A FAREWELL TO ARMS: NON-MILITARISATION AND THE PARADOX OF MILITARY INSECURITY

Abstract

A FAREWELL TO ARMS: NON-MILITARISATION AND THE PARADOX OF MILITARY INSECURITY Nathan James Frank Williams Abstract A small number of scholars and political leaders have praised the economic and social benefits of 'non-militarisation' - the policy of possessing no national armed forces. While 26 states currently practice this policy, the security implications of non-militarisation have, until now, largely escaped critical assessment. However, it is this very question of security in the absence of a military which is perhaps the decisive issue for any state considering non- militarisation. Barbey's (2015b) study suggests that, since World War II, non-militarised states have been immune to interstate war. However, since World War II, intrastate war has proven to be both the more frequent and destructive form of warfare. Using a mixed-methods approach this dissertation seeks to quantify and explain the causal effect of non-militarisation on intrastate conflict. It begins by testing the hypothesis that non-militarised states suffer less years of intrastate war than states with a military, using cross-sectional logit analysis on all country-years between 1989-2008. It consistently finds a sizable negative relationship, suggesting that in a given year the probability of intrastate war occurring in a...