From Global Balancing to Local Blood Money: How the End of the Cold War Redefined External Support for Insurgent Groups

What determines whether states external to a civil war send support to the rebels? Whereas current literatures emphasize timeless factors that contribute to rebel support, we note that both external state support for rebel groups and nearly every measured aspect of civil war governments and rebel groups exhibit discontinuities at the end of the Cold War. After disaggregating civil wars by year, we find that Cold-War era support for rebels was driven by ideological affiliation and realpolitik global power balancing - that is, factors largely external to individual civil wars. However, we argue that support after 1991 is driven largely by local/regional state competition. Moreover, support is granted secretly (or openly) in order to feign compliance with emergent normative regimes affirming the sanctity of democracies (and democratic movements). In other words, international regimes no longer drive the flow of guns and treasure to civil warriors around the world. Rather, international regimes simply condition the secrecy of support as states seek to settle enmities previously disciplined by Cold War structure.