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• The Five Reasons Wars Happen

Christopher Blattman | 10.14.22

Whether it is Russian President Vladimir Putin’s threats of nuclear strikes or Chinese belligerence in the Taiwan Strait , the United States seems closer to a great power war than at any time in recent decades. But while the risks are real and the United States must prepare for each of these conflicts, by focusing on the times states fight—and ignoring the times they resolve their conflicts peacefully and prevent escalation—analysts and policymakers risk misjudging our rivals and pursuing the wrong paths to peace.

The fact is that fighting—at all levels from irregular warfare to large-scale combat operations—is ruinous and so nations do their best to avoid open conflict. The costs of war also mean that when they do fight countries have powerful incentives not to escalate and expand those wars—to keep the fighting contained, especially when it could go nuclear. This is one of the most powerful insights from both history and game theory: war is a last resort, and the costlier that war, the harder both sides will work to avoid it.

When analysts forget this fact, not only do they exaggerate the chances of war, they do something much worse: they get the causes all wrong and take the wrong steps to avert the violence.

Imagine intensive care doctors who, deluged with critically ill patients, forgot that humanity’s natural state is good health. That would be demoralizing. But it would also make them terrible at diagnosis and treatment. How could you know what was awry without comparing the healthy to the sick?

And yet, when it comes to war, most of us fall victim to this selection bias, giving most of our attention to the times peace failed. Few write books or news articles about the wars that didn’t happen. Instead, we spend countless hours tracing the threads of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, America’s invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, or the two world wars. When we do, it distorts our diagnosis and our treatments. For if we follow these calamitous events back to their root causes and preceding events, we often find a familiar list: bumbling leaders, ancient hatreds, intransigent ideologies, dire poverty, historic injustices, and a huge supply of weapons and impressionable young men. War seems to be their inevitable result.

Unfortunately, this ignores all the instances conflict was avoided. When social scientists look at these peaceful cases, they see a lot of the same preceding conditions—bumblers, hatreds, injustices, poverty, and armaments. All these so-called causes of war are commonplace. Prolonged violence is not. So these are probably not the chief causes of war.

Take World War I. Historians like to explain how Europe’s shortsighted, warmongering, nationalist leaders naively walked their societies into war. It was all a grand miscalculation, this story goes. The foibles of European leaders surely played a role, but to stop the explanation here is to forget all the world wars avoided up to that point. For decades, the exact same leaders had managed great crises without fighting. In the fifteen years before 1914 alone, innumerable continental wars almost—but never—happened: a British-French standoff in a ruined Egyptian outpost in Sudan in 1898; Russia’s capture of Britain’s far eastern ports in 1900; Austria’s seizure of Bosnia in 1908; two wars between the Balkan states in 1912 and 1913. A continent-consuming war could have been ignited in any one of these corners of the world. But it was not.

Likewise, it’s common to blame the war in Ukraine overwhelmingly on Putin’s obsessions and delusions. These surely played a role, but to stop here is to stop too soon. We must also pay attention to the conflicts that didn’t happen. For years, Russia cowed other neighbors with varying degrees of persuasion and force, from the subjugation of Belarus to “ peacekeeping ” missions in Kazakhstan. Few of these power contests came to blows. To find the real roots of fighting, analysts need to pay attention to these struggles that stay peaceful.

Enemies Prefer to Loathe One Another in Peace

Fighting is simply bargaining through violence. This is what Chinese Communist leader Mao Tse-tung meant in 1938 when he said , “Politics is war without bloodshed, while war is politics with bloodshed.” Mao was echoing the Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz who, a century before, reminded us that war is the continuation of politics by other means.

Of course, one of these means is far, far costlier than the other. Two adversaries have a simple choice: split the contested territory or stake in proportion to their relative strength, or go to war and gamble for the shrunken and damaged remains. It’s almost always better to look for compromise. For every war that ever was, a thousand others have been averted through discussion and concession.

Compromise is the rule because, for the most part, groups behave strategically: like players of poker or chess, they’re trying hard to think ahead, discern their opponents’ strength and plans, and choose their actions based on what they expect their opponents to do. They are not perfect. They make mistakes or lack information. But they have huge incentives to do their best.

This is the essential way to think about warfare: not as some base impulse or inevitability, but as the unusual and errant breakdown of incredibly powerful incentives for peace. Something had to interrupt the normal incentives for compromise, pushing opponents from normal politics, polarized and contentious, to bargaining through bloodshed.

This gives us a fresh perspective on war. If fighting is rare because it is ruinous, then every answer to why we fight is simple: a society or its leaders ignored the costs (or were willing to pay them). And while there is a reason for every war and a war for every reason, there are only so many logical ways societies overlook the costs of war—five, to be exact. From gang wars to ethnic violence, and from civil conflicts to world wars, the same five reasons underlie conflict at every level: war happens when a society or its leader is unaccountable, ideological, uncertain, biased, or unreliable.

Five Reasons for War

Consider Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. What do these five tell us about why peace broke down?

1. Unaccountable. A personalized autocrat , Putin doesn’t have to weigh the interests of his soldiers and citizens. He can pursue whatever course helps him preserve his regime’s control. When leaders go unchecked and are unaccountable to their people, they can ignore the costs of fighting that ordinary people bear. Instead, rulers can pursue their own agendas. That is why dictators are more prone to war .

2. Ideological. Consider Putin again. Most accounts of the current war dwell on his nationalist obsessions and desires for a glorious legacy. What costs and risks he does bear, Putin is willing to pay in pursuit of glory and ideology. This is just one example of intangible and ideological incentives for war that so many leaders possess—God’s glory, freedom, or some nationalist vision.

Societies have ideological incentives too. Unlike the people of Belarus or Kazakhstan, the Ukrainians refused to accept serious restrictions on their sovereignty despite what (at first) seemed to be relative military weakness. Like liberation movements throughout history—including the American revolutionaries—they have been willing to undertake the ruin and risks of fighting partly in pursuit of an ideal.

3. Biased. Most accounts of Russia’s invasion stress Putin’s isolation and insulation from the truth. He and his advisors grossly underestimated the difficulty of war. This is a story of institutional bias—a system that is unwilling to tell its leader bad news. Autocrats are especially prone to this problem, but intelligence failures plague democracies too . Leaders can be psychologically biased as well. Humans have an amazing ability to cling to mistaken beliefs. We can be overconfident, underestimating the ruin of war and overestimating our chances of victory. And we demonize and misjudge our opponents. These misperceptions can carry us to war.

4. Uncertain. Too much focus on bias and misperception obscures the subtler role of uncertainty. In the murky run-up to war, policymakers don’t know their enemy’s strength or resolve. How unified would the West be? How capably would Ukrainians resist? How competent was the Russian military? All these things were fundamentally uncertain, and many experts were genuinely surprised that Russia got a bad draw on all three—most of all, presumably, Putin himself.

But uncertainty doesn’t just mean the costs of war are uncertain, and invasion a gamble. There are genuine strategic impediments to getting good information . You can’t trust your enemy’s demonstrations of resolve, because they have reasons to bluff, hoping to extract a better deal without fighting. Any poker player knows that, amid the uncertainty, the optimal strategy is never to fold all the time. It’s never to call all the time, either. The best strategy is to approach it probabilistically—to occasionally gamble and invade.

5. Unreliable. When a declining power faces a rising one, how can it trust the rising power to commit to peace ? Better to pay the brutal costs of war now, to lock in one’s current advantage. Some scholars argue that such shifts in power, and the commitment problems they create, are at the root of every long war in history —from World War I to the US invasion of Iraq. This is not why Russia invaded Ukraine, of course. Still, it may help to understand the timing. In 2022, Russia had arguably reached peak leverage versus Ukraine. Ukraine was acquiring drones and defensive missiles. And the country was growing more democratic and closer to Europe—to Putin, a dangerous example of freedom nearby. How could Ukraine commit to stop either move? We don’t know what Putin and his commanders debated behind closed doors, but these trends may have presented a now-or-never argument for invasion.

Putting the five together, as with World War I and so many other wars, fallible, biased leaders with nationalist ambitions ignored the costs of war and drove their societies to violent ruin. But the explanation doesn’t end there. There are strategic roots as well. In the case of Russia, as elsewhere, unchecked power, uncertainty, and commitment problems arising from shifting power narrowed the range of viable compromises to the point where Putin’s psychological and institutional failures—his misperceptions and ideology—could lead him to pursue politics by violent means.

The Paths to Peace

If war happens when societies or their leaders overlook its costs, peace is preserved when our institutions make those costs difficult to ignore. Successful, peaceful societies have built themselves some insulation from all five kinds of failure. They have checked the power of autocrats. They have built institutions that reduce uncertainty, promote dialogue, and minimize misperceptions. They have written constitutions and bodies of law that make shifts in power less deadly. They have developed interventions—from sanctions to peacekeeping forces to mediators—that minimize our strategic and human incentives to fight rather than compromise.

It is difficult, however, to expect peace in a world where power in so many countries remains unchecked . Highly centralized power is one of the most dangerous things in the world, because it accentuates all five reasons for war. With unchecked leaders , states are more prone to their idiosyncratic ideologies and biases. In the pursuit of power, autocrats also tend to insulate themselves from critical information. The placing of so much influence in one person’s hands adds to the uncertainty and unpredictability of the situation. Almost by definition, unchecked rulers have trouble making credible commitments.

That is why the real root cause of this current war is surely Putin’s twenty-year concentration of power in himself. And it is why the world’s most worrisome trend may be in China, where a once checked and institutionalized leader has gathered more and more power in his person. There is, admittedly, little a nation can do to alter the concentration of power within its rivals’ political systems. But no solution can be found without a proper diagnosis of the problem.

Christopher Blattman is a professor at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy. This article draws from his new book, Why We Fight: The Roots of War and the Paths to Peace , published by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.

Image credit: Oles_Navrotskyi , via depositphotos.com

27 Comments

War, in the end, is about Armed Robbery writ large; whether Committing it, Preventing it, or Redressing it. It is all about somebody trying to take somebody else's stuff.

Peace is the time of waiting for war. A time of preparation, or a time of willful ignorance, blind, blinkered and prattling behind secure walls. – Steven Erikson

That is the right reason, I do not know about the others, but I will give you a+ on this one

its beeches thy want Resorces

Wars often come when a group of nations (for example the USSR in the Old Cold War of yesterday and the U.S./the West in New/Reverse Cold War of today) move out smartly to "transform"/to "modernize" both their own states and societies (often leads to civil wars) and other states and societies throughout the world also (often leads to wars between countries).

The enemy of those groups of nations — thus pursuing such "transformative"/such "modernizing" efforts — are, quite understandably, those individuals and groups, and those states and societies who (a) would lose current power, influence, control, safety, privilege, security, etc.; this, (b) if these such "transformative"/these such "modernizing" efforts were to be realized.

From this such perspective, and now discussing only the U.S./the West post-Cold War efforts — to "transform"/to "modernize" the states and societies of the world (to include our own states and societies here in the U.S./the West) — this, so that same might be made to better interact with, better provide for and better benefit from such things as capitalism, globalization and the global economy;

Considering this such U.S./Western post-Cold War "transformative"/"modernizing" effort, note the common factor of "resistance to change" coming from:

a. (Conservative?) Individual and groups — here in the U.S./the West — who want to retain currently threatened (and/or regain recently lost) power, influence, control, etc. And:

b. (Conservative?) states and societies — elsewhere throughout the world — who have this/these exact same ambition(s).

From this such perspective, to note the nexus/the connection/the "common cause" noted here:

"Liberal democratic societies have, in the past few decades, undergone a series of revolutionary changes in their social and political life, which are not to the taste of all their citizens. For many of those, who might be called social conservatives, Russia has become a more agreeable society, at least in principle, than those they live in. Communist Westerners used to speak of the Soviet Union as the pioneer society of a brighter future for all. Now, the rightwing nationalists of Europe and North America admire Russia and its leader for cleaving to the past."

(See "The American Interest" article "The Reality of Russian Soft Power" by John Lloyd and Daria Litinova.)

“Compounding it all, Russia’s dictator has achieved all of this while creating sympathy in elements of the Right that mirrors the sympathy the Soviet Union achieved in elements of the Left. In other words, Putin is expanding Russian power and influence while mounting a cultural critique that resonates with some American audiences, casting himself as a defender of Christian civilization against Islam and the godless, decadent West.”

(See the “National Review” item entitled: “How Russia Wins” by David French.)

Bottom Line Thought — Based on the Above:

In the final paragraph of our article above, the author states: "That is why the real root cause of this current war is surely Putin’s twenty-year concentration of power in himself."

Based on the information that I provide above — which addresses the "resistance" efforts of entities both here at home and there abroad — might we beg to differ?

From the perspective of wars between nations relating to attempts as "transformation" by one party (and thus not as relates to civil wars which occur with "transformative" attempts in this case) here is my argument above possibly stated another way:

1. In the Old Cold War of yesterday, when the Soviets/the communists sought to "transform the world" — in their case, so that same might be made to better interact with, better provide for and better benefit from such this as socialism and communism:

a. The "root cause" of the conflicts that the U.S. was engaged in back then — for example in places such as Central America —

b. This such "root cause" was OUR determination to stand hard against these such "transformative" efforts and activities — which were taking place, back then, in OUR backyard/in OUR sphere of influence/in OUR neck of the woods.

2. In the New/Reverse Cold War of today, however, when now it is the U.S./the West that seeks to "transform the world" — in our case, so that same might be made to better interact with, better provide for and better benefit from such things as market-democracy:

“The successor to a doctrine of containment must be a strategy of enlargement, enlargement of the world’s free community of market democracies,’ Mr. Lake said in a speech at the School of Advanced International Studies of the Johns Hopkins University.”

(See the September 22, 1993 New York Times article “U.S. Vision of Foreign Policy Reversed” by Thomas L. Friedman.)

a. Now the "root cause" of the conflicts that Russia is engaged in today — for example in places such as Ukraine —

b. This such "root cause" is now RUSSIA'S determination to stand hard against these such "transformative" efforts and activities — which are taking place now in RUSSIA'S backyard/in RUSSIA'S sphere of influence/in RUSSIA's neck of the woods.

(From this such perspective, of course, [a] the current war in Ukraine, this would seem to [b] have little — or indeed nothing — to do with "Putin's twenty-year concentration of power in himself?")

