International Crisis and Conflict

by Richard Clutterbuck

Despite the collapse of Communism and the end of the Cold War, the world is probably more unstable than it has ever been since the 1950s. There are currently more than 30 armed conflicts in progress. Since 1989, 27 new democratic republics have come into being from the break-up of the USSR and Yugoslavia, all containing potentially explosive ethnic minorities. Nationalism and religious fanaticism are as strong as ever. A national leader's prime instinct is to stay in power, and to do this he/she must ensure national survival and be seen to advance national interests. These three factors override all others in international crisis management, and all three were very apparent in Europe in 1914, Cuba in 1962, the Falklands in 1982, the Gulf in 1990-91 and in Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia in 1990-93. In this book, Richard Clutterbuck examines the experience of crisis management and war in history, mainly through 24 case-studies, culminating in the Gulf, Somalia, Cambodia and Bosnia in 1990-93. He examines the disintegration of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, the opening of West European frontiers, and the conflicts arising or likely to arise from them. He considers the opportunities for resolving conflicts by the post-Cold War UN Security Council, and the enormous potential of NATO now that it is no longer tied to the Iron Curtain. He forecasts the patterns of future conflict, as well as the prospects for keeping the peace. This is a book that no serious student of politics or history can afford not to read. It is lively, free from jargon and pragmatic, so it will stimulate the thoughts of every citizen of every age who is concerned about the future peace of the world.

277 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Major General Richard Lewis Clutterbuck, CB, OBE was a British soldier and academic. He was one of the best known and most respected counter-insurgency theorists of the 1960s and early 1970s. In 1966, while he was still a serving officer in the British Army, his best-known book, 'The Long Long War: Counterinsurgency In Malaya And Vietnam', was published, immediately establishing his reputation as one of the foremost writers on the subject. He eventually earned a PhD, and after his retirement from military service in 1972, Dr. Clutterbuck lectured on political violence and related subjects at Exeter University. In his later years, he was closely associated with the St. Andrews Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, which was founded in 1994.