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A ‘Global Civil War’
Stein Tønneson
Full text version
Tromsø Papers
Centre for Peace Studies at the University of Tromsø hereby presents Working Papers No 4.
This paper is written by the director of PRIO (Peace Research Institute Oslo), Stein Tønneson. He argues that the conflict between Al Qaeda and the United States may be analysed as a ‘global civil war’ since the conflict cannot be labelled neither an ‘international war’, nor a ‘civil war’. Tønneson elaborates at some length on the foundations for his use of the concept global civil war, namely Qaeda’s trans-national character and the globalisation of US home security. Possible counter-arguments like the conflict not being a war, and not being new are investigated - and refuted - before Tønneson concludes by advancing a series of counter-strategies to diminish the risk – and escalation - of an eventual global civil war.
Tromsø, November 2002
CPS Working Papers:
No 1 Three articles by Johan Galtung:
What is Peace Studies?
The Epistemology and Methodology of Peace Studies
Constructing a Daoist Social Science Epistemology
No 2 Arne Kommisrud:
State-building, Nationalities, and Conflict Dynamics in the Soviet and Habsburg Empires. A Rokkanian Approach.
No 3 Johan Galtung:
Toward Peaceful Worlds - A Guide to Peace
No 4 Stein Tønneson:
A ‘Global Civil War’
Editors:
Jørgen Johansen, jorgenj@peace.uit.no
Vidar Vambheim, vidarv@peace.uit.no
Rune Henriksen, runeh@peace.uit.no
Address:
Centre for Peace Studies
University of Tromsø
9037 Tromsø,
Norway
www.peace.uit.no
www.transcend.org
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