Complex Political Emergencies:
A New Wor ld Disorder?

11. Introduction
Since the end of Cold War, the world has witnessed a rise in outbreaks ofviolent conflicts in various regions. From civil wars informer Yugoslaviaand Iraq tohigh profile cases in Somalia and Syria, these conflicts have developed into a prolonged
crisis that show little signs of improvement. Due to the difficulties involved in bothsolving them and defining the root causes,the international community has bestowed
upon them the label ‘complex political emergencies’.
The definition of complex political emergencies as provided by Inter-Agency
Standing Committee (IASC) is “a humanitarian crisis in a country, region or society
where there is total or considerable breakdown of authority resulting from an internal orexternal conflict and which requires an international response that goes beyond the
mandate or capacity of any single agency and/or the ongoing United Nations country
programs”1. In addition to this, the list by Goodhand and Hulme, featured in their book
From Wars to Complex Political Emergencies, includes defining characteristics such as
within-state conflicts, political origins, protracted duration, and social cleavages.2

1OCHA Orientation Handbook on Complex Emergencies, (Office for the Coordination of

Humanitarian Affairs, 1999), 6.
2Jonathan Goodhand & David Hulme, “From Wars to Complex Political Emergencies:
Understanding Conflict and Peace-building in the New World Disorder,”Third World
QuarterlyVol. 20 No.1 (1999): 16.

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The term ‘complex political emergencies’ has a relatively short history. It first
appeared in 1980s following the end of the Cold War to describe the widespread crisis
in Africa, and gained currency during the Gulf War.3

However, despite the wide usage,

it stands remaining that there are no concrete definitions for complex politicalemergencies, and many of the case studies described as such have actually little incommon with each other.
The concept of complex political emergenciescan be traced back to thediscourse ofconflicts and wars. Clausewitz defines war as a political tool with the clear
objective to “compel our enemy to do our will” 4. This definition fits what Kaldor later
describes as ‘old wars’ in her book New and Old Wars.5 As its modern counterpart, she
introducesthe concept of ‘new wars’—conflicts based on identity politics and having a
fluid, multi-actor nature.6Of course, violent conflicts dooccur outside of war as well,and not all patterns of conflicts can be explained by examining wars alone. But thediscourse of complex political emergencies is strongly related to the discourse of
warfare; as a result, many characteristics of complex political emergencies echo that ofthe ‘new wars’ as proposed by Kaldor.
3Mark Duffield, “Complex Emergencies and the Crisis of Developmentalism,”IDS

BulletinVol. 25 No.4 (1994): 3.
4Carl Von Clausewitz, On War (Princeton University Press, 1984), 75.
5Mary Kaldor, New & Old Wars (Stanford Unversiity Press, 2006), 15-32.
6Kaldor, 8-10.

3Forerunners ofthe research on complex political emergencies include Mark
Duffield. His works form the basis ofmore recent theories proposed by David Keen, oneof the most prominent scholars of contemporary conflicts in Africa. Duffield and Keenbothanalyzecomplex political emergencies as a newly developed phenomenon that
requires a more contemporary approach; underlying their views is the assumption thatmodern conflicts are of different nature from past. Goodhand and Hulme also make asimilar assertion, describing complex political emergencies as being emblematicof the“shift in patterns of violent conflict…which began around the middle of twentiethcentury”7.
In this paper, however, I argue that complex emergenciesare not a result ofchanges in the nature of conflict, but a phenomenon that emerged from a shift inperception. Global trends surrounding the conflicts have forced conflictsof today to beperceived differently from those in the past. In the following section, I will examine
global trends observed in the last five decades and analyze each of their influences on
the Western perception of conflicts.
2. Global trends and their influences
The concept of complex political emergencies is intrinsically Western in nature;

7Goodhand & Hulme, 13.

4since the responses to such crises are mainly initiated by Western governments andWestern-based international organizations, it is through their lens that the concept ofcomplex political emergencies has been created and defined.Thus we can trace theemergence and development of the concept by examining the global trends influential to
the West. Due to limited space, I will focus on four main trends that are thought to have
had the most impact: the rise of mass media, developmentalism, humanitarianism andhumanitarian relief, and neoliberal capitalism.