It’s easy to put the whole blame on Putin himself with his unchecked power . But this is a gross simplification of the reality in case of the Ukraine war. NATO expansion everywhere and especially into the very birthplace of Russia was a huge irritator , perceived as unacceptable, threatening, arrogant with no regard to Russia’s interests. Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008 was a clear warning, that was completely ignored. Without NATO’s ambitions there would be no war in Ukraine. Or Georgia .

When the Soviet Union installed missles in Cuba , the democratic and presumably the country with all checks and balances in place almost started a nuclear war with the Soviets. It was a reckless gamble that could end the world Why expect anything less from the modern Russia that feels threatened by NATO encroachment?

In the end, whether it's about committing, preventing, or rectifying, war is all about armed robbery. The main plot is around a thief trying to steal from another person.

One of the main causes of war is nationalist garbage. This nationalist site conveniently omits this as they push their preferred chosen nationalist enemy(cold war leftovers in this case) on the reader. What do you expect from OVRA/NKVD reruns?

In addition to the reasons explored to further explain the cause of war, there are also self-defeating schema in thought structures that deteriorate over time. They become compromised by the wear-and-tear grind of life of individuals seeking natural causes and solutions collectively and apart. This is particularly relevant to the matter of war dynamics. When energies used to pursue peace are perceived as exhausted, unspent warfare resources appear more attractive. Particularly in the instances of deteriorating leaders who are compromised by psychopathy, war can quickly become nearly inevitable. Add a number of subordinated population that are unable to resist, and the world can quickly find itself following in the footsteps of leaders marching to their own demise. On the broader sociopolitical battlefield, with democracy trending down and the deterioration in global leadership increasing, the probability of both war and peaceful rewards increase. The questions that arise in my mind point to developing leaps forward to the structures of global leadership, particularly for self-governing populations, leveraging resources that mitigate the frailties of societal and individual human exhaustion, and capping warfare resources at weakened choke points to avoid spillovers of minor conflicts into broader destruction. Technology certainly can be used to mitigate much more than has been realized.

Wow, I could say all those things about the U.S. and its rulers.

We don't have a dictator.

Trump came pretty close to being a dictator, what with the way people were following him blindly, and the ways that all parties, (Both republicans AND democrats) have been acting lately I wouldn't be surprised if a dictator came into power

War happens because humans are predatory animals and preditors kill other preditors every chance they get. The 3 big cats of africa are a prime example. We forget that we are animals that have animal insticts. There will always be war.

The cause of war is fear, Russia feared a anti Russian Army in Ukraine would come to fruitinion in the Ukraine threatening to invade Moscow!

it takes one powerful man in power to start war and millions of innocence people to die, to stop the war . / answer!,to in prison any powerful person who starts the war , and save your family life and millions of lives, / out law war.

The biggest cause of war is the demonstration of weakness among democratic nations facing a well-armed dictator with irrational ambitions. In the case of Russia, the democratic world turned weak on Vladimir Putin at a time when both democratic institutions and peace might have been preserved. Boris Yeltsin, Russia’s first-ever freely elected president, had given the newly democratic Russia a real chance to enter the community of free nations in 1991. But when Putin was elected in 2000, we saw the warning signs of trouble. Putin already was undermining democracy. In Russia’s transition from socialism, he used his old KGP connections to buy up all the political parties (except ironically the Communist Party, which now was tiny and unpopular). He also declared he yearned for the old greater Russia, with those Soviet Union borders. The U.S. and NATO didn’t take Putin’s greater-Russia statements too seriously. After all, once their economy stabilized after the transition from socialism, the Russian people were pleased with their new and free Russia, the removal of the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain, and the new openness to the West. There was no popular call for retaking old territory. But Putin had his own plans, and as Christopher Blattman’s article observes, when you’re dictator (and even with ‘elections’ you are dictator if you own all the political parties) you can go your bloody way. Then came America’s ‘Russian re-set.’ As Putin consolidated his power, and forced the parliament, the Duma, to give him permission to run for several unopposed ‘re-elections,’ the U.S. decided to go gentle on Putin, in hopes he’d abandon his authoritarian course. This was the fatal mistake. When the U.S. should have been publicly encouraging Putin to commit himself to international borders and to democracy in Russia, the U.S. leadership instead was asking what it could do to make Putin happy. Putin saw this as weakness, an opening for his insane territorial desires, which focused mainly on Ukraine. He let a few more years go by, prepared secretly, and then in 2014, he ordered the invasion of Ukraine, killing about 14,000 people and claiming Ukraine’s Crimea for Russia. The U.S. imposed economic sanctions on Russia, but the terrible damage had been done. Because the Free World’s leaders had let down their guard, an awful precedent had been set. A new Russian dictator had murdered to steal territory. To him, the price was low. That told him he could do it again someday. And in 2022, again sensing weakness from the West, Putin invaded Ukraine once more. Not only have tens of thousands of Ukrainians been killed in this new war, but the Russian people themselves are now locked in an even tighter, more brutal dictatorship. Peace through Strength is not just a slogan. It’s as real as War through Weakness. My father, who fought in Europe in World War II, said an American soldier’s first duty was to preserve America’s rights and freedoms, as described in the Constitution. He said an American soldier also has two jobs. A soldier’s first job, he said, is to block the tyrants. Just stand in their way, he said, and most tyrants won’t even try to pass. That’s Peace through Strength. A soldier’s second job, he said, is to fight and win wars. He said that second job won’t have to be done often if we do enough of the first job.

I hope there will be no more wars in the world

This, pandemic of wars will soon make us realize and accept the fact that the global society’s compassion towards its individuals is numbed and will eventually be completely absent as it is transformed into a human super-organism, just as one’s body is not concerned about the millions of cells dying daily in it, unless it affects the body as a whole like the cancer cells where we consider them to be terrorists and actively kill them.

Boghos L. Artinian MD

I hope there is no more war in this world

war it not good for all humans

Ultimately, be it engaging in, averting, or resolving, war can be likened to organized theft. The central theme revolves around a thief attempting to pilfer from someone else.

In the end, whether involving, preventing, or resolving, war can be compared to organized theft. The core idea centers on a thief attempting to steal from someone else.

No nation would wage a war for the independence of another. Boghos L. Artinian

And I will give you one word that sums up and supersedes your Five Reasons: Covetousness James 4:2, ESV, The Holy Bible.

Christopher Blattman offers a comprehensive analysis of the five key reasons wars occur, shedding light on the complexities underlying conflicts and peacekeeping efforts. Blattman emphasizes the importance of understanding the incentives for peace and the institutional mechanisms that mitigate the risk of war. By examining factors such as accountability, ideology, bias, uncertainty, and reliability, he provides a nuanced perspective on the decision-making processes that lead to conflict. Blattman's insights underscore the significance of promoting dialogue, minimizing misperceptions, and strengthening institutions to preserve peace in an increasingly volatile world.

Excuse me, but why all the Russia focus? Also, can all these "reasons of war" be applied to Israel also – autocratic rule, biases in information, etc? Finally, most wars in the last 70 years have been started by the US (either directly invading, or by supporting a nationalist faction in bloody coups and civil wars) – do the same reasons apply to those wars, as in the US has essentially autocratic leadership which has biased views and fears competition?

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A New Era of Conflict and Violence

The nature of conflict and violence has transformed substantially since the UN was founded 75 years ago. Conflicts now tend to be less deadly and often waged between domestic groups rather than states. Homicides are becoming more frequent in some parts of the world, while gender-based attacks are increasing globally. The long-term impact on development of inter-personal violence, including violence against children, is also more widely recognized.

Separately, technological advances have raised concerns about lethal autonomous weapons and cyberattacks, the weaponization of bots and drones, and the livestreaming of extremist attacks. There has also been a rise in criminal activity involving data hacks and ransomware, for example. Meanwhile, international cooperation is under strain, diminishing global potential for the prevention and resolution of conflict and violence in all forms.

ENTRENCHED CONFLICT

Globally, the absolute number of war deaths has been declining since 1946. And yet, conflict and violence are currently on the rise , with many conflicts today waged between non-state actors such as political militias, criminal, and international terrorist groups. Unresolved regional tensions, a breakdown in the rule of law, absent or co-opted state institutions, illicit economic gain, and the scarcity of resources exacerbated by climate change , have become dominant drivers of conflict.

In 2016, more countries experienced violent conflict than at any point in almost 30 years. At the same time, conflicts are becoming more fragmented. For example, the number of armed groups involved in the Syrian civil war has¬ mushroomed from eight to several thousand since the outbreak of the conflict. Furthermore, the regionalisation of conflict, which interlinks political, socio-economic and military issues across borders, has seen many conflicts become longer, more protracted, and less responsive to traditional forms of resolution.

ORGANISED CRIME, URBAN AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

Today, crime kills far more people than armed conflicts. In 2017, almost half a million people across the world were killed in homicides, far surpassing the 89,000 killed in active armed conflicts and the 19,000 killed in terrorist attacks . If homicide rates keep climbing at the current rate of 4 per cent, then Sustainable Development Goals 16 – which includes a target ‘to significantly reduce all forms of violence and related death rates everywhere’ – will not be met by 2030. 

Organised crime and gang violence vary widely across regions. Countries in the Americas have the worst homicide rates by a wide margin, accounting for 37 per cent of the global total in a region that accounts for only 13 per cent of the world’s population. Political instability engenders organised crime, including targeted attacks against police, women, journalists, and migrants. Meanwhile political violence no longer affects only low-income states. In the past 15 years, more than half of the world’s population has lived in direct contact or proximity to significant political violence. 

For women and girls, the home remains the most dangerous place. Some 58 per cent of female homicides were carried out by intimate partners or family members in 2017, up from 47 per cent in 2012. Women bear the heaviest burden of lethal victimisation, often as a result of misogynistic beliefs, inequality, and dependency, which persist globally, especially in low-in-come countries.

VIOLENT EXTREMISM

While terrorism remains widespread, its impact has been waning in recent years. Globally, the number of deaths attributed to terrorism dropped for a third consecutive year in 2018, to under 19,000. Attacks have become less lethal as governments step up counter-terrorism efforts, regional and international coordination, and programmes to prevent and counter violent extremism. In 2017, a fifth of terrorist attacks were unsuccessful , compared with just over 12 per cent in 2014. 

Conflict remains the primary driver of terrorism, with more than 99 per cent of all terrorist-related deaths occurring in countries involved in a violent conflict or with high levels of political terror. The majority of deadly attacks take place in the Middle East, North Africa, and Sub-Saharan Africa, with Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, and Syria, bearing the heaviest burden. 

In countries with high levels of economic development, social alienation, lack of economic opportunity, and state involvement in an external conflict are the major drivers of terrorist activity. In Western Europe, terrorism-related deaths have fallen dramatically in the past few years, but the number of incidents has increased. There has been a sizeable increase in the number of attacks carried out by actors with far-right, white nationalist, or anti-Muslim beliefs in both Western Europe and North America in the past two decades. The number of incidents across the two regions increased from three in 2002 to 59 in 2017, with social media playing a crucial role in the dissemination of xenophobic speech and incitement to violence.

Extremist groups today have unprecedented access to the general public through the internet, which allows for more efficient and effective recruitment, incitement, and propaganda, as well as the purchase of weapons and unregulated money transfers. Both state and non-state actors can also use AI-enabled deep learning to create ‘deepfakes,’ which create seemingly real footage of people speaking words they never uttered and have the potential to fuel misinformation, divisions, and political instability.

NEW TECHNOLOGIES

Technological advances are contributing to the changing nature of conflict. There are concerns about the potential for artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to enhance cyber, physical, and biological attacks. For example, by making them more finely targeted,  harder to attribute, and easier for small groups perhaps even ‘lone wolfs’ to carry out.

Emerging technologies are lowering the barriers to the acquisition of biological weapons – toxic substances or diseases used to harm or kill humans, livestock, and crops. There are concerns that advances in AI and 3D printing could facilitate biological attacks , by automating the development and production of the weapons and the systems that develop them.

There is also mounting international concern over the development of so-called lethal autonomous weapons (LAWs), which could identify and engage a specific target without human guidance, thereby transferring responsibility over life and death from human moral systems to complex data systems, devoid of an ethical compass. The UN Secretary-General has called for fully autonomous weapons to be prohibited by international law, as have over 30 nations .

Perhaps the most prevalent modern-day threat is that of cyber-attacks. According to IBM’s X-Force Incident Response and Intelligence Services, the number of cyber-attacks doubled in the first half of 2019 in comparison with the second half of 2018, most of them targeting manufacturers, oil and gas companies, and educational institutes. Owners of critical infrastructure are especially at risk, as malicious actors seek to target airport control towers, nuclear power plants, hospitals, and dams. Over the past year, more than a hundred cyber incidents with the potential to undermine international peace and security were identified. Such attacks would cause substantial damage and casualties.

On the flip side, advances in AI and other technologies also provide new tools and preventive strategies for police and counterintelligence agencies to better prevent attacks and identify perpetrators. But here too there are risks. For example, predictive policing comes with its own downsides, including inbuilt racial and religious biases, which can engender radicalisation to violent extremism.

THE NUCLEAR THREAT

Today, we are witnessing the unravelling of the international arms control architecture and a gradual backtracking on established arms control agreements, which have supported global stability, restraint, and transparency. The continued existence of nuclear weapons poses an ever-greater threat to the survival of humanity. While the number of nuclear weapons has dropped from more than 60,000 during the Cold War to around 14,000 today, nuclear weapons are more powerful today. At the same time relations between nuclear-armed states are fraying, and divisions over the pace and scale of disarmament are growing. 

When the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty ended in August 2019, the UN Secretary-General deplored the loss of “an invaluable brake on nuclear war”. The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) faces a similar demise. The total elimination of nuclear weapons can still be achieved, but it will require a renewed commitment to trust and cooperation between the world’s most powerful countries. The Secretary-General has called on states to renew fervour on outstanding and current arms control agreements. 

LOOKING FORWARD

In 1945, the UN was primarily designed as a tool to manage interstate relations as the world reeled from the horrors of two world wars. While today’s world is in many ways safer, the nature of threat has evolved considerably. New, more complex and more sophisticated threats require imaginative and bold responses, and strengthened collaboration between states, as well as the private sector and civil society. Institutional boundaries must also be bridged, so that political, human rights, and development partners can work in concert.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

The Sustainable Development Goals 

UNODA | Securing Our Common Future 2018

UNODC | Global Study on Homicide 2019

UN and World Bank | Pathways for Peace 2018

UN | Violence Against Children

The Age of Digital Interdependence: Report of the UN Secretary-General’s High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation

Global Terrorism Index 2018

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Article contents

The conduct and consequences of war.

