Abstract:

The purpose of this dissertation is to identify the conditions under which foreign countries intervene in civil wars. For this purpose, I contend that we should consider four dimensions of civil war intervention. The first dimension to consider is the civil war itself. The characteristics of civil war are assumed to have some impact on a third party's decision regarding intervention. Second, the characteristics of intervening states should be considered. Their domestic politics, including institutional settings, should be taken into account if we want to see how their decisions regarding intervention are made. Third, the relationship between the host country and the intervening country needs to be analyzed. Their formal alliances and ethnic ties are assumed to be factors in decision-making around foreign intervention. Moreover, following the realist perspective, differences in military capability between the target country and the potential intervener will also have an impact on the decision-making process. Finally, the relationship between the intervening states should be considered. This consideration is not only limited to the cases where there is more than one intervener. As we can infer from extended deterrence theory, the existence of another country backing one side in the civil war will yield a different decision on the part of a potential intervener. Previous studies have neglected this dimension. In most previous studies about foreign intervention, ail interveners have been treated equally.

I found that the intervention decision calculus changes as a reaction to earlier intervention by other countries in the same civil war. Thus, I conclude that relationships between interveners are a critical aspect of foreign intervention. These findings suggest that the model and the framework used in this dissertation better reflect the reality of foreign intervention in civil wars than previous studies on this subject.