Key elements of 15 chapters of the book "Peace and Conflict Studies", among others used in the MA4-box "War & Peace 1 ', part of the Master International and European Law at the University of Groningen
- under the influence of Isaiah and later Hebrew prophets Jewish tradition has tended to
strongly endorse peacefulness.
- negative peace = the absence of war
- positive peace = a social condition in which exploitation is minimized or eliminated and in
which there is neither overt violence nor the more subtle phenomenon of underlying struc-
tural violence.
- structural violence is typically built into the very structure of social, cultural, and economic
institutions.
- structural violence usually has the effect of denying people important rights.
- under conditions of structural violence people may participate in settings within which in-
dividuals may do enormous amounts of harm to other human beings without ever intending
to do so, just performing their regular duties as a job defined in the structure.
- structural violence is often unnoticed.
- positive peace > not only the absence of violence but also the presence of well-being,
wholeness, and harmony within oneself, a community, and among all nations and people.
- positive peace focuses on peace building, the establishment of non-exploitative social
structures, and a determination to work toward that goal even when a war is not ongoing or
imminent.
- widespread disagreement continues as to what exactly a just society would look like.
- war and peace are two ends of a continuum, with only a vague and uncertain transition
between the two.
- most of the world’s armed conflicts involve revolutionary, counterrevolutionary, genocidal,
and/or terrorist violence with no declarations of war whatsoever.
HS2
- Quincy Wright > war has taken place either when it was formally declared or when a cer-
tain number of troops were involved.
- Lewis Richardson defined wars by the number of deaths incurred.
- there can also be debate over exactly when a given war began.
- there have also been many indirect casualties of war (wars and the preparations for wars
divert resources that might be directed against other causes f death, such as disease and
starvation)
- advances in military technology have made wars themselves more deadly
- through most of human history, war casualties were overwhelmingly concentrated among
military forces.
Trends in war:
, - increase in the human, environmental, and economic costs of war
- decrease in the casualty rate among combatants
- increase in the number of civilian casualties
- increase in the speed at which wars spread to additional belligerents, in the number of
belligerents involved in a given war, and in the are covered.
- increase in the frequency of so-called low-intensity conflicts ((counter)revolutions)
- (even small conventional wars can be devastating)
- increase in asymmetrical conflicts between nationals or empires on the one hand and
guerillas, freedom fighters or terrorists on the other hand
- increase in religiously inspired armed conflicts since the Israeli occupation of Arab lands
in 1967.
- three phases of weaponry: 1) muscle power, 2) chemicals, especially gunpowder, 3) nu-
clear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction.
- other developments are quick-moving armored forces; highly accurate precision-guided
munitions.
- observers suggested that since war has become unacceptably destructive the likelihood
of war has actually decreased.
- nuclear weapons carry with them an inherent ambiguity: since the consequences of using
them are so extreme, the threat to do so lacks credibility.
- weapons have become more deadly while at the same time been increasingly directed to-
wards civilians
- the separation between civilian and military has changed dramatically with the hardening
of political boundaries as well as the advent of what has come to be called total war.
- the techniques of war had completely overpowered the ability of governments to limit their
commitment to it; total war requires the goal of total victory.
- the invention of airplanes, and with that the possibility of long-range strategic bombing
opened up yet another phase in the march of total war
- wars have also often served to prevent significant social and economic changes.
- war has been the ultimate arbiter of human disputes and a way of achieving glory. Social
Darwinism: it’s the subjugation of weaker by stronger peoples.
- wars have frequently shaken up the existing sociopolitical order and have resulted in
many changes.
- wars may at times serve the enticing ends of enhancing national self-determination and
political liberty.
- for some of the most militant people, peace is something to kill and die for if it can bring
about greater social justice and economic equity.
- Michael Howard: ‘bellicist’ cultures > in which the settling of contentious issues by armed
conflicts is regarded as natural, inevitable and right.
- conservatism has long tended to look upon war more favorably.
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