• Alyssa K. Prorok Alyssa K. Prorok Department of Political Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
•  and  Paul K. Huth Paul K. Huth Department of Government and Politics, University of Maryland
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.013.72
• Published in print: 01 March 2010
• Published online: 22 December 2017
• This version: 25 June 2019
• Previous version

The academic study of warfare has expanded considerably over the past 15 years. Whereas research used to focus almost exclusively on the onset of interstate war, more recent scholarship has shifted the focus from wars between states to civil conflict, and from war onset to questions of how combatants wage and terminate war. Questioned as well are the longer-term consequences of warfare for countries and their populations. Scholarship has also shifted away from country-conflict-year units of analysis to micro-level studies that are attentive to individual-level motives and explanations of spatial variation in wartime behavior by civilians and combatants within a country or armed conflict. Today, research focuses on variations in how states and rebel groups wage war, particularly regarding when and how wars expand, whether combatants comply with the laws of war, when and why conflicts terminate, and whether conflicts end with a clear military victory or with a political settlement through negotiations. Recent research also recognizes that strategic behavior continues into the post-conflict period, with important implications for the stability of the post-conflict peace. Finally, the consequences of warfare are wide-ranging and complex, affecting everything from political stability to public health, often long after the fighting stops.

• interstate war
• laws of war
• civilian victimization
• war termination
• war severity
• post-conflict peace

Updated in this version

Updated introduction, subheadings, references, and substantial revision throughout.

Introduction

Over the past 15 years, research by social scientists on the conduct and consequences of war has expanded considerably. Previously, scholarly research had been heavily oriented towards the analysis of the causes of interstate war and its onset. Three simultaneous trends, however, have characterized scholarship on war since the early 2000s. First, studies of the dynamics of civil war have proliferated. Second, war is conceptualized as a series of inter-related stages in which the onset, conduct, and termination of wars as well as post-war relations are analyzed theoretically and empirically in a more integrated fashion. Third, studies have shifted away from country-conflict-year units of analysis to micro-level studies that are sensitive to spatial variation in behavior within a country or conflict.

This article reviews and assesses this body of recent scholarship, which has shifted the focus from war onset to questions of how combatants wage war and what are the longer-term consequences of warfare for countries and their populations. Scholarly research examines the conduct and consequences of both interstate and civil wars.

The analysis is organized into three main sections. It begins with research on how states and rebel groups wage war, with particular attention given to questions regarding war expansion, compliance with the laws of war, and war severity. Section two turns to the literature on war duration, termination, and outcomes. Different explanations are discussed, for when and why wars come to an end; then, the question of how war’s end influences the prospects for a stable post-war peace is considered. In section three, recent scholarship is examined on the consequences of war for post-war trends in political stability and public health. The concluding discussion addresses some of the important contributions associated with recent scholarship on the conduct and consequences of war as well as promising directions for future research.

The Waging of Civil and International Wars

What accounts for the nature of the wars we see? This broad question drives a new research tradition in conflict studies that compliments traditional analyses of war onset by shifting the focus to state behavior during war. This research goes beyond understandings of why states fight one another to engaging questions of why states join ongoing wars, when and why they follow the laws of war, and what explains the severity of wars. Taken together, these questions open the black box of wartime behavior.

Intervention and the Expansion of Interstate Wars

Research on war expansion developed as a natural outgrowth of analyses of war onset: scholars studying why states initiate conflict shifted focus to understand why third parties join ongoing wars. The link between alliances and joining behavior has been central to studies of war expansion, spawning a broad research tradition that focuses on alliances and geography, differences among types of alliances, and the characteristics of alliance members. Siverson and Starr ( 1991 ), for example, find a strong interaction effect between geography and alliances, in that a warring neighbor who is an ally increases the likelihood of a state joining an existing conflict. Leeds, Long, and Mitchell ( 2000 ) also find that the specific content of alliance obligations is critical to understanding when states choose to intervene, and that states uphold the terms of their alliance commitments nearly 75% of the time. Most recently, Vasquez and Rundlett ( 2016 ) found that alliances are essentially a necessary condition for war expansion, highlighting the importance of this factor in explaining joining behavior.

Alliance behavior is also an important topic in the study of democratic wartime behavior. While Choi ( 2004 ) presents findings suggesting that democracies are particularly likely to align with one another, Reiter and Stam ( 2002 ) provide counter-evidence that democracies are willing to align with non-democracies when it serves their strategic interests. Given the tendency to uphold alliance obligations, and empirical evidence showing that war initiators are more successful when their adversary does not receive third-party assistance (Gartner & Siverson, 1996 ), recent theoretical research suggests that states, understanding joining dynamics, might manipulate war aims to reduce the likelihood of outside intervention (Werner, 2000 ).

These studies suggest that war expansion should be understood as the consequence of a decision calculus undertaken by potential joiners. While much of the contemporary literature focuses on alliance behavior, this only indirectly gets at the question of who will join ongoing conflicts. A full explanation of war expansion from this perspective would also require that we explain when states form alliances in the first place. Further, the analyses of Gartner and Siverson ( 1996 ) and of Werner ( 2000 ) suggest that strategic thinking must be the focus of future research on war expansion. Recent research begins to address this issue: DiLorenzo and Rooney ( 2018 ) examine how uncertainty over estimates of third party resolve influence war-making decisions of states, finding that rival states are more likely to initiate conflict when domestic power shifts in potential joiner states (i.e., allies) increase uncertainty over the strength of that alliance commitment. Future research should continue to investigate the links between expectations of third-party behavior and initial war initiation decisions, as this research highlights important selection processes that empirical research has not yet fully explored.

Finally, recent research goes further to connect war initiation and expansion by arguing that commitment problems—one of the key bargaining failures leading to war initiation—also helps explain war expansion. Shirkey ( 2018 ) finds that wars caused by commitment rather than information problems are more likely to expand, as they are generally fought over greater war aims, are more severe, and last longer. These factors generate risks and rewards for intervention that encourage expansion.

The literature on interstate war expansion has made progress in the last decade with much closer attention to modeling strategic calculations by combatants and potential interveners. The result has been a better understanding of the interrelationship between onset and joining behavior and the realization that the timing and the sequence in which sides intervene is critical to war expansion (Joyce, Ghosn, & Bayer, 2014 ).

Expansion of Civil Wars

The analog to studies of war expansion in the interstate context has traditionally been the study of intervention in the civil war context. Research in this field treats the decision to intervene in much the same way as the war expansion literature treats the potential joiner’s decision calculus. That is, intervention is the result of a rational, utility-maximizing decision calculus in which potential interveners consider the costs and benefits of intervention as well as the potential for achieving desired outcomes. Understood in these terms, both domestic and international strategic considerations affect the decision to intervene, with the Cold War geopolitical climate much more conducive to countervailing interventions than the post-Cold War era has been (Regan, 2002a ), and peacekeeping-oriented interventions most likely in states with ethnic, trade, military, or colonial ties to the intervening state (Rost & Greig, 2011 ).

Whether states are most likely to intervene in easy or hard cases is a central question. While Aydin ( 2010 ) showed that states will delay intervention when previous interventions by other states have failed to influence the conflict, Rost and Grieg ( 2011 ) showed that state-based interventions for peacekeeping purposes are most likely in tough cases—long ethnic wars and conflicts that kill and displace large numbers of civilians. Finally, Gent ( 2008 ) shows that the likelihood of success may not affect the intervention decision equally for government and opposition-targeted interventions. He finds that both types of intervention are more likely when governments face stronger rebel groups, thus implying that intervention in support of rebel groups occurs when the likelihood of success is highest, but intervention supporting governments is most likely when states face their most intense challenges.

There are two likely sources of the discrepancies in this literature. First, most analyses have focused exclusively on the intervener’s decision calculus, or the supply side, failing to account for variation in the demand for intervention. Second, there is significant inconsistency in the literature’s treatment of the goals of interveners. Some analyses assume that states intervene to end conflicts, while others don’t make this limiting assumption but still fail to distinguish among interventions for different purposes.

Newer research takes important strides to address these issues. First, Salehyan, Skrede Gleditsch, and Cunningham ( 2011 ) developed a theory of third party support for insurgent groups that explicitly modeled both supply-side and demand-side factors driving the intervention decision. They found that demand is greatest among weak rebel groups, but supply is greatest for strong groups. Second, research by Cunningham ( 2010 ) explicitly measured whether third party states intervene with independent goals, and Stojek and Chacha ( 2015 ) theorized that intervention behavior is driven by economic motivations. Trade ties increase the likelihood of intervention on the side of the government.

Finally, Kathman ( 2010 ) focused on contiguous state interveners in examining motives for intervention. He developed a measure of conflict infection risk that predicts the likelihood of conflict spreading to each contiguous state. Empirically, he finds that, as the risk of contagion increases, so does the probability of intervention by at-risk neighbors. This research develops a convincing mechanism and empirical test to explain a subset of interventions and provides a clear link from intervention research to recent research on civil conflict contagion. While the contagion literature is too broad to review here, mechanisms posited for civil war expansion across borders range from refugee flows (Salehyan & Gleditsch, 2006 ), to ethnic kinship ties (Forsberg, 2014 ), to increased military expenditures in neighboring states (Phillips, 2015 ).

The literature on intervention into civil wars has grown significantly over the past decade as internationalization of civil conflicts has become common and often results in escalatory dynamics that are of deep concern to analysts and policymakers.

Compliance With the Laws of War

Scholars have recently begun studying the conditions under which compliance with the laws of war is most likely and the mechanisms most important in determining compliance. This research shifts the focus toward understanding state behavior during war and the strategic and normative considerations that influence decision-making processes of states. Two key questions drive scholarship in this tradition; first, does international law constrain state behavior, even when the state is threatened by severe conflict, and second, can observed compliance be attributed to ratification status, or is it instead a result of strategic decision making?

Scholars have yet to provide conclusive answers to these questions; while compliance is observed in many circumstances, most scholars attribute observed restraint to factors other than international law. Legro ( 1995 ), for example, found that international agreements had limited impact on Britain and Germany’s use of unrestricted submarine warfare, strategic bombing of civilian targets, and chemical weapons during WWII. In analyses of civilian targeting during interstate war, Downes ( 2006 ) and Valentino, Huth, and Croco ( 2006 ) also found that international law itself has little impact on a state’s propensity for civilian targeting. Downes argued that civilian targeting occurs most often when states are fighting protracted wars of attrition and desire to save lives on their own side, or when they intend to annex enemy territory with potentially hostile civilians. Valentino et al. ( 2006 ) similarly found that the decision to target civilians is driven by strategic considerations and is unconstrained by treaty obligations relating to the laws of war. Finally, Fazal and Greene ( 2015 ) found that observed compliance is explained by identity rather than law; violations are much more common in European vs. non-European dyads than in other types of dyads.

While these analyses suggest that international law has little effect on state behavior and that observed compliance is incidental, Price ( 1997 ) and Morrow ( 2014 ) argued that law does exert some influence on compliance behavior. Price attributed variation in the use of chemical weapons to the terms of international agreements, arguing that complete bans are more effective than partial bans. Morrow ( 2014 ), however, demonstrated that law’s impact varies depending upon issue area, regime characteristics, and adversary identity. Of eight issue areas, he found the worst compliance records on civilian targeting and prisoners of war, which perhaps accounts for the largely negative conclusions drawn by Downes ( 2006 ) and Valentino et al. ( 2006 ). Additionally, Morrow found, unlike Valentino et al., that democratic states are more likely to comply after ratification than before, suggesting that obligations under international law do affect state behavior, at least in democracies. Finally, he demonstrated that compliance increases significantly when an adversary has also ratified a given treaty, arguing this effect is due to reciprocity.

More recent scholarship expands this research, showing that law may affect state behavior through additional mechanisms that previous research had not considered. For example, Kreps and Wallace ( 2016 ) and Wallace ( 2015 ) found that public support for state policies as diverse as drone strikes and torture of prisoners of war are critically influenced by international law. International condemnation of U.S. policies reduces public support most when such condemnation focuses on legal critiques. This suggests that international law influences state behavior in democracies through its effect on public opinion, not through liberal norms of nonviolence. Additionally, Appel and Prorok ( 2018 ) and Jo and Thompson ( 2014 ) showed that external constraints influence states’ compliance behavior. Specifically, Appel and Prorok showed that states target fewer civilians in interstate war when they are embedded in alliance and trade networks dominated by third party states who have ratified international treaties prohibiting the abuse of non-combatants during war. Jo and Thompson showed that states are more likely to grant international observers access to detention centers when they are more reliant upon foreign aid. These findings suggest that international law can influence state behavior indirectly, through pressure exerted by international donors and backers.

Scholarship on compliance with the laws of war in interstate wars has made considerable progress over the past decade. We now know much more about the contingent support of democratic state leaders and publics for compliance with the laws of war. This key finding opens up new areas of research on the strategic efforts of political and military leaders to convince publics of their commitment to international law and whether those strategies are likely to be successful.

Civilian Targeting in Civil War

The mistreatment and deliberate targeting of civilian populations is an active area of research by scholars who study civil wars (Hultman, 2007 ; Humphreys & Weinstein, 2006 ; Kalyvas, 2006 ; Valentino et al., 2004 ; Weinstein, 2007 ; Wickham-Crowley, 1990 ). Most research on this topic treats the use of violence against civilians as a strategic choice; that is, combatants target civilians to induce their compliance, signal resolve, weaken an opponent’s support base, or extract resources from the population. In his seminal work on the topic, Kalyvas ( 2006 ) demonstrated that combatants resort to the use of indiscriminate violence to coerce civilian populations when they lack the information and control necessary to target defectors selectively. Similarly, Valentino ( 2005 ) and Valentino et al. ( 2004 ) found that incumbents are more likely to resort to mass killing of civilians when faced with strong insurgent opponents that they are unable to defeat through more conventional tactics.