The Rise of Mass Media
Complex political emergencies are almost always accompanied by images ofpoverty, famine and violence,often against innocent children. The rise of mass media,
from television to journalism, has led to a widespread coverage suffering and atrocities
accompanying modern conflicts.Today, people are able to know what is happening inconflict-torn countries halfway across the globe, andconstantly exposed to gruesome
images of suffering.
The effects of the media on humanitarianism have been widely examined. In
his book Complex Emergencies, Keen addresses the effects of the media incomplexpolitical emergencies, especially regarding aid and humanitarian intervention.

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He cautions that while media coverage helps raise awareness of the crises, it can also be
used to reinforce Western superiority.8 Although it remains unclear whether media
reporting actually translates into effective action by the international community, thebroadcasting of suffering has certainly given a humanitarian face to conflicts, creating ageneral public consensus that the victims are in a state of ‘dire emergency’ that must be
addressed quickly.
The representation of suffering in the media has been further amplified byNGOs and international aid agencies. Most rely on the media togarner support and raise
funds for their causes, relyingon images of suffering in conflict-torn countries tomobilize public empathy. The iconic image of a starving African child, for example, hasbeen usedin so many campaigns directed toward developing countries it has become
almost synonymous with the continent itself. When the public read about conflicts today,
they see more than the military or political parties involved; they also see the sufferingsof the displaced refugees and harmed civilians, adding to the impression that theconflicts are multi-casual and complex.
When comparing images associated with modern conflicts to those with past
conflicts, it is important to remember that there is a myth surrounding how wars were

8David Keen, Complex Emergencies (Polity Press, 2008), 164-165

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fought in the past; we cannot say, for example, that if the mass media had existed during
the time when the so-called ‘traditional wars’ took place, with journalists on the groundand NGOs campaigning for their causes as they are today, the public would not finditself witnessing atrocities and suffering that are considered important components
oftoday’s complex political emergencies.
This newly acquired perceptive can be passed on from the general public on toauthorities: with increasing interconnectedness in today’s world, there has also been agrowing need for governments to take into consideration the public opinion when
dealing with modern crisis. Numerous studies have been conducted to measure what iscalled the CNN effect, a theory that examines the effect of media coverage on foreigninterventions by the US government.9 While a concrete correlation between the tworemains yet to be found, there is no doubt that a prevalent shift in awareness on bothindividual and state levels has been taking place.
Moral arguments aside, it can be said that the heavy representation of sufferingin the media has indeed given dimensions to conflicts that have not been acknowledged
before.

9Piers Robinson, “The CNN effect: can the news media drive foreign policy?”Review ofInternational Studies 25 (1999): 301-309.

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Developmentalism
International development, one of the major tools of foreign policy, is often
examined in close relation when dealing withforeign conflicts. The modern concept ofdevelopment has been formedmainly in the West,starting with the inaugural address for
U.S. President Harry S. Truman in 1949when he announced that benefits of industrial
progress be made available for ‘underdeveloped’ countries, and spread through thecrusades against poverty by President John F. Kennedy in the 1960s. The concept has
undergone much revision since then, but the main discourse of development remains
tied to poverty and its eradication.The turning point came in the 1970s, with the surge in
grassroots movements by the impoverished: as freedom from poverty quickly became
associated with liberation from structural oppression, development went from being aneutral, economical concept to a process that waspolitical, structural, and more
complex.10
In Complex Emergencies and the Crisis of Developmentalism, Duffield claims
that “complex emergencies challenge conventional views on development” 11 , andargues the need for a more innovative approach to the crises.Underlying his argument is
the assumption that the challenges faced by the conventional modernist view of
10Maggie Black, The No-nonsense Guide to International Development (NewInternationalist, 2007),120-124.
11Duffield, 2.

