Wars Without End : Competitive Intervention, Escalation Control, and Protracted Conflict

Despite their untold human suffering, widespread destruction and loss, and far-reaching destabilization, the fires of many of the world's most violent civil wars continue to burn.In light of their devastating effects, how can we explain the intractability of costly and stalemated, yet seemingly endless, civil wars?By situating internal conflicts within the broader geopolitical environment in which they take place, Wars Without End provides an answer.It highlights the critical role of competitive intervention--opposing, simultaneous transfers of military assistance from different third-party states to both government and rebel combatants--in the dynamics, duration, and global prevalence of internal conflict.Providing a comprehensive theoretical and empirical account of this form of external meddling, it brings together battlefield bargaining dynamics, the escalatory pressures of interstate competition, and the systemic dimensions of geopolitical rivalry in civil wars to explain how prot