More recent analyses have built upon these earlier works, adding levels of complexity to the central theories developed previously and examining new forms of violence that previous studies did not. Balcells ( 2011 ) brought political considerations back in, finding that direct violence is most likely in areas where pre-conflict political power between state and rebel supporters was at parity, while indirect violence is most likely in locations where the adversary’s pre-war political support was highest. Wood ( 2010 ) accounted for the impact of relative strength and adversary strategy, finding that weak rebel groups, lacking the capacity to protect civilian populations, will increase their use of violence in response to state violence, while strong rebel groups display the opposite pattern of behavior. Lyall ( 2010a ) also found conditionalities in the relationship between state behavior and insurgent reactions, demonstrating that government “sweep” operations are much more effective at preventing and delaying insurgent violence when carried out by forces of the same ethnicity as the insurgent group. Finally, Cohen ( 2016 ) advanced research by focusing on wartime sexual violence. She found that rape, like other forms of violence, is used strategically in civil war. Specifically, armed groups use rape as a socialization tactic: groups that recruit through abduction engage in rape at higher rates, to generate loyalty and trust between soldiers.

This large body of research provides many insights into the strategic use of violence against civilians during civil war. However, until recently, little research addressed questions of compliance with legal obligations. With the recent formation of the International Criminal Court, however, states and rebel groups are now subject to legal investigation for failure to comply with basic principles of the laws of war.

Emerging research suggests that the International Criminal Court (ICC) and international law more generally do affect the behavior of civil war combatants. For example, Hillebrecht ( 2016 ) found that ICC actions during the Libyan civil war reduced the level of mass atrocities committed in the conflict, while Jo and Simmons ( 2016 ) found that the ICC reduces civilian targeting by governments and rebel groups that are seeking legitimacy, suggesting international legal institutions can reduce violations of humanitarian law during civil war. These findings should be tempered, however, by recent research suggesting that ICC involvement in civil wars can, under certain conditions, extend ongoing conflicts (Prorok, 2017 ).

Finally, beyond the ICC, Stanton ( 2016 ) and Jo ( 2015 ) both demonstrated that international law constrains civil war actors by establishing standards against which domestic and international constituencies judge the behavior of governments and rebel groups. Particularly when rebels are seeking legitimacy, Jo argues, they are more likely to comply with international legal standards in a variety of areas, from protection of civilian populations to child soldiering. This research suggests that even without direct intervention by the ICC, international law can influence the behavior of governments and rebels engaged in civil war.

While recent research has shown that the laws of war can influence civilian targeting in civil wars, the large loss of civilian life in the Syrian civil war highlights how fragile the commitment to international law can be. It points to important future research questions about when threats of various sanctions by the international community against non-compliance are actually credible and which actors can apply effective coercive pressure.

Losses Suffered in Wars

Recent scholarship has taken up the issue of war severity. Empirical research suggests that the tactics and strategies used by states during war, and the political pressures that compel them to adopt those policies, affect the severity of conflict. Biddle ( 2004 ), for instance, argued that war-fighting strategies influence the magnitude of losses sustained during war, and found that states employing the modern system of force reduce their exposure to lethal firepower, thus limiting losses. Valentino, Huth, and Croco ( 2010 ) examined the reasons behind different strategic choices, arguing that democratic sensitivity to the costs of war pressure democratic leaders to adopt military policies designed to limit fatalities. They found that increasing military capabilities decreases civilian and military fatalities, while reliance on guerrilla or attrition strategies, as well as fighting on or near one’s own territory, increases fatalities. They reported that democracies are significantly more likely to join powerful alliances and less likely to use attrition or guerrilla strategies, or to fight on their own territory.

Speaking to the conventional wisdom that interstate warfare is on the decline, recent research by Fazal ( 2014 ) suggests that modern medical advances mean that, while war has become less fatal, it has not necessarily become less severe. This raises questions about common understandings of broad trends in conflict frequency and severity as well as questions about best practices for measuring conflict severity. Future research should grapple with both of these issues.

Civil war studies have recently begun to focus more on conflict severity as an outcome in need of explanation. Many key explanatory factors in early research mirrored those in interstate war research, making comparison possible. For example, like interstate war, civil war scholarship consistently finds that democracies suffer less severe conflicts than nondemocracies (Heger & Salehyan, 2007 ; Lacina, 2006 ; Lujala, 2009 ). Regarding state military strength, research by Lujala ( 2009 ) demonstrated that relative equality between government and rebel forces leads to the deadliest conflicts, as rebels with the strength to fight back will likely inflict more losses than those without the ability to sustain heavy engagement with government forces. Finally, recent research by Balcells and Kalyvas ( 2014 ) mirrored work on interstate war by focusing on how the military strategies adopted by combatants affect conflict intensity. They found that civil conflicts fought via conventional means tend to be more lethal than irregular or symmetric nonconventional (SNC) wars, as only the former involve direct confrontations with heavy weaponry. While research on conflict severity is still developing, these studies suggest that democracy, military strength, and strategy are consistent predictors of conflict severity, although the mechanisms posited for the effects of these variables sometimes differ between civil and interstate war.

What this research does not provide clear answers on is how battle losses trend throughout the course of conflict, as most factors examined in the above research are static throughout a conflict. As our ability to measure conflict severity at a more micro temporal and spatial level has improved, emerging research is beginning to address these questions. For example, Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon ( 2014 ) find that increasing UN troop presence decreases battlefield deaths by increasing the costs of perpetrating violence. Dasgupta Gawande, and Kapur ( 2017 ) also found reductions in insurgent violence associated with implementation of development programs, though the pacifying effects of such programs are conditional upon local state capacity. Additional research shows that trends in violence in Islamist insurgencies vary predictably, with violence suppressed due to anticipated social disapproval during important Islamic holidays (Reese, Ruby, & Pape, 2017 ). Recent research also suggests local variation in cell-phone coverage affects local levels of insurgent violence, as increasing cell-phone communication improves the state’s ability to gather information and monitor insurgent behavior, thereby reducing insurgent violence (Shapiro & Weidmann, 2015 ). These recent studies represent an important trend in conflict severity research that more carefully examines the dynamics of escalation and de-escalation within given conflicts, both spatially and temporally. We encourage additional research in this vein.

The Duration, Termination, and Outcome of War

What accounts for the duration, termination, and outcomes of interstate and civil wars, and the durability of the peace that follows these conflicts? These questions represent a central focus of contemporary conflict studies, and are closely linked in terms of their explanations. A major innovation in this literature in the past 10 to 15 years has been the extension of the bargaining model of war from its original application in the context of war onset (Blainey, 1973 ; Fearon, 1995 ) to its use in the context of war duration, termination, and outcome.

The turn to bargaining models has placed relative military capabilities and battlefield developments at the center of much of the theoretical literature in this area. This focus, however, has spawned a backlash in recent years, as patterns that contradict the implications of bargaining models are detected and theorized. The bargaining approach and its critiques are discussed in the following sections.

Duration of Wars

Understood within the bargaining framework, war duration is closely linked to factors that influence the relative strength of combatants. Theoretical and empirical research suggests that longer wars occur when opponents of relatively equal strength cannot achieve breakthroughs on the battlefield (Bennett & Stam, 1996 ; Filson & Werner, 2007b ; Slantchev, 2004 ), although this pattern does not hold for wars involving non-state actors where a large asymmetry in power increases war duration (Sullivan, 2008 ).

Additional research suggests, however, that relative military strength may not be the best predictor of war duration. Bennett and Stam ( 1996 ), for example, demonstrated that military strategy has a large impact on war duration, independent of military strength, with attrition and punishment strategies leading to longer wars than maneuver strategies. The type of political objectives sought by a war initiator may also offset the impact of military strength, as war aims that require significant target compliance generally lead to longer wars (Sullivan, 2008 ). Still others argue that domestic political sensitivity to concessions-making increases conflict duration, while domestic cost sensitivity leads to shorter wars (Filson & Werner, 2007a ; Mattes & Morgan, 2004 ). Thus, democracies are expected to fight shorter wars (Filson & Werner, 2007b ), whereas mixed regimes will fight longer wars as they gamble for resurrection in the face of high domestic costs for war losses (Goemans, 2000 ). Research by Lyall ( 2010b ), however, suggests that this relationship is conditional upon conflict type, as he found no relationship between democracy and war duration in the context of counterinsurgency wars.

Biddle ( 2004 ) more directly challenged bargaining models of war duration by comparing the predictive power of models including traditional measures of relative military capabilities to those accounting for combatants’ methods of force employment. Biddle demonstrated that models taking force employment into account generate more accurate predictions of war duration than those assuming an unconditional relationship between military power and war duration. A second important challenge to traditional applications of bargaining models comes from Reiter ( 2009 ). He demonstrated that the argument that decisive battlefield outcomes promote quick termination is conditional upon the absence of commitment problems. When compliance fears dominate information asymmetries, battle losses and the expectation of future losses may not be sufficient to end conflict, as belligerents will continue fighting in pursuit of absolute victory to eliminate the threat of the losing state defecting from post-war settlements. Reiter thus demonstrates that commitment problems and information asymmetries have varying effects on war duration, and both must be accounted for in models of conflict duration and termination.

Despite these critiques, more recent research continues to approach the question of war duration from the bargaining perspective. Shirkey ( 2012 ), for example, argued that late third-party joiners to interstate conflicts lengthen those disputes by complicating the bargaining process. Joiners add new issues to the war and increase uncertainty about relative power among combatants, thus requiring additional fighting to reveal information and find a bargained solution. Weisiger ( 2016 ) similarly focused on information problems, but attempts to unpack the mechanism by focusing on more specific characteristics of battlefield events. Using new data on the timing of battle deaths for specific war participants, Weisiger found that settlement is more likely after more extensive fighting, and that states are more likely to make concessions after their battle results have deteriorated. Finally, recent research has also begun to problematize resolve, considering how variation in actors’ resolve affects their willingness to stay in a fight or cut losses (Kertzer, 2017 ). This represents a fruitful area for future research, as conceptually and empirically unpacking resolve will shed new light on costs of war and how they relate to war onset, duration, and termination.

Scholars studying the duration of civil wars also commonly apply a rationalist perspective. Factors that increase the costs of sustaining the fight generally shorten wars, while those that raise the costs of making concessions tend to lengthen conflicts. Along these lines, research suggests that the availability of contraband funding for rebel groups lengthens conflicts by providing rebels with the economic resources to sustain their campaigns (Fearon, 2004 ). However, additional research demonstrates that the influence of contraband is mitigated by fluctuations in its market value (Collier, Hoeffler, & Söderbom, 2004 ), by how rebels earn funding from resources (through smuggling versus extortion; Conrad, Greene, Igoe Walsh, & Whitaker, 2018 ), and by the composition of state institutions (Wiegand & Keels, 2018 ).

Research suggests that structural conditions also affect civil war duration, such as the stakes of war, ethnic divisions, and the number of combatants involved. For example, ethnic conflicts over control of territory are generally longer than those fought over control of the central government (Balch-Lindsay & Enterline, 2000 ; Collier et al., 2004 ; Fearon, 2004 ). Regarding the role of ethnicity, Wucherpfennig, Metternich, Cederman, and Skrede Gleditsch ( 2012 ) demonstrated that the effect of ethnic cleavages is conditional on their relationship to political institutions. Regarding the complexity of the conflict, Cunningham ( 2011 ) found that civil wars with a greater number of combatants on each side are longer than those with fewer combatants. Findley ( 2013 ), however, showed that the number of conflict actors has varying effects across different stages of conflict, encouraging cooperation early on while impeding lasting settlement.

Third party intervention has also received significant attention in the civil war duration literature, with scholars generally arguing that intervention affects duration by augmenting the military strength of combatants. Empirical findings in early studies are mixed, however; while results consistently show that unbiased intervention or simultaneous intervention on both sides of a conflict increase war duration (Balch-Lindsay & Enterline, 2000 ; Balch-Lindsay, Enterline, & Joyce, 2008 ; Regan, 2002b ), biased interventions generate more inconsistent results.

In a valuable study addressing limitations of earlier research, Cunningham ( 2010 ) focused on the goals of third parties, and found that when interveners pursue agendas that are independent of those of the internal combatants, wars are more difficult to terminate due to decreased incentives to negotiate and a higher likelihood that commitment problems stymie settlements. This suggests that the empirical finding that intervention lengthens war may be driven by a subset of cases in which third parties intervene with specific goals. Ultimately, analyses focused on intervention do not account for the potential selection effect that influences when states will intervene. If Gent ( 2008 ) is correct, biased intervention should be most likely when the power ratio between government and rebel forces is close to parity, a factor which, if ignored, may bias the results of these analyses.

More recent studies have continued to unpack intervention, demonstrating that there are important distinctions beyond the biased versus balanced debate. Sawyer, Cunningham, and Reed ( 2015 ), for example, showed that different types of external support affect rebel fighting capacity differently. Specifically, fungible types of support like financial and arms transfers are particularly likely to lengthen conflict because they increase uncertainty over relative power. Similarly, Narang ( 2015 ) also focused on the uncertainty induced by external support. He showed that humanitarian assistance inadvertently increases both actors’ uncertainty over relative power, thereby prolonging civil war.

Until recently, this literature suffered from a major weakness in that it relied empirically on state-level variables that did not fully capture the dyadic nature of its theoretical propositions. Cunningham, Skrede Gleditsch, and Salehyan ( 2013 ) new dyadic data represents an important contribution to the field, as it explicitly measures the relative strength, mobilization capacity, and fighting capacity of rebel groups and applies a truly dyadic empirical approach. New research in this field should continue to approach questions of war duration and outcome with dyadic data and theory along with more micro-level studies that seek to explain variation in rebel and state fighting across different geographic locations and over time (e.g., Greig, 2015 ).

Ending Wars as a Bargaining Process

Interstate wars rarely end in the complete destruction of the defeated party’s military forces. Instead, new information is revealed through combat operations and negotiating behavior which enables belligerents to converge on a mutually agreeable settlement short of total war. Wittman ( 1979 ) provided the first formal articulation of the bargaining model in the context of war termination. He argued theoretically that war continues until both adversaries believe they can be made better off through settlement. Subsequent analyses have focused on both the battlefield conditions and strategies of negotiations leading states to believe settlement is the better option.

These analyses show that, as a state’s resources are depleted from battle losses, it has incentives to negotiate a settlement more acceptable to its adversary rather than suffer total defeat (Filson & Werner, 2002 ; Smith & Stam, 2004 ). Further, fighting battles reduces uncertainty by revealing information about resolve, military effectiveness, and the true balance of power between adversaries, causing expectations on the likely outcome of the war to converge, and making settlement possible (Wagner, 2000 ). Wartime negotiations provide adversaries with additional information, which Slantchev ( 2011 ) argued makes war termination more likely.

