SWBP: Conflicts

SWBP: Solutions for the World's Biggest Problems

a book I'm reading, 2007, edited by Bjorn Lomborg,
Director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center,
Chapter 12, Conflicts, by Paul Collier, Oxford University
Summary and Commentary

You wanna that I should whack the guy, boss?

Motivated! Dedicated! Ooh Rah!

Rich countries and poor countries face differing security challenges. This chapter deals with poor countries (whose challenges are low-pro). Poor countries mainly face civil wars and coups. Security has received less attention than health and education, for these countries. The risks and responses to civil wars and coups are highly costly. New advances in 'defense economics' , employing cost-benefit analysis, offer promise to organizations like the permanent UN Peacebuilding Commission. Cost-effective international interventions could have enormous payoffs.

The author recommends 5 interventions:

1. increasing aid

2. making aid conditional upon limits to military spending

3. expanding peacekeeping forces &

4. guaranteeing security using 'over the horizon' measures

5. all of the above (packages of some or all of 1-4 -as reinforcing complementarities- to meet the specific needs of countries)

as solutions to the 3 'scourges' faced by poor countries experiencing conflict:

1.civil war

2.coups

3.military spending

1.Civil War

In poor countries, as I said, civil war is more likely. They also last longer and are more likely to recur. The economy can be devastated and large populations displaced. A typical civil war in a poor country costs around $64B USD.

3 recent developments have raised the risk for new outbreaks of civil war:

1. the discovery of oil in fragile states (like Chad)

2. the high price of primary commodities, and

3. fragile settlements that ended a number of recent civil wars

Mineral/oil resources may not benefit the local population, or primarily anyway, and add ethnic differences to the mix, and militias or guerilla groups secede from the state or try to take over.

Fragile settlements need real incentives for the combatants to maintain the peace, and effective sanctions against those who break agreements. Basic carrot and stick stuff. The continued presence of poor and brutalized sectors, inured to violence, in conditions that led to the conflict which are rarely more than suppressed by one side's victory, requires the building of a prosperous and stable state.

Gvt. expenditure, after war, becomes skewed toward military spending. This is in a context of many lives lost, disease, and population movements which can have a destabilizing effect on neighbors.

Internationally, civil wars can influence drugs, AIDS, and terrorism, too. There is credible though not decisive evidence that AIDS originated in an African civil war due to the dangerous conjunction of mass rape and mass migration.

2.Coups

They are far more likely in poor countries. In the past 30 years, there have been over 200 coup attempts (in Africa alone). Quantitative economic research has been done. Coups reduce growth by around 3% of GDP during the first year of the coup, and it lasts awhile, so they're costly. The mere threat of a coup inflicts costs, with gvts. pre-emptively making military expenditures. And get this: aid 'significantly and substantially' increases the risk of one taking place.

The root causes are similar to civil war: instability, poverty, and disaffection (plus arms). And they can lead to continuing conflict; still, there's quite a difference between a drawn-out civil war and a (mere, relatively speaking) coup.

3. Military Spending

Also the subject of quantitative research (and thus meriting mention in this mighty book), military spending does not reduce the risk of civil war, AND, in post-conflict situations, sharply increases the risk. Spending by one country results in spending by neigbors, which spreads to entire regions. About 11% of aid 'inadvertently leaks' into military budgets, which makes aid interventions problematic. Aid, military spending, coups, and civil wars are thus interconnected.

I'm going to quote an entire paragraph:

"Military spending in countries where civil war has broken out is typically increased by 1.8% of GDP. At the end of the war, expenditure drops in general by only 0.5%. At a time when a country needs all possible resources to rebuild itself, an increased proportion of the national income is spent in ways that do nothing to raise the welfare level of the population. Since poor countries are far more prone to civil conflict than rich ones, anything that depresses development and income becomes a risk factor for further violence. Little wonder, then, that in post-conflict nations, there is a much greater risk of a new war breaking out."

INTERVENTIONS

1.Increasing aid

Economic recovery is the surest way of reducing the risk of further conflict. Aid, unfortunately, finances additional military spending and increases the threat of a coup (unless it is made conditional, or paired with other interventions). Beyond the early post-conflict years, when institutions are weak and money is likely to go to unintended purposes (requiring oversight), post-conflict aid is normally unusually productive.

2. Introducing new conditions for aid

Conditions, such as not exceeding a particular level of military spending, or allowing practical intervention to maintain stability. The cost:benefit ration is estimated at better than 1:2 for eliminating increased military spending, and it's associated reduction in security risk.

3. Expanding the role of peacekeeping forces

An international peacekeeping force is the most useful replacement for increased military spending. Professional soldiers, with no allegiance to any warring faction, bring stability without the destabilizing downside of armed partisans. The more that is spent on peacekeeping forces, the lower the risk of further conflict, the Copenhagen Consensus is proud to be the first to report. The numbers? Doubling expenditure per inhabitant per year over a decade from 5 to 10 bucks reduces the risk/likelihood/probability of conflict by around 15 percentage points. The cost of a typical post-conflict civil war is $8B USD, but the cost of peacekeeping is 1.1B, so the ratio is around 1:7. Wars make the news more than successful peacekeeping, but the investment is easily justifiable. Peacekeepers must be of sufficient size and capability.

4. Security-Guarantees: Guaranteeing security (from 'over-the-horizon')

Okay, this phrase is a bit weird. It's troops at the ready in their home countries for rapid intervention, should there be any flare-ups. France did this for it's territories in Africa between 1965-2005. Their risk of conflict was only one quarter what it would have been otherwise.This reduction in risk was worth about 5 billion, across 13 countries, for a cost-benefit ratio of about 1:5. Let's hear it for the bean-counting statisticians and economists who calculated this stuff!

(To tell you the truth, I don't actually understand it, but I'm taking P.C.'s word for it) It worked for the UK in Sierra Leone, too.

5. Packages

Hopefully war torn countries will say, "I like your package!", lol. Sorry, couldn't resist. Anyway, -peacekeeping and aid complement each other.

-Aid and ceilings on military spending complement each other.

-Security guarantees and aid complement each other. (Complement is different from compliment). Security guarantees eventually replace peacekeeping, for less money.

-Peacekeeping + security guarantees complement ceilings.

These complementarities can be quantified and subjected to CBA (cost benefit analysis). He says there is a strong economic case for them. (Nike says Just Do It)