8development studies is caused by the rise of complex political emergencies. However, acomparisonof the histories of the discourse of development and complex politicalemergencies reveals a much different correlation between the two concepts:the
supposed shift in the nature of conflict took place only after the development became
perceived as political, and therefore difficult and complicated to achieve.This suggests
an opposite picture than what Duffield paints; it is not due to complex modern conflicts
that development is deemed difficult, it is because development has become perceived
as multi-causal and complicated that modern conflicts are also perceived as being
complex.
Past conflicts, including those considered as traditional wars, may have also
posed similar challengesto developmentalism as modern conflicts now do. We would
never know for sure, of course—but it is likely that modern conflicts are considered‘complex’ and ‘emergencies’only because of the context in which they are
examined.Even Duffield admits that a large part of complex political emergencies is“notan original or apt conception”12, indicating that the cause of the shift may lie somewhereoutside its nature, possibly in the framework within which it is perceived. The more
complex development is understood to be, the more complex modern conflictmay be

12Duffield, 3.
9perceivedas well.

Humanitarianism and Humanitarian Relief
Humanitarian relief, both in the form of aid and intervention, is an essential
aspect of complexpolitical emergencies, sincethey are by nature defined as a crisis that‘requires an international response’. The concept of humanitarianism gained momentum
during the World Wars with the increase in international organizations, and has today
become the core doctrine for external intervention in complex political emergencies.
The history of humanitarian interventionis closely linked to the emergence ofthe human security discourse. The discourse itself emerged in the post-Cold War era,
providing an individual-based view and a wider scope of security as opposed to the
traditional concept of security. This, combined with post-Cold War optimism for the
potential for peace, hadstrengthened the general support for humanitarian intervention.
This can be seen in the increase in emergency spending by Western states andinternational organizations even as development aid declined. 13 Despite thepast
difficulties involving operations in Kurdistan, Bosnia, Somalia, and Rwanda, and thecontroversies surrounding its legality 14 , humanitarian interventions, as opposed to

13Duffield, 3.

14Nicholas J. Wheeler, Saving Strangers: Humanitarian Intervention in International

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military interventions, came to be considered as not only moral and acceptable, butnecessary to resolving complex political emergencies.
Unfortunately, the language of ‘human security’ has often been used tolegitimize Western interventions in the form of humanitarian relief. Wheeler cites thepassing of Resolution 974 by the UN Security Council in 1995 as an example of this, bywhich“for the first time, humanitarian claims were being advanced and legitimated bymembers as justification for the use of force”15. This trend of humanitarianism has not
only helped empower international aid agencies, but also Western governments in theirforeign policies. The discourse on development itself has always been eerily reflectiveof the colonial period; the people of South, instead of savages requiring ‘civilization’,
have now become helpless beings deserving ‘development’. Even the term ‘third world’,still commonly used, is strongly reminiscent of the Cold War power dynamics.16
In the last several decades, as security became increasingly connected todevelopment through the concept of human security, the rhetoric surrounding
humanitarian relief has become even more prominent. The language of ‘failing states’
exemplifies this:claiming a state as ‘failing’ gives a greater legitimacy to humanitarian
intervention by Western states, as it is harder to argue against a breach of sovereignty
Society(Oxford University Press, 2000), 1.
15Wheeler,185.
16Black, 16.
11when the state in question is thought to be have little or no government authority at all.
Yetafundamental

question

regardinghumanitarianism

remains

unanswered:what qualifies as ‘humanitarian intervention’, and what exactly is a ‘failingstate’? Both these terms are elusive and ill-defined, and more often than not shrouded
inthe rhetoric of justification. This has led to difficulties defining the purpose andsuccess of interventions in complex political emergencies, which may have contributed
to the perception of modern conflicts as having no beginning or end.