Challenging traditional notions regarding the likelihood of termination in the face of large asymmetries in capabilities, Slantchev ( 2011 ) argued that war termination depends upon states’ abilities to both impose and bear the costs of fighting. If a weaker state can minimize the costs it bears while forcing its adversary to expand its war effort, the benefits of fighting relative to its costs are reduced, and the stronger state may choose termination. The implication of this argument relates closely to Biddle’s ( 2004 ) empirical critique of the bargaining literature, which finds modern methods of force employment can mitigate losses during war, thereby shifting the balance of costs and benefits independent of relative military capabilities. Reiter’s ( 2009 ) critique of bargaining approaches also has implications for war termination. While traditional approaches argue that fighting battles reveals information and increases the likelihood of termination, Reiter suggested that this is only the case if belligerents expect their opponent to comply with the post-war status quo. If commitment problems are severe, information revealed during battles and war-time negotiations will have little effect on termination.

Biddle’s argument that country-year measures of military capabilities are inexact and crude proxies for the concepts advanced in theoretical models is a strong one that should be taken seriously by scholars. We therefore appreciate the contributions of Ramsay ( 2008 ) and Weisiger ( 2016 ), which use more fine-grained battle trend data rather than country-level measures of military capabilities to empirically test the implications of bargaining theories of war termination, and advocate future research adopting this strategy for testing the implications of bargaining theories.

Much of the literature on civil war termination also focuses on how battlefield developments affect the termination of civil wars. Collier et al. ( 2004 ) built on the idea of war as an information revelation mechanism, arguing that the probability of settlement should increase as war duration increases and more information is revealed regarding the relative strength of each side. Others focus on the costs of battle, with research showing that settlements are more likely when the costs of battle are high and the relative payoffs from victory decrease (Walter, 2002 ). Also, a relatively equal balance of power between combatants creates a mutually hurting stalemate, in which neither side can achieve victory, and settlement becomes more likely (Walter, 2002 ).

Empirical results support many of these theoretical predictions. Several scholars show that the longer a civil war lasts, the more likely it is to terminate (Collier et al., 2004 ; Fearon,, 2004 ; Regan, 2002b ), and that the probability of negotiated settlement increases as conflict duration increases (Mason, Weingarten, & Fett, 1999 ). The magnitude of conflict, measured as total war deaths, also correlates positively with the probability of adversaries initiating negotiations (Walter, 2002 ). Finally, Walter ( 2002 ) found that military stalemates significantly increase the likelihood of negotiations as well as the implementation of a ceasefire.

While these results support the theoretical predictions surrounding “hurting stalemates,” Walter’s coding of stalemates does not account for the timing of the stalemate or the number of stalemates that occur throughout the course of conflict. We therefore see great value in more recent research that uses new micro-level data to more closely capture actual battle dynamics and incorporate more information at the conflict and group-level. For example, Hultquist ( 2013 ) used a novel troop strength measure to better capture relative strength between rebel and government forces. He found that relative power parity increases the likelihood of negotiated settlement, while power imbalances extend civil war. Making use of fine-grained data on battle event dates and locations, Greig ( 2015 ) showed that the location, and changes in location over time, of battle events relays information to combatants that, in turn, affects their willingness to negotiate and settle their conflicts. We encourage additional research in this vein moving forward.

Domestic-Level Factors and War Termination

Recent research suggests that domestic political conditions influence war termination. Specifically, domestic political accountability, the domestic audience’s expectations, and cost-sensitivity affect leaders’ decisions to continue fighting versus settling on specific terms (Mattes & Morgan, 2004 ). Along these lines, Goemans ( 2000 ) argued that the postwar fate of leaders influences their choice between terminating and continuing a war. The threat of severe punishment by domestic actors increases the costs of war losses for leaders of semi-repressive regimes, leading them to continue fighting a war they are losing in the hope of achieving victory. Thus, war termination does not follow strictly from battle trends.

Empirically, Goemans ( 2000 ) found that losing mixed regimes suffer significantly more battle deaths than democratic or autocratic losers, and that wars fought against losing mixed regimes last, on average, almost twice as long as those fought against either democratic or autocratic losers. Taken together, these results suggest that mixed regime leaders are likely to sustain rather than terminate a losing war, and more generally, that regime type significantly influences war termination. Croco ( 2015 ) refined Goemans’s work by arguing that the individual responsibility of leaders for involving their country in a war has important effects on war termination patterns, with culpable leaders more likely to fight for victory in order to avoid being punished domestically for poor wartime performance. Croco and Weeks ( 2013 ) refined this logic further, showing that only culpable leaders from democracies and vulnerable nondemocracies face increased punishment risk from war losses. Koch and Sullivan ( 2010 ) provide another take on the relationship between domestic politics and war termination, demonstrating that partisanship significantly affects democratic states’ war termination decisions. Faced with declining approval for military interventions, their results demonstrate, right-leaning governments will continue the fight, while left-leaning executives will be more likely to end their military engagements.

The analog to studying domestic-level factors in interstate conflict would be to examine the effect of internal state and rebel characteristics on civil war termination. Traditionally, civil war studies have focused only on state characteristics, as data on rebel groups’ organization and internal characteristics has been unavailable. Early research argued that state capacity, regime characteristics, and ethnic/religious divisions influenced war termination by influencing the balance of power, accountability of leaders, and stakes of conflict, but empirical results provided mixed support for these theories (e.g., DeRouen & Sobek, 2004 ; Svensson, 2007 ; Walter, 2002 ).

More recent research has made significant strides in understanding how internal characteristics of combatants affect civil conflict termination by using new data to explore how the composition and practices (i.e., leader characteristics, governance, and internal cohesion) of rebel groups influence civil conflict dynamics. This research demonstrates that some of the same leader-accountability mechanisms that affect interstate war termination also influence civil conflict. For example, Prorok ( 2016 ) used novel data on rebel group leaders to show that culpable leaders are less willing to terminate or settle for compromise outcomes than their non-culpable counterparts in civil wars, just like in interstate conflicts. Heger and Jung ( 2017 ) also advanced existing research by using novel data on rebel service provision to civilian populations to explore how good rebel governance affects conflict negotiations. They found that service-providing rebels are more likely to engage in negotiations and to achieve favorable results, arguing that this reflects the lower risk of spoilers from groups with broad support and centralized power structures. Finally, Findley and Rudloff ( 2012 ) examined rebel group fragmentation’s effects on conflict termination and outcomes. Using computational modeling, they find that fragmentation only sometimes increases war duration (on fragmentation, also see Cunningham, 2014 ).

These studies underscore the value of exploring rebel group internal structures and practices in greater detail in future research, as they have an important impact on how, and when, civil wars end.

Victory/Defeat in Wars

Recent scholarship on victory and defeat in war suggests, as in the duration and termination literatures, that domestic politics, strategies of force employment, military mechanization, and war aims mediate the basic relationship between military strength and victory. Empirical results show that strategy choices and methods of force employment have a greater impact on war outcomes than relative military capabilities (Biddle, 2004 ; Stam, 1996 ), that high levels of mechanization within state militaries actually increase the probability of state defeat in counterinsurgency wars (Lyall & Wilson, 2009 ), and that weak states win more often when they employ an opposite-strategy approach in asymmetric conflicts (Arreguin-Toft, 2006 ) or when the stronger party’s war aims require high levels of target compliance (Sullivan, 2007 ). High relative losses and increasing war duration also decrease the likelihood of victory for war initiators, even if prewar capabilities favored the aggressor (Slantchev, 2004 ).

More recent research focuses on counter-insurgent conflicts, using new micro-level data and modeling techniques to address questions of counterinsurgent effectiveness in these complex conflicts. For example, Toft and Zhukov ( 2012 ) evaluated the effectiveness of denial versus punishment strategies, finding that denial (i.e., increasing the costs of expanding insurgent violence) is most effective, while punishment is counterproductive. Relatedly, Weidmann and Salehyan ( 2013 ) used an agent-based model applied to the U.S. surge in Baghdad to understand the mechanisms behind the surge’s success. They found that ethnic homogenization, rather than increased counterinsurgent capacity, best accounts for the surge’s success. Finally, Quackenbush and Murdie ( 2015 ) found that, counter to conventional wisdom, past experiences with counterinsurgency or conventional warfare have little effect on future success in conflict. States are not simply fighting the last war.

An important area of research that has fostered significant debate among scholars focuses on explaining the historical pattern of high rates of victory by democracies in interstate wars. The strongest explanations for the winning record of democracies center on their superior battlefield initiative and leadership, cooperative civil-military relations, and careful selection into wars they have a high probability of winning (Reiter & Stam, 2002 ). Challenging these results both theoretically and empirically, however, Desch ( 2002 ) argues that “democracy hardly matters,” that relative power plays a more important role in explaining victory. This debate essentially comes down to the relative importance of realist-type power variables versus regime type variables in explaining military victory; while scholars such as Lake ( 1992 ) and Reiter and Stam ( 2002 ) argued that regime type matters more, Desch asserted that relative power is the more important determinant of military victory.

Ultimately, we find Desch’s objections to the relevance of democracy to be overstated and his theoretical and empirical justifications to be largely unconvincing. First, Desch’s analysis is biased against Reiter and Stam’s argument because it is limited to dyads that Desch labels “fair fights,” that is, dyads with relatively equal military capabilities. This does not allow Desch to test the selection effect that Reiter and Stam discuss. Second, Desch failed to recognize that many of the realist variables he attributes the greatest explanatory power to are actually influenced by the foreign and military policies adopted by democratic leaders (Valentino et al., 2010 ). Democracy thus has both a direct and an indirect effect on war outcomes, and because Desch ignores the latter, he underestimates democracy’s total impact. Finally, the impacts of power variables may be overstated, as recent research demonstrates that military power’s influence is conditional upon method of force employment and military mechanization (Biddle, 2004 ; Lyall & Wilson, 2009 ).

More recent research examines some of the mechanisms suggested for the unique war-time behavior of democracies, raising some questions about existing mechanisms and suggesting alternatives to explain democratic exceptionalism. For example, Gibler and Miller ( 2013 ) argued that democracies tend to fight short, victorious wars because they have fewer territorial (i.e., high salience) issues over which to fight, rather than because of their leaders’ political accountability. Once controlling for issue salience, they find no relationship between democracy and victory. Similarly, using novel statistical techniques that allow them to account for the latent abilities of states, Renshon and Spirling ( 2015 ) showed that democracy only increases military effectiveness under certain conditions, and is actually counterproductive in others. Finally, new research by Bausch ( 2017 ) using laboratory experiments to test the mechanisms behind democracy and victory suggested that only some of these mechanisms hold up. Specifically, Bausch found that democratic leaders are actually more likely to select into conflict and do not mobilize more resources for war once involved, contrary to the selection and war fighting stories developed by Reiter and Stam ( 2002 ). He did find, however, that democratic leaders are less likely to accept settlement and more likely to fight to decisive victory once conflict is underway, and that democratic leaders are more likely to be punished than autocrats for losing a war. Thus, the debate over the democratic advantage in winning interstate wars continues to progress in productive directions.

Theoretical arguments regarding civil war outcomes focus on state/rebel strength, positing that factors such as natural resource wealth, state military capacity, and third-party assistance influence relative combatant strength and war outcomes. Empirical studies find that increasing state military strength decreases the likelihood of negotiated settlement and increases the probability of government victory (Mason et al., 1999 ). Characteristics of the war itself also affect outcomes, with the probability of negotiated settlement increasing as war duration increases (Mason et al., 1999 ; Walter, 2002 ), and high casualty rates increasing the likelihood of rebel victory (Mason et al., 1999 ).

Debate remains over how third-party interventions affect civil war outcomes. UN intervention decreases the likelihood of victory by either side while increasing the probability of negotiated war terminations (DeRouen & Sobek, 2004 ). This impact is time sensitive, however (Mason et al., 1999 ). Further, the impact of unilateral interventions is less clear. While Regan ( 1996 ) found intervention supporting the government to increase the likelihood of war termination, Gent ( 2008 ) found military intervention in support of rebels to increase their chance of victory but that in support of governments to have no significant impact. More recent research by Sullivan and Karreth ( 2015 ) helps explain this discrepancy. They argued that biased intervention only alters the chances for victory by the supported side if that side’s key deficiency is conventional war-fighting capacity. Empirically, they show that because rebels are generally weaker, military intervention on their behalf increases their chance of victory. For states, however, military intervention only increases their odds of victory if the state is militarily weaker than or at parity with the rebels.

Additional new research by Jones ( 2017 ) also represents an important step forward in understanding the effects of intervention in civil war. By examining both the timing and strategy of intervention, Jones demonstrated that the effects of intervention on conflict outcomes are much more complex than previous research suggests.

Post-War Peace Durability

As with studies on war duration, termination, and outcomes, much of the literature on the stability of post-war peace grows from extensions of the bargaining model of war. For these scholars, recurrence is most likely under conditions that encourage the renegotiation of the terms of settlement, including postwar changes in the balance of power (Werner, 1999 ) and externally forced ceasefires that artificially terminate fighting before both sides agree on the proper allocation of the spoils of war (Werner & Yuen, 2005 ). Building off of commitment problem models, Fortna ( 2004b ) argued that strong peace agreements that enhance monitoring, incorporate punishment for defection, and reward cooperation help sustain peace. Specific measures within agreements, however, affect the durability of peace differently. For example, troop withdrawals and the establishment of demilitarized zones decrease the likelihood of war resumption, while arms control measures have no significant impact (Fortna, 2004b , p. 176).

Postwar intervention is also expected to increase peace duration by ameliorating commitment problems, as peacekeepers act as a physical barrier and reduce security fears, uncertainty, and misperceptions between former adversaries (Fortna, 2004a ). Empirical results support this theoretical prediction, and while the size of the force is not significant, both monitoring and armed forces missions increase the durability of post-war peace (Fortna, 2004a ).

The debate that remains in this literature is whether or not peace agreements can effectively mitigate the influence of relative power variables. Recent research by Lo, Hashimoto, and Reiter ( 2008 ) suggests that they cannot. They demonstrated that cease-fire agreement strength has almost no significant impact on post-war peace duration, while factors encouraging renegotiation receive partial support. While discrepancies in results may be in part attributable to differences in time periods covered, this result essentially confirms Warner and Yuen’s ( 2005 ) finding that externally imposed war termination invites resumption of conflict, regardless of the presence of strong cease-fire agreements.

