“The results show that outsiders are much more motivated to join a fight if they have a vested financial interest.” No country joins another country’s civil war without balancing the cost against their own strategic interests and what possible benefits there are. “Military intervention is expensive and risky. “We wanted to go beyond conspiracy theories and conduct a careful, nuanced analysis to see whether oil acts as an economic incentive in the decision on whether to intervene in an internal war in another country,” explained Sekeris. They found that about two-thirds of these wars saw intervention by another country or outside organization and that the most common reason for this intervention, “over and above historical, geographical or ethnic ties”, was oil. In their research, the UK team - Petros Sekeris of University of Portsmouth, Vincenzo Bove from the University of Warwick and Kristian Skrede Gleditsch of the University of Essex - looked at 69 countries that experienced civil conflicts between 19. In “Oil above Water - Economic Interdependence and Third-party Intervention” the researchers explain how they modelled the decision-making process used by third-party countries to determine whether to interfere in civil wars and examined their economic motives. For example, a lack of oil is “said to be behind the absence of intervention in Syria now and in Rwanda in 1994”, say two of the authors of a new Journal of Conflict Resolution paper.Ĭivil wars have made up more than 90 percent of all armed conflicts since World War II and, during that period, countries that need oil have found reasons to militarily intervene in countries with a good supply of it, according to the study. Likewise, the researchers say, third party states may decide not to step into ongoing intrastate conflicts if there is no crude incentive. Finally, there is strong evidence to back up a popular conspiracy theory - oil is often the motivating reason that one country interferes in another country’s war.
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