Peace and Conflict
Domain 4 tests analysis of why conflicts begin, how they are fought and what makes peace durable. The key move is separating peace from the mere absence of fighting.
Core concepts
- Galtung: negative peace (no direct violence) versus positive peace (cooperation and justice, without structural violence); direct, structural and cultural violence.
- Conflict data: the Uppsala Conflict Data Program counts armed conflict at 25 battle-related deaths a year and war at 1,000; most contemporary conflicts are intrastate.
- Causes: greed versus grievance (Collier and Hoeffler), weak institutions, exclusion, resource dependence, identity and security dilemmas.
- Responses: Chapter VI pacific settlement, Chapter VII enforcement, peacekeeping, mediation and peacebuilding (An Agenda for Peace, 1992; Peacebuilding Commission, 2005).
- Just war: jus ad bellum (just cause, legitimate authority, last resort, proportionality), jus in bello (discrimination, proportionality) and jus post bellum.
Worked example
Question: UN peacekeeping prevents war. Test it with cases. UNAMSIL in Sierra Leone (1999-2005) helped end fighting; UNAMIR in Rwanda had a narrow mandate and too few troops as genocide unfolded in 1994. Reasoning: mandates, troop numbers, consent of the belligerents and P5 interests explain the variation. Judgement: peacekeeping works where there is a peace to keep and the Council is united, so the claim holds conditionally rather than generally.
Traps
- Equating peace with the absence of war, i.e. negative peace only.
- Confusing peacekeeping, peacemaking and peacebuilding.
- Using one case as proof of a general claim.
- Describing a conflict without analysing its causes.