If, at the end of a civil conflict, each side maintains its ability to wage war, issues of credibility can undermine the peace and cause the conflict to resume. Thus, wars ending in negotiated settlements are more likely to recur than those ending with a decisive victory because both sides have the ability to resume fighting to gain greater concessions and neither can credibly commit to the peace (Licklider,, 1995 ; Walter, 2002 ). More recent research confirms that conflicts ending in military victory are less likely to recur than those ending in settlement (Caplan & Hoeffler, 2017 ; Toft, 2009 ), though Toft suggested that this is particularly true for rebel victories.

This understanding of post-war peace in terms of the bargaining model’s commitment problem has led scholars to examine three primary avenues through which commitment problems might be overcome and peace maintained. First, partition has been advanced as a possible solution to post-war instability. The separation of warring factions is expected to reduce security fears by creating demographically separate, militarily defensible regions (Kaufmann, 1996 ). Empirical evidence generally supports this strategy. Partitions that successfully separate warring ethnic groups significantly reduce the risk of renewed conflict (Johnson, 2008 ), while those that do not achieve demographic separation increase the risk of renewed hostilities (Tir, 2005 ). Further, relative to de facto separation, autonomy arrangements, or maintenance of a unitary state, partition is significantly less likely to lead to war recurrence (Chapman & Roeder, 2007 ).

Second, third-party intervention is expected to play a role in ameliorating the security dilemma arising from commitment problems in post-conflict states (Fearon, 2004 ; Walter, 2002 ). Empirical results confirm that third-party security guarantees are critical to the signing and durability of peace settlements (Walter, 2002 ). Once settlement has been reached, third-party guarantees and international peacekeeping establish punishments for defection (Fortna, 2008 ; Walter, 2002 ), thereby reducing incentives for and increasing costs of renewed conflict. More recent research that employs more fine-grained data on the size and composition of UN peacekeeping forces suggests, however, that this type of third-party guarantee is most effective when it has the military power to enforce the peace. Specifically, Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon ( 2016 ) found that increasing UN troop presence increases peace durability, but the presence of other types of UN monitors has little effect on peace duration. By using more fine-grained data, this study makes an important contribution by allowing us to parse the mechanisms driving the role of third party guarantees in promoting peace.

Third, the incorporation of power-sharing arrangements that guarantee the survival of each side into the postwar settlement is also expected to solve post-civil war commitment problems (Walter, 2002 ). These arrangements allow adversaries to generate costly signals of their resolve to preserve the peace, thus ameliorating security fears (Hartzell & Hoddie, 2007 ). Empirical results indicate that given a negotiated settlement, the agreement’s ability to ameliorate security concerns is positively associated with the preservation of peace. Thus, the more regulation of coercive and political power included in an agreement, and the greater the number of dimensions (political, territorial, military, economic) of power sharing specified, the more likely agreements are to endure (Hartzell & Hoddie, 2007 ).

More recently, scholars have begun to extend this research by focusing more broadly on settlement design. Whereas previous research tended to simply count the number of power-sharing dimensions, newer analyses focus on issues such as the quality of the agreement (Badran, 2014 ) and equality in the terms of settlement (Albin & Druckman, 2012 ). Martin ( 2013 ), for example, found that provisions that share power at the executive level are less effective than those that regulate power at the level of rank-and-file or the public, as elite-level power-sharing is relatively easy for insincere actors to engage in at a relatively low cost. Cammett and Malesky ( 2012 ) found that proportional representation provisions are particularly effective at stabilizing post-conflict peace because of their ability to promote good governance and service provision, while Joshi and Mason ( 2011 ) similarly found that power-sharing provisions that expand the size of the governing coalition result in more stable peace. These analyses suggest that delving further into the design and content of settlement agreements is a positive avenue for future research. Future research should also examine how implementation of peace agreements proceeds, and how the timing and sequencing of implementation affects the durability of peace (e.g., Langer & Brown, 2016 ).

Finally, emerging research on civil war recurrence also shifts focus toward rebel groups and how their composition and integration affect post-conflict peace. For example, new research finds that rebel group fragmentation hastens the recurrence of civil war (Rudloff & Findley, 2016 ), while greater inclusion of former rebels in government improves prospects for post-conflict peace (Call, 2012 ; Marshall & Ishiyama, 2016 ). Emerging research on post-conflict elections also represents an important area for further study, as debate remains over how elections affect conflict recurrence. While some argue that they destabilize the peace (Flores & Nooruddin, 2012 ), others suggest they actually reduce the risk of conflict recurrence (Matanock, 2017 ).

The Longer-Term Consequences of Wars

What are the political, economic, and social consequences of interstate and civil wars, and what explains these postwar conditions? As Rasler and Thompson ( 1992 ) recognized, the consequences of war are often far-reaching and complex. Given this complexity, much of the literature varies significantly in quality and coverage; while post-war political change has received significant attention from political scientists, the social and health-related consequences of war are less well-known.

Post-War Domestic Political Stability and Change

Scholarship on post-war political stability focuses on both regime and leadership change, positing political accountability as a central mechanism in both cases. Interstate war has been theorized to induce internal revolution both indirectly (Skocpol, 1979 ) and directly (Bueno De Mesquita et al., 2003 ; Goemans, 2000 ). Empirical results support the accountability argument, as war losses and increasing costs of war increase the likelihood of post-war leadership turnover (Bueno De Mesquita & Siverson, 1995 ) as well as violent regime overthrow (Bueno De Mesquita, Siverson, & Woller, 1992 ). Related work shows that accountable leaders are also more likely to face foreign-imposed regime change at the hands of war victors (Bueno De Mesquita et al., 2003 ).

A central focus of recent research has been the conditional relationship between war outcomes and regime type. In his seminal study, Goemans, 2000 ) found that leaders of mixed and democratic regimes are more likely to be removed from office as a result of moderate losses in war than are leaders of autocracies. These findings, however, have been challenged by recent scholarship. Colaresi ( 2004 ) finds no difference in leadership turnover rates across all regimes types under conditions of moderate war losses, and Chiozza and Goemans ( 2004 ), employing a different measure of war outcomes and discounting the impact of termination over time, find that defeat in war is most costly for autocratic leaders and has no significant impact on tenure for democratic leaders.

Recently, research in the civil war literature has begun to focus more on post-war democratization, elections, and how groups transition from fighting forces to political parties. Much of the early work in this area focused on the link between war outcomes and the development of democratic institutions in the post-war period, specifically arguing that negotiated settlements facilitate democratization by requiring the inclusion of opposition groups in the decision-making process (Doyle & Sambanis, 2006 ; Gurses & Mason, 2008 ). More recent research, however, challenges this conventional wisdom, showing that the benefits of negotiated settlement are limited to the short-term and that economic factors are better predictors of post-war democratization (Fortna & Huang, 2012 ).

Recognizing that not all negotiated settlements are created equal, scholars have also begun to examine how variation in power-sharing provisions influences democratization. Debate remains on this topic as well, however. While some argue that power-sharing facilitates democratization by generating costly signals that create the stability necessary for democratization (Hoddie & Hartzell, 2005 ), others argue that they undermine democratization by reifying wartime cleavages, incentivizing political parties to seek support only from their own wartime constituencies, and undermining public confidence in governmental institutions (Jung, 2012 ). However, after accounting for non-random selection into power-sharing, Hartzell and Hoddie ( 2015 ) found that the inclusion of multiple power-sharing provisions in peace agreements increases post-civil war democratization. Future research should delve further into this debate, and consider more carefully whether specific types of provisions or institutional designs vary in their ability to promote democracy. Joshi ( 2013 ) represents an important first step in this direction, finding that institutional designs that favor inclusivity (e.g., parliamentary systems and proportional representation) are more successful at producing democracy.

Debate also continues over the effects of international intervention on post-conflict democratization. While some scholars expect intervention to facilitate postwar democratization by mitigating commitment problems and raising the costs of defection (Doyle & Sambanis, 2006 ), others suggest it is used as a tool by interveners to impose amenable, generally non-democratic, institutions in the target country (Bueno De Mesquita & Downs, 2006 ). Doyle and Sambanis ( 2006 ) found multidimensional UN missions incorporating economic reconstruction, institutional reform, and election oversight, to be significantly and positively correlated with the development of postwar democracy. However, Gurses and Mason ( 2008 ) and Fortna and Huang ( 2012 ) challenged this finding, reporting no significant relationship between UN presence and postwar democratization, and Paris ( 2004 ) and Bueno de Mesquita and Downs ( 2006 ) showed that peacebuilding missions and UN interventions actually decrease levels of democracy.

Future research should attempt to reconcile many of these open debates in both the interstate and civil conflict literatures. It should also build upon emerging research on post-conflict elections (Flores & Nooruddin, 2012 ; Matanock, 2017 ) and rebel governance (Huang, 2016 ). Huang’s work on rebel governance, in particular, shows that how rebels interact with civilian populations during conflict has important implications for post-conflict democratization.

Public Health Conditions in the Aftermath of Wars

Social scientists have recently begun to study the consequences of war for the postwar health and well-being of civilian populations. Theoretical arguments developed in this literature generally do not distinguish between interstate and civil war, instead developing mechanisms that apply to both types of conflict. The most direct public health consequence of war, of course, results from the killing and wounding of civilian populations. Scholars argue, however, that more indirect mechanisms cause longer-term public health problems as well. War, for example, is expected to undermine long-term public health by exposing populations to hazardous conditions through the movement of refugees and soldiers as vectors for disease (Ghobarah, Huth, & Russett, 2003 ; Iqbal, 2006 ), damaging health-related facilities and basic infrastructure (Li & Wen, 2005 ; Plümper & Neumayer, 2006 ), and reducing government spending and private investment on public health (Ghobarah et al., 2003 ).

Many empirical analyses, unfortunately, do not directly address the mechanisms outlined above. Overall, findings indicate that both civil and interstate war increase adult mortality in the short and long term (Li & Wen, 2005 ) and decrease health-adjusted life-expectancy in the short term (Iqbal, 2006 ). Conflict severity is also influential; while low-level conflict has no significant effect on mortality rates, severe conflict increases mortality and decreases life-expectancy in the long run (Li & Wen, 2005 ; Hoddie & Smith, 2009 ; Iqbal, 2006 ). Comparing the health impacts of interstate and civil wars, analysts have found interstate conflict to exert a stronger, negative impact on long-term mortality rates than civil war, despite the finding that civil war’s immediate impact is more severe (Li & Wen, 2005 ). Finally, many analysts have found that the negative, long-term effects of war are consistently stronger for women and children (Ghobarah, et al., 2003 ; Plümper & Neumayer ( 2006 ) than for men.

This developing field provides important new insights into the civilian consequences of war, but remains underdeveloped in many respects. First, while some evidence suggests that civil and interstate war might affect public health differently, the mechanisms behind these differences require further elaboration. Research by Hoddie and Smith, represented an important contribution in this respect, as it distinguishes between different conflict strategies, finding that conflicts involving extensive violence against noncombatants have more severe health consequences than those in which most fatalities are combat-related. Second, theoretical models are generally much more developed and sophisticated than the data used to test them. While data availability is limited, efforts should be made to more closely match theory and empirics.

Third, analyses that employ disaggregated measures of health consequences (Ghobarah et al., 2003 ) provided a more thorough understanding of the specific consequences of war and represent an important avenue for additional theoretical and empirical development. Iqbal and Zorn ( 2010 ) thus focus specifically on conflict’s detrimental impact on the transmission of HIV/AIDS, while Iqbal ( 2010 ) examines the impact of conflict on many different health-based metrics, including infant mortality, health-associated life expectancy, fertility rates, and even measles and diphtheria vaccination rates. These studies represent important advances in the literature, which should be explored further in future research to disentangle the potentially complex health effects of civil and interstate conflict.

Finally, recent research has begun to conceptualize health more broadly, accounting for the psychological consequences of wartime violence. Building upon research in psychology, Koos ( 2018 ) finds that exposure to conflict-related sexual violence in Sierra Leone generates resilience: affected households display greater cooperation and altruism than those unaffected by such violence during conflict. Bauer et al. ( 2016 ) similarly find that conflict fosters greater social cohesion and civic engagement in the aftermath of war. This is an important area for future research. As conceptions of conflict-related violence broaden, our conceptualizations of the consequences of violence should also expand to include notions of how conflict affects psychological health, community cohesion, and other less direct indicators of public health.

This final section highlights some of the contributions generated by scholarship on the conduct and consequences of war, as well as some of the gaps that remain to be addressed. First, this body of scholarship usefully compliments the large and more traditional work of military historians who study international wars, as well as the work of contemporary defense analysts who conduct careful policy analyses on relevant issues such as wartime military tactics and strategy as well as weapon system performance. The bargaining model of war has also proven a useful theoretical framework in which to structure and integrate theoretical analyses across different stages in the evolution of war.

Second, a number of studies in this body of work have contributed to the further development and testing of the democratic peace literature by extending the logic of political accountability models from questions of war onset to democratic wartime behavior. New dependent variables, including civilian targeting, imposition of regime change, the waging of war in ways designed to reduce military and civilian losses, and victory versus defeat in war have been analyzed. As a result, a number of new arguments and empirical findings have improved our understanding of how major security policy decisions by democratic leaders are influenced by domestic politics.

Third, this literature has advanced scholarship on international law and institutions by examining questions about compliance with the laws of war and the role played by the UN in terminating wars and maintaining a durable post-war peace. The impact of international law and institutions is much better understood on issues relating to international political economy, human rights, and international environmental governance than it is on international security affairs. As a result, studies of compliance with the laws of war, the design of ceasefire agreements, or international peace-building efforts address major gaps in existing literature.

Fourth, this new body of research has explicitly focused on the consequences of war for civilian populations, a relatively neglected topic in academic research. Research on questions such as the deliberate targeting of civilians during wars and the longer-term health consequences of war begin to address this surprising gap in research. As such, this new literature subjects the study of terrorism to more systematic social science methods and also challenges the common practice of restricting terrorism to non-state actors and groups when, in fact, governments have resorted to terrorist attacks on many occasions in the waging of war.

