![define insurgency define insurgency](https://static.dw.com/image/15840069_6.jpg)
![define insurgency define insurgency](https://slidetodoc.com/presentation_image/7ea7216b19e6fb2b1431346ffa56a519/image-5.jpg)
They argue that the causes for such conflicts are primarily economic and not grievance based. One of the most influential studies on civil war is that by Collier and Hoeffler. Greed versus Grievance: the causes of civil war They estimate that 20% of nations have experienced at least ten years of civil war. The black and white line chart from Blattman and Miguel (2010) shows the distribution of the number of years countries experienced conflict between 19. It neatly displays the variance of civil wars: many conflicts are relatively short-lived but some have lasted decades the deadliest civil war had 600 combatant deaths per thousand while the lowest ranked conflict had only 1.5. The coloured chart is from The Economist and displays a ranking of the 100 deadliest civil wars and internal conflicts since WWII. These two graphs show just how common internal wars are and the high degree of persistence in these conflicts.
![define insurgency define insurgency](https://radiopatriot.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/screen-shot-2020-04-30-at-4.55.45-pm.png)
Decolonization from the 1940s through the 1970s gave birth to a large number of financially, bureaucratically, and militarily weak states. The prevalence of internal war in the 1990s is mainly the result of an accumulation of protracted conflicts since the 1950s rather than a sudden change associated with a new, post-Cold War international system. James Fearon and David Laitin explain the peak in the 1990s as the result of the accumulation of protracted conflicts: 2
![define insurgency define insurgency](https://image1.slideserve.com/1861532/insurgent-l.jpg)
During this peak, around a third of countries in Sub-Saharan Africa were engaged in civil war. These two graphs show precisely how the number of civil wars increased from the end of the Second World War before peaking in the 1990s and the distribution of conflict lengths. Both the Korean War and Vietnam War began as civil wars but ended up drawing in resources from the US and Soviet Union. The struggle for global superiority between the United States and the Soviet Union led both to engage in proxy wars with one another. The rising number and intensity of conflicts between the end of WWII and the collapse of the Berlin Wall (1945-89) is associated with the Cold War. What is more, many modern conflicts in the Middle East (both civil and conventional wars) have their roots in the division of the Ottoman Empire. The collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917 led to the Russian Civil War and the deaths of millions of people. The end of the WWI saw the collapse of the Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, German and Russian Empires, as well as the beginning of the end of the remaining European powers. Over the course of the 20th century, the deaths from civil wars (as defined by PRIO-UPSALA dataset) first spike at the end of the First World War, and flare up again in the interwar years as well as the end of the Second World War.