign Policy and Intervention in Ukraine

Russian President Vladimir Putins evolving policies toward Ukraine have continued to surprise almost everyone. It was clear from the start that he considered the February 2014 ouster of Ukrainian ...

Informal Political Networks and Putin’s Foreign Policy: The Examples of Iran and Syria

While many analysts use an informal political network perspective to describe Russian domestic politics under Vladimir Putin, almost none have applied that framework to Russian foreign policy. This article explains why Russia is a useful case to use in developing such a framework, and then proposes a preliminary set of arguments about what a foreign policy based on informal politics would look like. While a realism or state interest framework still explains a lot, this article argues that an informal politics perspective explains Russian actions better than realism can alone, and explains why a personalized network approach is different from a more classic interest-group model. It cites a variety of examples from the Putin era to begin to illustrate the arguments, and then provides longer illustrative case-studies of Russian policy toward Iran and Syria to show how the arguments can be used in practice. It concludes by asking whether the perspective is useful in understanding Putin’s actions in Ukraine in 2014.

Reformed or Deformed? Patronage Politics, International Influence, and the Palestinian Authority Security Forces

A great deal of international attention and funding was given to reform and training of the Palestinian Authority Security Forces (PASF), starting with the Oslo Accords process in 1993 and accelerating with the advent of Fayyadism and the expulsion of the Palestinian Authority government from Gaza in 2007. Many donors and other supporters in the US, the EU, and Israel claimed this process as a success story, and indeed from 2008–2010 local conditions looked hopeful in the fragile, post-conflict West Bank proto-state. But soon unresolved political conflicts inside the West Bank encouraged patronage-based violence to reemerge within the security forces, and the fractured approach of the international community aggravated the situation. By 2013 reform had stalled. This article explores the history of patronage politics in the PASF and uses the Palestinian example to highlight the tensions inherent in contested visions of security, when international donors define success in terms of anti-terrorism rather than genuine domestic security governance.

From Kabul to Kandahar: The Canadian Forces and Change

This article analyzes the civil-military and political-bureaucratic issues and relationships, both conflictual and cooperative, surrounding the deployment of the Canadian Forces to Kandahar. It examines the role played by former Chief of Defence Staff General Rick Hillier in the Kandahar decision, and chronicles the development and fate of two of Hilliers organizational innovations, CEFCOM and SAT-A. It also explores the efforts of the Manley Panel to “civilianize” Canadas Afghanistan mission and assesses the effectiveness of two associated administrative innovations: the Afghanistan Task Force inside the Privy Council Office, and the RoCK (Representative of Canada in Kandahar) on the ground. While the Kandahar decision may ultimately have been a mistake for Canada, and while bureaucratic conflict pervaded much of the atmosphere in Ottawa, whole-of-government cooperation often succeeded on the ground in Kandahar, and its lessons need to be captured in organizational memory.

The ‘KGB State’ and Russian Political and Foreign Policy Culture

ABSTRACT This article reviews a variety of historical analyses of the KGB and its follow-on organizations to determine whether and how its organizational culture may be reflected in current Russian politics and foreign policy. Using the suggestion by some analysts that a ‘soft coup’ using KGB methods of kompromat may have occurred in the late Yeltsin era, it analyzes how remnants of the KGB organization may be influencing the directions of President Vladimir Putin’s actions. It concludes with an argument about what this might mean for Russia after Putin and about why Russia’s unique intelligence culture may make a comparative theory of ‘intelligence states’ difficult to create.

Warlords and Governance

This chapter examines the roles that warlords play in the governance of violence and crime. Warlords often cooperate with state leaders to forego violence (Chojnacki and Branovic 2011). In doing so they make informal bargains with leaders in their own capitals and bureaucratic representatives from their own states, as well as with foreign states and leaders on their borders and beyond. They also cooperate with various non-state actors, including other warlords, foreign businesses that make profitable investments on their territories, and foreign aid providers who sometimes depend on contracts with them for security provision. Furthermore, warlords can choose to protect their surrounding populations from bandit violence that would otherwise be unleashed by competing armed groups. In that sense, warlords can contribute to the provision of public goods. In all of these senses, warlords can contribute to the creation of one form or another of at least temporary order.