While this literature has advanced scholarship in many ways, there remain several theoretical and empirical gaps that future research should aim to address, two of which are highlighted here. First, while research on interstate war duration and termination is more theoretically unified than its civil war counterpart, the dominance of the bargaining model in this literature is currently being challenged. Recent research on asymmetric conflict suggests that the basic tenants of the bargaining model may not hold for non-symmetric conflict, while research on force employment and mechanization suggest that traditional power measures exert a conditional impact at best. Additional research is needed to determine the conditions under which bargaining logic applies and its relative importance in explaining wartime behavior and war outcomes.

Second, the accumulation of knowledge on civil war’s conduct and consequences has lagged behind that on interstate war, partially because the civil war literature is younger, and partially because sub-national level data is only now becoming more readily available. While bargaining logic is often applied to civil war, we have little cross-national information on relative capabilities and battle trends, and thus a very limited understanding of the way in which these variables affect civil war duration and outcomes. New micro-level data and studies that are beginning to address these problems represent a promising direction forward for civil conflict research.

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Karina Moxon

October 9th, 2018, essay competition 2018 second place: is war and conflict an inevitable feature of global politics.

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“Is war and conflict an inevitable feature of global politics?”

This article was written by Dheevesh Mungroo, year 13 student at John Kennedy College, Mauritius.

War and conflict takes several forms; military or non-military and interstate or state versus organisation. I shall use the steps to war  (Vasquez and Henehan, 1999)   and motivated biases (Mercer, 2005) theories to support my argument that war and conflict may be an inevitable feature of global politics. These theories have been chosen due to their seemingly increasing relevance to modern global politics. As explained by steps to war, many present day states have been fighting because of irresolvable matters of territory. As per motivated biases theory, human psychology at a large scale, some argue, leads to in-group cooperation and out-group discrimination, which often leads to war. On the other hand, I shall use the democratic peace theory – suggesting that democracies do not fight each other – to support my argument that in fact, war and conflict may be avoidable in global politics. At the core, these theories attempt to explain the causes of war. Yet, it is fair to assume that if cause is avoidable, then at some point, effect can be avoided too and conversely, if cause is inevitable, then at some point, effect is inevitable too.

Consensus exists that matters such as territory are irresolvable in global politics. It is impossible to increase the amount of land in the world and to change the fact that our wants are unlimited. This scarcity often leads to disputes. While often, the disputes are limited to legal and economic conflict, in other instances, concerned parties resort to using force, particularly when those parties are geographically close. The steps to war theory in fact suggests that war and conflict can arise owing to such reasons.

An example of the steps to war theory applying to present day global politics is the case of Israel and Palestine  disputing  territory  which  has  often  escalated  to  military  conflicts (The New York Times, 2009).  Another relevant example of violent conflict due to irresolvable matters is the case of Iraq and Syria fighting the Islamic State (IS) terror group to reclaim their territory (The New York Times, 2017; US Department of Defense, 2018; Reuters, 2017). This is evidenced in the following map which shows the significant changes in control of territory, from IS to Iraq and Syria following military conflict (BBC, 2018).

It is true that irresolvable problems, of territory at least, are an integral part of global politics. It can also be argued that when the perceived cost to parties of starting military war and conflict over irresolvable matters is lower than perceived gains, which is often the case, then this could lead to war and conflict.So, it follows from these premises that war and conflict is possibly an inevitable feature of global politics.

Motivated biases and political psychology provides further insights on the topic. According to Mercer (2005), humans get a sense of identity in groups which provide a sense of belonging (part of the emotion in identity). While this emotion in identity builds trust and allows cooperative problem solving, Mercer argues that this emotion also creates self- esteem and pride which as a result could lead to a feeling of superiority and discrimination of other groups. Accordingly, it follows that discrimination could become violent. Quoting Mercer,  “Emotion  drives  in-group  cooperation  and  out-group  discrimination” (2005, p. 97). At global scale, this could inevitably lead to war.

Examples of motivated biases leading to discrimination, war and conflict could include:

• several European nations’ invasion and colonisation of countries around the world prior to the 20th century – which implied war, conflict and slavery – possibly on grounds of moral superiority
• Germany under Nazi control, which fought wars, invaded foreign states and which perpetrated the holocaust, allegedly to “reclaim” the superiority of the Nazi “Aryan race”
• wars declared by terror groups against states – arguably on grounds of religious, moral and spiritual superiority as in the case of Al-Qaeda versus the USA and more recently
• several Israeli-Palestinian conflicts, possibly caused by race.

Indeed then, psychology can offer great insight on the inevitability of war and conflict in global politics. Human psychology, generally, may not change much as opposed to the state of politico-economic affairs, tending to be relatively volatile and unpredictable – even for the near future. Hence, predicting human psychology, a relatively easier task, could help answer whether war and conflict is inevitable. While the past may not always be a good indicator of the future in general, because of its seemingly unchanging nature, it seems to be for human psychology. If, then, human psychology remains like it currently is, war and conflict seems inevitable.

However the theory of democratic peace – the belief that democratic nations do not fight each other using force, although they may fight non-democracies – could help argue that war and conflict is avoidable. It may not be democracy, intrinsically, which is the cause of peace between democracies. Rather, the causes of democratic peace are arguably some features of democracy. Such features, according to Russet et al (1993) may include:

• the sharing of global institutions and economic interdependence (e.g. the operations of large multinationals and trading links greatly increases the cost of war),
• the fact that democracies tend to form alliances (e.g. NATO) – making lethal conflict between members irrational in a global politics and power standpoint,
• the commitment of democracies to preserve their political stability and,
• the mutual feeling of liberal values.

The following table (Russett et al, 1993, p.21) exemplifies democratic peace. Dyads, in this context, is a term referring to pair of states close to each other — geographically, politically and/or economically. As it can be seen, during this time period, in no case did a democratic dyad go to war and the number of disputes (conflicts) was far lesser when the dyads were democratic. This could indicate a causal relationship between the features of democracy and democratic peace.

Nonetheless, it would be a fallacy to assume that democracies are absolutely peaceful. While democracies do not use military means to start wars and conflicts among themselves, passive means and intimidation are frequently used. For instance and arguably, economic integration like the creation of the European Union (EU) can be regarded as a form of disguised protectionism against the rest of the world, implying conflict in a more subtle sense. A less subtle example involves the recent tariffs on steel between the USA and the EU (Reuters, 2018a), and the USA’s threatened tariffs on EU car imports (Reuters, 2018b). Moreover, “they  (democracies)  often  initiate  international  disputes  during  economic slowdowns or recessions, or if in economic difficulty respond more aggressively when others initiate disputes” (Russett et al, 1993, p.29). Indeed, there seems to be a correlation between the American economic slowdown during the early 2000s and the Iraq invasion of 2003. It is alleged that this correlation is synonymous with causation, rather than mere coincidence.

Limited resources are available to satisfy unlimited wants. Additionally, while ethics change, human psychology seems unchanging. Therefore, humans will never stop fighting over limited resources. Moreover, believing that all nations will become democratic and that democratic peace will end all wars is believing that Earth will be named Utopia. Much sense lies in saying that while it may become less lethal, war and conflict – at present and in the foreseeable future at least – is an inevitable feature of global politics.

Bibliography

BBC. 2018. ‘Islamic State and the crisis in Iraq and Syria in maps ‘ . BBC. [online] <https://bbc.in/2MFgor2>

Mercer, J. 2005. ‘Rationality and psychology in international relations’. International Organisation. 59:1. pp. 77–106.

Reuters. 2018a. ‘ EU states back measures to limit steel imports after U.S. tariffs ‘. Retrieved from https://reut.rs/2tVO9c8

Reuters. 2017. ‘ Iraq declares final victory over Islamic State ‘. Retrieved from https://reut.rs/2AajWXX

Reuters. 2018b. ‘ Trump relents on EU car tariffs, as U.S.-China fight derails Qualcomm deal ‘. Retrieved from https://reut.rs/2C1hBUr

Russett, B., Antholis, W., Ember, C., Ember, M., and Maoz, Z. 1993. Grasping the Democratic Peace: Principles for a Post-Cold War World . Princeton: Princeton University Press.

The New York Times. 2009. ‘A Brief History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict’. The New York Times . [online] <https://nyti.ms/2wwRe2W>

The New York Times. 2017. ‘Iraq Prime Minister Declares Victory Over ISIS.’  The New York Times.  [online] <https://nyti.ms/2CqSKpp>

USA Department of Defense. 2018. ‘Syrian Democratic Forces Announce Drive to Reclaim Last ISIS Territory’. [online] <https://bit.ly/2PQIywT>

Vasquez, J. and Henehan, M. 1999. The Scientific Study of Peace and War: A Text Reader. Maryland: Lexington Books.

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622 Conflict Essay Topics & Examples

