The propensity for states to wage civil wars is something that isn’t going to go away anytime soon. Regions yet to stabilize will continue intrastate carnage until regional power is established. How then, is that power best established? De-escalation and negotiations are naturally the preferred method of resolution, but some scholars such as Luttwak and Toft pose what many criticize as radical and inconsiderate of human life. Regrettably, the proposition of letting civil wars and other localized conflicts take their natural path is one that may lead to better outcome, and not only theoretically. Negotiations are a natural inclination for human-kind when enough pain has been endured and the chances of victory do not inspire confidence. The …show more content…
As he elaborates, “…either the avoidance of the use of force, or its unchallenged or effective use [is the cause for peace]. Whereas many of the theories put forth by Luttwak and Toft realistically deal with hyper-localized conflict, Wagner’s work is perfectly well-suited to elucidate how and why peace works in the modern, globalized, world and to what extent overwhelming military force serves as a deterrent to aggression. When writing on civil war, Wagner writes that the outcome of a negotiated settlement hinges upon two factors: a) the robustness or fragility of the victorious faction, and b) the residual bartering power/position of the losing faction. These elements are vital to understanding civil war and its likelihood of reemergence. Intervening bodies, be they international or otherwise must be capable of integration or disarmament in such a way that allows for a relatively strong party to conduct governmental business so that the vacuum doesn’t invite additional parties, or fragmentations of old ones into the fold which are capable of overtaking the agreed upon
The idea of a lasting, ideally global, peace has been present in the minds of people for centuries. The most notable formulation of this is Kant’s vision of perpetual peace. “He saw it as a condition that needed to be maintained by politics between states with governments which represented society and separation of power. From this basic framework stems the idea called “democratic peace theory” (pg. 82). Democratic Peace Theory (DPT) asserts that democracies do not generally fight other democracies because they share common norms and domestic institutions that constrain international, state actors from going to war. Sebastian Rosato states, “In practical terms democratic peace theory provides the intellectual justification for the belief that spreading democracy abroad will perform the dual task of enhancing American national security promoting world peace” (pg. 585).
The history of ethnic civil war consists of ethnic fragmentation appeared along the societal path to globalization. Over time, human enabled a comprehensive study of variables and motives in attempt to theorize a historical pattern of civil war. Two important models, one constructed by Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, and the other by James Fearon and David Laitin, provided hypothesis of the causes of civil war based on social, economic and political measurements. However, as Horowitz states, “a bloody phenomenon cannot be explained by a bloodless theory”, civil conflict can never be concluded to a certain pattern; despite the general trend, chance events such as natural disasters and regional factors such as corruption would also diversify the scale of war in an idiosyncratic manner.
Rosato, S. (2003). The flawed logic of the democratic peace theory. The American Political Science Review, 97(4), 585–602.
Over the span of recorded history, humankind has inflicted horrors upon itself. Attempts at ending these brutal conflicts usually involved a great deal of violence; problem solving entailed an “off with his head” approach. We would like to think that we are better than that today, but look no further than newspaper headlines to see that human behavior has not come very far since the Middle Ages. Nevertheless, there has been a positive development in modern day problem solving that Pruitt and Kim (2004) call “reconciliation” (p. 218). Simply put, this is the process of relationship repair. The importance of this theory cannot be understated. Reconciliation of divided people and societies is vital to preventing the reoccurrence of violence and building long-term, sustainable peace (Sustainable reconciliation, 2013). If people do not reconcile, conflicts will continue to arise time after time after time.
The purpose of this essay is to inform on the similarities and differences between systemic and domestic causes of war. According to World Politics by Jeffry Frieden, David Lake, and Kenneth Schultz, systemic causes deal with states that are unitary actors and their interactions with one another. It can deal with a state’s position within international organizations and also their relationships with other states. In contract, domestic causes of war pertain specifically to what goes on internally and factors within a state that may lead to war. Wars that occur between two or more states due to systemic and domestic causes are referred to as interstate wars.
Lewicki, R., Saunders, D.M., Barry B., (2010) Negotiation: Readings, Exercises, and Cases. 6th Ed. McGraw-Hill Irwin. New York, NY
"Effective negotiation is not about conflict. It is not about deviance or dishonesty. It is not about posturing, or bullying, or threatening. Effective negotiation is about exhaustive preparation, utter clarity, heartfelt communication, and a sincere, demonstrated desire to fully understand not just your own needs, but the needs of the other party." Leigh Stienberg: Winning with Integrity.
...levance of its supra- and intra-state sides. The normative implications can have two sided effects, either maintaining peace or justifying war.
Rosato, S. (2003). "The flawed logic of democratic peace theory." American Political Science Review 97.
War has plagued society for as long as society has existed. While preventing the outbreak of war is a stated goal of the international community, wars continue to rage on. I think that the best way to avoid the outbreak of war is to subscribe to a liberalist theory. The key assumption of the liberalist theory is that the principles of liberalism, freedom, tolerance, progress, privacy, and scientific rationality, must be accepted universally (Ferraro, 03 Mar 2014). If these principles are implemented on a universal level, they will significantly reduce, if not eradicate, war. For example, the Rwandan genocide would not have occurred if the country subscribed to the liberal values. With tolerance for one another, the Hutu and Tutsi would not have resented one another as adversaries in the power structure of the country (Ferraro, 15 Apr 2014). Also, by approaching the problem with scientific rationality, they would have come to the conclusion that killing each other over a power system established by a foreign power was not attending to the root of the problem (Ferraro, 17 Apr 2014).
Lewicki, R. J., Barry, B., & Saunders, D. M. (2007). Essentials of Negotiation. New York: McGraw-Hill/ Irwin.
From this perspective, the question as to whether politics can or cannot adequately resolve conflict takes a new form, whereby the question becomes whether the conflicts that are essential to politics simply become so debilitating that political organizations such as governments can no longer function. If conflict is essential to politics, therefore, then we cannot expect politics to resolve all conflict: it rather, instead, must be expected to continually re-define where irresolvable conflict lies in the social organization. This is not a critique of the effectiveness of politics itself, but rather a critique of what we expect from politics: it becomes a naïve position to think that politics can resolve all our conflicts if it is in fact founded in forms of conflict.
Causes of conflicts: Why wars happen. The Economist, 16 Dec. 2008. Web. 16 Feb. 2014. .
Isolation of political conflicts in the separate problem of the world political science falls in the middle of the twentieth century. Since then, the political conflict studies has become one of the most important branches of theoretical and applied political science. In the national political science focuses on the study of regional and ethnic conflicts. Today's world’s problem is studying the nature of conflict and ways to resolve them is important, firstly, in terms of the overall threat that armed conflicts pose to human civilization, and secondly, by the close proximity of many conflicts on its borders, and thirdly, because of the special dangers of conflict in a multinational country, the availability of a number of persistent conflict-prone zones (Batros and Wehr 2002).
History shows that negotiations might fail due to the difference of the justice and fairness definitions. The Melos- Athens conflict proved that negotiations might only be a step that delays war, rather than a peaceful way out of the dispute. However, reality and experience indicates that the outcomes of negotiations are subject to circumstances, timeframe, and people’s ideologies. People’s mentality has changed and they have become more open-minded, tolerant and more educated to understand that war is the last resort of solving a dispute. Reality and circumstances have also changed and war...