Abstract
The single strongest predictor of civil war is a nation having had one in the past, and preventing the recurrence of civil war has thus become the critical problem for both scholarship and policy. The conventional wisdom urges the creation of capable, legitimate, and inclusive postwar states to reduce the risk of relapse into civil war, and international peacebuilders have often encouraged the formation of a new national army including members of the war’s opposing sides. However, military integration has received little theoretical or empirical attention. Filling that gap, we argue that both the theoretical logics and the empirical record identifying military integration as a significant contributor to durable post-civil war peace are weak. Our analysis of eleven cases finds little evidence that military integration played a substantial causal role in preventing the return to civil war and little support for the likely causal mechanisms. Military integration does not usually send a costly signal of the parties’ commitment to peace, provide communal security, employ many possible spoilers, or act as a powerful symbol of a unified nation. We conclude that it is both unwise and unethical for the international community to press military integration on reluctant local forces.