This book shows that wars that have hitherto been mainly interpreted as driven by economic, resource, ethnic or clan interests (such as the conflicts in Liberia and Somalia in the early 1990s) do have an overriding political rationale, which revalidates Carl von Clausewitz's nineteenth-century understanding of war.

Isabelle Duyvesteyn is a lecturer at the Department of History of International Relations, Institute of History, Utrecht University, the Netherlands.

Preface and acknowledgements, List of abbreviations, 1. Clausewitz, the nature of war and African warfare, 2. Case study I: Liberia, 1989-97, 3. Case study II: Somalia, 1988-95, 4. Political actors, 5. Political interests, 6. Political instruments and conventional war, 7. Politics and strategy in African wars: intervention dilemmas, Notes, Bibliography, Index