Neoliberal capitalism
The fall of Soviet Union was perceived by many as the triumph of capitalism.
Since then, neoliberal capitalism has become the dominant paradigm of the world, withever increasing pressure on developing countries to open up their markets to the global
economy. Its influence extends into other spheresof life, as economic values
increasingly replace social and cultural ones. This trend can also be seen inthe conflictzoneswhere government authority has collapsed: capitalistic values gain currency associal and political institutions deteriorate.
Conflict entrepreneursare prime examples. Embodied by people such as arms
dealers, warlords and drug dealers, conflict entrepreneurs often sustain violence and12instability for personal economic benefits. Under the capitalistic values that havebecome so pervasive following the end of Cold War, the actions of these players are
considered rational. A recent case of this phenomenon would be the allegations ofwide-scale food aid theft that surfaced in Somalia in August 2011: on top of the ongoingcrisis involving violent conflicts and famine, food aid was found being stolen by corrupt
businessmen and sold to the refugees.17The emergence of new economicalactors added
a complex dimension to the already difficult situation, increasing the need for a solutionthat expanded beyond a mere humanitarian response.
Studies on complex political emergencies often cite the presence of conflict
entrepreneurs as an important evidence of the complexities involved in modern conflicts
that had not existed in conventional warfare.18It should be noted, however, that war
profiteering itself is far from modern: arms dealing is a centuries-old trade, and wasused asa popular tool for winning allegiance during the Cold War era, before theemergence of complex political emergencies.
Rather, it is the amount of influence capitalistic values have gained overconflicts that have altered the context in which conflicts are examined, from

“Somali: Food Aid stolen, inquiry finds.” New York Times. August 15, 2011.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/16/world/africa/16briefs-foodaidstolen.html (accessed
December 8, 2011)18 Goodhand & Hulme, 18.
17

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theconventional perceptionas a two-actor game with clear rules to a multi-dimensional
crisis whose solution appears to lie outside a purely military or political response.

3. Conclusion
In this paper, I have examined four global trends: mass media,
developmentalism, humanitarianism, and liberal capitalism. In combination, they havecontributed to the change in how conflicts are perceived as having changed from being
clear-cut both in the problem and the solution, to a phenomenon that is more obscureand complicated. Because these trends have gained momentum only after the Cold War,theyhave created the illusion that the nature of conflict itself has changed—but none of
the fourtrends indicate that there has been an actual change in the nature itself.
Analyzing complex political emergencies as a new form of conflictmay beeffective in searching for innovative solutions, but it runs the risk of failing to
acknowledge the influence of past wars in today’s crises, and thereby failing to properly
address the root causes. One could argue that many of the complex politicalemergencies are in fact extensions ofpast wars, and the common belief that traditional
wars before and during Cold War had a beginning and an end is no more than an illusion
created by Western perception and solidified by history.

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By examining complex political emergencies not as an indicator of changes inconflict itself, but rather of a shift in perception caused by global trends involving
technology, economy, and ideas of development and humanitarianism, we would be able
to acquire a clearer vision of the true nature of modern conflicts and what can be done
to effectively address them.

15Bibliography

Black, Maggie. The No-nonsense Guide to International Development. New
Internationalist, 2007.
Clausewitz, Carl Von. On War.Princeton University Press, 1984.
Duffield, Mark.“Complex Emergencies and the Crisis of Developmentalism”.IDS
BulletinVol. 25, No. 4(1994).
Goodhand, Jonathan &Hulme, David. “From Wars to Complex Political Emergencies:
Understanding Conflict and Peace-building in the New World Disorder”.Third
World Quarterly Vol.20, No.1(1999): 13-26.
Kaldor, Mary. New & Old Wars, Stanford Unversiity Press, 2006.
Keen, David. Complex Emergencies, Polity Press, 2008.
OCHA Orientation Handbook on Complex Emergencies. Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs, 1999.
Robinson, Piers. “The CNN effect: can the news media drive foreign policy?” Review ofInternational Studies 25(1999): 301-309“Somali: Food Aid stolen, inquiry finds.” New York Times. August 15, 2011.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/16/world/africa/16briefs-foodaidstolen.html(accessed December 8, 2011)16

Wheeler, Nicholas J. Saving Strangers: Humanitarian Intervention in International
Society, Oxford University Press, 2000.

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