Peace and Conflict: Causes, Conduct and Consequences
What this section tests
Peace and conflict studies require you to analyse the origins, course and resolution of a conflict, and to evaluate attempts at peacekeeping or international cooperation. The concepts you must use precisely are nationalism, ideology, imperialism and decolonisation, deterrence, collective security, sovereignty, intervention, and post-conflict reconstruction. Depending on your chosen study, you may need to discuss the League of Nations, the United Nations, the Cold War, the Arab–Israeli conflict, the Indochina wars or peacekeeping operations.
Traps in questions
A frequent trap is monocausal explanation: attributing conflict to one leader, one ideology or one incident. Strong answers weigh long-term structural tensions against short-term triggers. A second trap is confusing the League's failures with the idea of collective security, which was also constrained by great-power interests and the absence of major powers. A third trap is treating peace settlements as endings; the exam expects analysis of how settlements shaped later conflict. A fourth is moralising without evidence, or conversely refusing to make judgements about responsibility. Be careful to distinguish peacekeeping, peacemaking and peace enforcement.
Rule of thumb
Structure conflict answers as structure, trigger, escalation, and attempted resolution, and name the level of analysis - individual, state, or international system - at each stage.
Worked example: A question asks why collective security failed in the 1930s. A strong answer separates structural weakness (no enforcement capacity, great-power absence or withdrawal), inconsistent application (Manchuria and Abyssinia), and the revisionist challenge from Germany, Italy and Japan, then argues that the failure lay less in the principle than in the unwillingness of states to subordinate national interest to it.