ABSTRACT
The end of the Cold War fundamentally altered the place of civil war in international politics, as well as in political science. In the realms of policy, internal conflict is no longer a proxy in a global struggle for influence between superpowers. In the absence of that dynamic, however, the interests and the normative role of the international community in internal conflict zones is still being debated. Contemporaneously, the 1990s and early 2000s have seen a flurry of media and scholarly interest in civil war. Today it is commonplace to hear that the primary global security threat is not a war between powerful states but zones of internal conflict and contested or absent governance where illegal drugs, human and weapons trafficking, HIV/AIDS, famine, terrorism, and banditry can thrive.
