As ... ... middle of paper ... ...ine war not just as a conflict between states (i.e., the rationalist position), but also a conflict between non-state peoples, non-declared actions, and highly organized, politically controlled wars as well as culturally evolved, ritualistic wars and guerrilla uprisings, that appear to have no centrally controlling body and may perhaps be described as emerging spontaneously. The political issue of defining war poses the first philosophical problem, but once that is acknowledged, a definition that captures the clash of arms, the state of mutual tension and threat of violence between groups, the authorized declaration by a sovereign body, and so on can be drawn upon to distinguish wars from riots and rebellions, collective violence from personal violence, metaphorical clashes of values from actual or threatened clashes of arms. Back to Table of Contents 2. What causes war? Various sub-disciplines have grappled with war's etiology, but each in turn, as with definitions of war, often reflects a tacit or explicit acceptance of broader philosophical issues on the nature of determinism and freedom.
Realism can be broken down to its core understanding that the international system is anarchic and it consists of political actors known as states. There are three tenants that each state will inherently follow and are known as statism, survival, and self-help. Every decision by a state will have to follow these tenants to be considered rational. Because of this, each state will be naturally distrustful of one another and will act or make decisions based on getting the upper hand or protecting its security from another state. This generates conflict between states and creates a vicious circle of sizing up every state, making a decision based on what would likely be the most beneficial... ... middle of paper ... ...thus NATO has made its mission to uphold these ideals.
It seems that there is a development in the trend of conflicts, not cooperation. The two prominent schools of thought, Realism and Idealism, both identify conflict as the main issue in international relations. For Realists, war is the product of the states’ competition for power; therefore, war is unavoidable. On the other hand, Idealists believes that war is the product of socio-economics inequality and the interest of the monarchy. It is difficult to address a single cause of war.
British Journal of Political Science 37(04): 731-751. Powell, Robert D., 2006: War as a Commitment Problem. International Organization 60 (Winter): 169-203. Sisk, Timothy D., 1996: Power Sharing and International Mediation in Ethnic Conflicts. Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace, U.S., Chapter 3: Democracy and Its Alternatives in Deeply Divided Societies: 27-45.
Carroll, W. K., & Ratner, R. S. (1999). Media Strategies and Political Projects: A Comparative Study of Social Movements. The Canadian Journal of Sociology, 24(1), 1-34. Dudouet, V. (2008). Nonviolenct Resistance and Conflict Transformations in Power Asymmetries (Berghof Research Center for Constructive Conflict Management, Publication).
Chambers (2003) defines conflict is as “ a violent collision: a struggle or contest: a battle: a mental struggle “(pg. 272) This is a general and very broad definition of the word which has been differently interpreted by psychologists as well as sociologists and economists. Shaw claims that in conflict situations driving forces are involved, combined with restraining forces, own forces and various combinations of induced or impersonal forces. All these contribute to a conflict situation. He goes on to explain that driving forces produce conflicts when the person is located between two positive valences, two negative valences or the person themselves.
However, from another perspective, it is also apparent that politics itself produces its own series of conflicts. For example, realist theories of international relations maintain that politics is itself defined by struggles for power between political actors. This thesis is also clearly valid for a political actor such as a nation-state’s internal politics, as in democracy, for example, there is clear conflict between political parties regarding what policies to pursue. Accordingly, conflict is unavoidable for politics. The question as to whether political institutions in contemporary societies remain adequate to resolve conflict is in this sense profound, to the extent that it is a question concerning the essence of politics itself.
The Just War tradition has been seen as a leading perspective on the ethics of war since the writings of St Augustine were rearticulated by Thomas Aquinas. It attempts to provide a framework which validates just conflicts, whilst at the same time applying limits so as to prevent unrestrained warfare. Today, its core principles can be divided into two broad categories: ‘jus ad bellum’ (just resort to war) and ‘jus in bello’ (just conduct in war). For a war to be just, numerous criteria must be satisfied within these categories. In recent decades non-state terrorism has become increasingly high-profile; indeed, in the twenty first century it has dominated the global political agenda.
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