Quote Originally Posted by Bob's World View Post
Civil War, on the other hand, is when a State breaks cleanly at the start of the conflict into 2 or more distinct legal entities, with clear boundaries and formal governing bodies. The new states willing to fight to retain their newly declared independence, and the remnant of the old state willing to fight to prevent the same. This is more traditional warfare between these two governments. Once the Civil War is resolved by accepted principles of warfare, however, one may find them self with all of the conditions of insurgency as described above that must be appreciated and managed as well.

Some may say that I am leaning too heavily on the American experience. No, it is merely a distinction that to me provides some form of worthwhile merit.
I think there are two rules of thumb that ought to guide conceptual definitions:

1) Does the category have any analytical utility? The whole purpose of applying labels and drawing conceptual boundaries, after all, is to aid analysis.

2) Does the use of the term more-or-less coincide with the way the term is used by scholars and a broader audience? If it doesn't there is simply too much scope for increased confusion.

Your definition of "civil war" certainly meets test #1, but I would argue it doesn't meet test #2, since it excludes a great many things that most folks understand as "civil wars" (Lebanon, Algeria, Sri Lanka, Somalia, Liberia, Sierra Leone, etc).

Instead, your definition seems to better fit the existing category of "wars of secession."

On a side note--since my current summer job involves pouring over hundreds of intel judgments to look at the way language is used, and the ambiguities that can arise from this--the whole discussion highlights the way in which analysts need to be very careful that the terms they use in assessments or policy advice are understood by clients in the same way. From the discussion above, it's clear that if someone wrote a memo to Bob and I warning of "a growing risk of civil war" the two of us might well understand that prediction in very different ways...