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• ❓ Essay Questions About Conflict
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• The Israeli – Palestinian Conflict The purpose of this study is to establish the causes and the consequences of the Israeli Palestinian conflict. The question which this study seeks to address include what is the relationship between the conflict and […]
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• Experience of Interpersonal Conflicts I believe that my case is closely related to the course materials and scholarly articles because the newly obtained knowledge might be beneficial for determining the appropriate model of communication with my parents and coping […]
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• Conflict in ‘The Most Dangerous Game’ by Connell Rainsford went through an internal conflict when he was in the ocean and had to keep stay focused by not panicking and realizing that his clothes were not helping his strokes and he ‘wrestled out […]
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• Non-Violence Approach to Conflicts The rarity of success of non-violence approach to conflicts is a clear indicator that there is the need for further analysis of both the failure and success of non-violent movements.
• John Updike’s “A&P”: Themes & Conflicts Analysis Essay The main character of the story is Sammy, a teenager who tries to rebel against the system and structure of social norms represented in the text in the form of rules and standards typical for […]
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• Organisational Conflict: Unitarist vs. Pluralist Views Ethical issues and the need to adhere to the ethical code of the company may lead to the intrapersonal conflict. The supervisor can be the mediator who guides and improves the communication that leads to […]
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• Durkheim’s Functionalism and Marx’s Conflict Theory According to Durkheim, there is vital interconnectivity of all the elements of any society that share common ideas and principles, and the sum of these elements is not as great as the society itself.
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• Women and Girls in Armed Conflicts Nonetheless, participation in the negotiations still puts a strain on women since their personal information and background are disclosed in the process, and it further becomes a subject of negligence. Women’s economic problems are wide-ranging, […]
• Personal Conflict Resolving Skills To my knowledge one needs to have the capabilities to understand his or her situation and the kind of problems they are faced with and then the ultimate impact of them on their lives and […]
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• Person vs. Society Conflict in Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” This is the best description of the person vs.society conflict; it allows the reader to understand, analyze the handmaid’s feelings and emotions, and come to a logical definition of the subject of this confrontation.
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• Colonialism in the Case of Conflict Between Wet’Suwet’en and Coastal GasLink The example of the conflict between Wet’suwet’en and Coastal GasLink is indicative of the ongoing colonization of indigenous settlements in Canada.
• Managing a Sexual Harassment Conflict at Sony In Sony, as in any other company, conflicts also occur, and managers strive to establish a common language between all sides involved, though the result of the conflict may be disappointing for one of the […]
• Conflict of Interest vs. Code of Ethics A code of ethics differs from a conflict of interest because it is a set of guidelines established to regulate professional conduct. The commission acts as the representative of public interests in overseeing and implementing […]
• Workplace Conflicts of Interest The alignment of interest increases the chance of accurate perception, and conflict of interest raises the probability of erroneous perception. Evidently, the interest of a buyer, in this case, is to purchase the goods that […]
• Culture and Individualism: The Conflict Analysis The described stance is supported by a range of philosophical and cultural perspectives, including the notions of multiculturalism, cultural relativism, and the theory of rational choice, to name just a few. Therefore, active cross-cultural communication […]
• Conflicts in the Workplace: The Role of Leaders Leaders should know how they handle conflicts, foster a collaborative workplace culture, and take conflict resolution courses. Training leaders is essential for corporate culture by boosting staff motivation, raising participation and output, lower employee burnout, […]
• The Kashmir Conflict Between India and Pakistan Both countries need to prioritize the people of Kashmir; otherwise, their moral dignity will plummet, and they will indulge in immoral actions violence.
• Workplace Conflict Gap Analysis The issue caught the attention of the management and an investigation was launched into the matter by conducting interviews among all the members of the team.
• The Balfour Declaration of 1917: Beginning of the Israel-Palestine Conflict Despite the passing of the century, the main ideas of the Balfour Declaration of 1917 still govern the US foreign policy in the Middle East. The first signs of the possible conflict were in the […]
• The Gender Conflict Theory and Martineau’s Approach to Social Analysis To understand the prevalence of modern biases in the relations between men and women, two theories are essential to explore the gender conflict theory and Martineau’s approach to social analysis. The latter explores the unjust […]
• Interpersonal Conflict Among AGC Corp.’s Employees In the case study team, the Canadian, Mexican, and Chinese cultures might have posed difficulties in communication and sharing beliefs and practices. The priority is to communicate with the team to address the issue.
• Uses of Stand4 App in the Peace and Conflict Resolution Field If someone from anywhere in the world shares a message on peace and conflict resolution in the app, that message will spread to as many users as possible.
• Sociology and Theory of Conflict On the other hand, my friend who got bitten by a dog in the past may now only think of these animals with fear and resentment. The best example of functional perspective is religion and […]
• Counseling for Family Conflicts Resolution Family conflicts are considered in the project, and it is expected that the intervention will lead to a decreased incidence of the given phenomenon.
• Gender-Based Conflicts in Relationships Indeed, gender-based conflicts occur often, and it causes individuals to discuss relationships between males and females. The article is dedicated to conflicts between women’s and men’s interests.
• Colonial Style and Post-Colonial Ethnic Conflict in Africa Colonization of Africa is a historically formed process, the purpose of which was the development, conquest, and use by the colonizers of the entire territory of the continent.
• The Human Body as a Site of Active Conflict The paramount, major conclusion is that the hypothesis that the simulation of pre-industrial conditions associated with nutrition, fasting, and physical activity can stimulate insulin sensitivity and improve metabolism is true.
• Pediatric Operating Room: Conflict Management Strategies
• Post-Conflict State Building in Sierra Leone
• IT Systems Theories: Conflict Resolution in the Workplace
• Arab-Israeli Conflict’s Cultural and Political Context
• Researching of Conflict Styles
• Addressing Interprofessional Team Conflict
• Interpersonal Conflict: Definition and Analysis
• Interpersonal Conflict: Causes, Outcomes, and Resolutions
• The Role of Workplace Mediation in Conflicts
• Intergroup Conflict at Primerica Company
• State-Building, Expansion and Conflict
• How to Handle a Conflict in the Workplace
• The Ongoing Ukrainian Conflict: Historical Context and International Response
• Discussion: Managing Conflict of Interest
• Conflict and Reconciliation in South Sudan
• The US, Russia, and China Cybersecurity Conflict
• The Conflicts in Organizations: Experiences in the Kindergartens
• The Specific Expectation: Adopting a Problem-Solving Approach to Conflict
• The Sarah Celeb vs. Star Weekly Conflict Statement
• Medical Care Crisis From Conflict Perspective
• Russo-Japanese War and American-Japanese Conflicts in the Pacific
• Five Conflict Management Styles
• Analysts, Securities Firms, and Conflicts of Interest
• Communication Skills for Conflict Resolution
• Post-Conflict State-Building: Approaches and Strategies
• Cultural Differences and Origins of Conflict
• Conflict Management in the Healthcare Workplace
• The Business Conflict: Red-Holdings Case
• Conflict Resolution for the Helping Professions
• Discussion of Conflict Capability
• Impact of Conflict Resolution for Best Conversations
• Transformative Mediation: Conflict Management
• The Moral Conflict in Antigone: The Familial Values Against the Law
• Resolution of Conflicts of Heirs to an Estate
• Machiavelli’s Views on Free Will and Class Conflict
• The Work Conflict and Its Influence on the Future Reactions to Conflicts
• Contrast, Conflict and Tension in The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
• “King of the Bingo Game”: Internal Conflict
• Culture Lag and Conflict Theory of Change
• Resolving Conflicts in the Healthcare Setting
• Conflicts in the Workplace: Solving and Decision-Making
• Interpersonal Conflicts in the Workplace
• Conflicts in Social Work Depicted in Movies
• Communication Conflict and Climate in Relationships
• Free Speech vs. Anti-Discrimination Practices Conflict
• Win-Win Solutions in a Potential Conflict Scenario
• Withdrawal as Conflict Solving Technique
• Racial Conflict in Ferguson
• Interpersonal Conflict: Management, Economics and Industrial Organization
• Sociological Perspectives: Functional, Conflict, or Symbolic Interaction
• Workplace Conflicts and Resolution in Nursing
• Theories in Have a Nice Conflict by Scudder et al.
• The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict
• Age Diversity and Conflicts in the Workplace
• Culture and Conflict Reflection Essay
• Organizational Behavior: Employees Conflict
• COVID-19 Pandemic and Conflict Theory
• Conflict and Social Change
• Exploring Workplace Problems, Issues, or Conflicts: Managing Complex Healthcare Systems
• Conflict Theory: The Basic Principles
• Fundamental Analysis of Regional Conflicts on Dubai Financial Markets
• How Climate Change Affects Conflict and Peace
• Third Party Intervention in Conflict
• Successful Negotiation in Conflict
• The Nature of Power in Conflict
• Communication and Moderating Conflict
• Communication and Conflict Styles
• Deviances Viewed by Labeling, Conflict, and Merton’s Strain Theories
• Conflict of Interests at the Workplace
• Cross-Functional Teams Conflicts
• Charting a Course for Conflict Resolution – “It’s a Policy”
• Manifestation of Strategic Cultures in Cyber Conflict
• The Karabakh Conflict: True Causes and the Role of Mediation
• Irregular Warfare: Asymmetric Conflicts in Recent Years
• Conflict: The Cutting Edge of Change in a Medical Team
• Conflict and Change in Medical Teams
• Edwards Engineering Inc. and Kiel A.G. Conflict
• Conflict as a Result of an Ineffective Leadership Style
• Social Networks: Functional Analysis and Conflict Theory
• Consulting Service-Client Problematic Cooperation: Communication & Conflict
• Conflict Management in Human Services
• Conflicts of Police Officers With the Members of the Minority Groups
• Emotional Intelligence and Conflict-Handling Styles in Nurses
• Ethical Conflict in Nursing
• Negotiation Strategies: Investor-Government Conflicts
• Conflict Management: Styles, Strategies, and Their Effect
• Conflicts Between Nursing Ethics and Law
• Conflicts Between Ethics and the Law in Healthcare
• Principles of Conflict Resolution
• Conflict Scripts and Styles Learnt in Childhood
• Conflict Between Research and Ethics
• Factortame Litigation: Conflict Over Fishing Waters Legislation
• Aerial Experiment Association & Wright Brothers Conflict
• Adverse Drug Reactions Reporting Conflict
• Effectiveness of European Regime Vs English Common Law System in Conflict of Law
• European Regime Approach to Jurisdiction in Conflict of Laws
• Conflict Management Efficiency in Team Leaders
• Cultural Diversity and Conflict in the Health Care Workplace
• Researching Conflict of Laws
• Study-Work Conflict and the Risk of Burnout
• The Conflict Between Banks and Financial Speculation
• Communication and Conflict Management
• Conflicts That Nurses Encounter in Their Practice
• “Revisiting America: Readings in Race, Culture, and Conflict” by S. Wyle
• Activities Coordinator and a Conflict of Interest Situation at Cooinda Nursing Home
• The Parallel Between Crime and Conflicts in Africa, Asia and Latin America
• Conflict and and Crisis in the Neovida Research Hospital
• Theories and Styles of Conflict Resolution
• Assessing the Role of Conflict in the Health Care Environment
• Humor Application in Conflict Management: Facilitating and Regulating Communication
• Methods of Conflict Resolution: Solving the Disagreements
• Stages of History, Capitalism, Class Conflict, and Labor Theory in Adam Smith’s Writings
• The Israel and Palestine Conflict: One Land Two Claimants
• Peace and Conflict in Film Adaptation of Book “Hungry Games” by Collins
• Major Conflict Between Britain & Their US Colonies
• Environment and Land Conflict in Brazil
• Syrian Conflict and Women Rights: Way to Equality or Another Discrimination
• Conflict Resolution Plan Draft and Strengthening the Team
• Internal Conflicts Within the Ottoman Empire During the Era of Decline
• Mediation and Arbitration: Ways of Resolving Conflicts
• Communication Techniques as a Way to Resolve Conflicts
• Applying Constructive Conflict Management to a Conflict
• The Impact of Improper Conflict Resolution
• The Impact of Global and Regional Conflicts on Infrastructure in the US
• Effective Business Meetings and Conflict Management
• Opening Scene of a Play: Conflict, Intrigue, Suspense
• International Journal of Conflict Management Critique
• Using Conflict in Organizations Written by C.K.W De Dreu and E.V. De Vliert
• Conflicts of Interest in Governmental Contracting
• Gulf War Deterrence. The Most Viable Way of Dealing With Conflicts
• Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Key Issues at Stake
• Teamwork Dynamics, Motivation, Conflict Resolution, and Leadership
• “The Final Failure” and “Crisis and Conflict”: Credibility of the Sources and Contents
• Inter-Jurisdictional Conflict Management
• Conflict Management Concepts Implementation and Outcomes
• Intergroup Conflict and Its Management
• PSDM Model Usage in Solving Family Conflicts
• Orbit Limited: Conflict Resolution
• Conflict Resolution: Definition of Problem, Criteria for Effective Solution, Root Causes
• Collective Bargaining and Conflict
• Conflict and Its Resolution Within the U.S. Military and Department of Defense
• Conflict in Breaking Smith’s Quarter Horse: The Story Full of Chaos, Unrest, and Deceit
• Identity Based Conflict: Zamri and Gordon
• Rwandan Conflict as a Deep-Rooted and Identity-Based Conflict
• How Did the Movie “Life as We Know It” Demonstrate the Conflict in a Family Institution?
• Human-Wildlife Conflict: Vehicle Collisions With Animals
• Negotiation and Conflict Resolution at the Workplace
• Civil Peace as Absence of War or Physical Conflict
• The Political and Social Conflicts Between the French and the English
• Options for Resolving an Environmental Conflict
• The Conflict Between Fate and Free
• “The Difference Between Conflict Prevention” by Robert Bakal
• Culture War in Australia: Conflict Between the Conservatives and Liberals
• Personal Conflict of King Lear in Play by Shakespeare
• Child Soldiers Use in an Armed Conflict Is Justified
• Internal Managerial Conflicts: Jones and Shephard Accountants, Inc.
• Natural Resources and Conflicts in Asian Countries
• Understanding Conflict Management
• Conflict and Collaboration: Workforce Investment Act
• Conflict Resolution Strategies and Relationships
• Fathers’ Work, Conflicts and Children’s Self-Esteem
• Conflict and Culture, Based on Articles’ Analysis
• Conflict and Marriage Satisfaction
• Conflict in ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ by C. Perkins Gilman
• The Profound Social Conflict and Social Forces in USA
• Matters of Social Conflicts
• Conflict Theory: Gender Differences in Cultural Capital and Educational Opportunities
• The Right Side in the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict
• Israeli-Palestine Conflict and US-China Relationship
• Religious Conflict in the History: The Key Causes of Conflicts
• Communication at Work: Discussion, Relational Development, Conflict
• Conflict Management in Empyrean Company
• Diversity and Conflicts in Education in Idaho
• Strategies to Handle Conflict
• Conflict Management and Negotiations
• Culture and Conflict: Yanomami Conflict
• The Israel-Lebanon Conflict: Media Opinion
• Conflict Management: Teambuilding and Dynamics
• The Northern Ireland Conflict or “The Troubles”
• Conflict Between Medical Research and Ethics
• Interracial Conflicts: Issue Histrory
• A Conflict Theory: Term Definition
• Conflict Resolution Tactics and Bullying
• Science and Technology Conflict Between the United States and Japan in the Late 1980s
• The Wars of Weak and Strong: Asymmetrical Conflict
• Workplace Overview Conflict Between Two Engineers
• Conflict Between Lobby Groups and UK Retailer
• Human Communication and Conflict Management in Family
• Indigenous Groups and Ethnic Conflicts as Social Problems
• Psychology: Conflict Resolution and Leadership
• Internal Conflict in Business: Greenway Industries
• Conflict Management Challenges in Trade Unions
• Humanitarian Aid as a Cause of Conflict in Syria
• Mass Communications: History and Review of the Profit vs. Duty Conflict
• Israelis and Palestinians Ethical Conflict
• Geography. Australia’s and New Zealand’s Conflicts
• Conflicts in European History: Relations Between the Individual and the Government
• Culture and Its Effects on Ethnic Conflict: Theoretical Comparisons
• Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Policy Recommendation
• Enron vs. Andersen: Ethical Issues and Conflicts of Interests.
• Conflicts of the 20th Century: Roles of Civilizations
• Implications of Religious Conflicts in Present World
• The Role of the USA in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
• America and Darfur Conflict Analysis
• Chechnya and Russia: A History of Conflict
• Ethnic Conflict in Somalia Analysis
• The Conflict Between Individualism and Community in Andersen’s “Hands”
• The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Origins and Evolution
• Final Take Home Exam: The Arab-Israeli Conflict
• Orientalism and East and West Conflicts
• The Nagorno-Karabakh Security Conflict and Outcome
• Non-Violent Resolution to the Conflict Between America and Iraq
• Conflict as an Aspect of Managing People
• The Ku Klux Klan: Conflicts & Compromises
• Trends in Global Terrorism. Conflict Resolution and Iraq
• Sociology of Ethnic Conflict Analysis
• The Iranian Revolution: Conflicts Between Leaders
• Covert Conflicts in Business Organizations
• Do the Structures of Global Governance Deal With the Drivers of Conflict in Fragile States?
• Mergers, Acquisitions, and Cultural Dilemmas
• China and the World: International Conflict
• Peace Conflict and Social Identity
• Politics, the Israel-Palestine Conflict, and Oil: After the WWII
• World Political Science Discussion: Conflict Analysis
• Conflicts Between Japanese Americans and Chinese Americans During the 1920s-1940s Period
• Military Conflicts at the Civil War
• Cultural Interpretations of Conflict: Western Perspective vs. Eastern Concepts
• Diversity and Conflict: Working Approaches
• Conflict Management Styles Applied in Healthcare
• Co-Development and Racial Conflict in “Kindred” by Butler
• Conflict Management: Gender Pay Gap in Hollywood
• Conflict, Negotiation, and Group Behavior
• Neo-Nazism: Conflict and Power Theories
• Theater Stage Manager’s Conflict Resolution
• Overt vs. Covert Conflict
• Conflicts and Disputes at Workplace, and Their Resolution
• Parental Responsibilities and Related Conflicts
• Organizational Behavior: Conflicts in the Workplace
• Hate Speech in “The Office”: Mitigating Conflicts
• Workplace Conflicts and Their Sources
• Managing Organizational Conflict: Rahim’s Meta Model
• Competitiveness and Intercultural Conflict in Qatar
• Conflict and Culture in the Organizational Behavior
• Post-Soviet Eurasia’s Conflicts and Reconciliation
• “Nash in Najaf”: Game Theory in Iraqi Conflict
• Conflict & Crime Control vs. Consensus & Due Process Model
• Zimmerman vs. Martin Conflict and Its Resolution
• Conflict Management Styles: Zimmerman vs. Trayvon Martin
• Approach to Negotiation and Conflict
• Negotiation, Pricing and Conflict Resolution
• Ethical Issues and Conflicts of Interest in the Company
• The Class on Cross Cultural and Conflict
• Containing Violence Conflict: Peacekeeping
• The Scholarship Coordination Office: Conflict and Leadership
• Teams and Conflict at Riordan Manufacturing
• Ethnic Conflicts According to Humanistic Theory
• Cultural Differences and Conflicts
• Interpersonal Communication: Relationship Climate and Conflict
• Manufacturers and Retailers Conflicts
• Class Conflict in Marxism and Other Theories
• Leader’s Mood Impact on Conflict Resolution
• Workplace Conflicts and Effective Communication
• Conflict in the “Wanda’s Visit” Play by Durang
• Journalistic Mechanisms for Covering Death in Violent Conflicts
• Martyrdom Culture in Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
• Group and Gender Conflicts and Their Resolution
• The Rwandan Conflict and Social Network Approaches
• Custom Chip Inc.’s Management Issues and Conflicts
• Conflict Analysis: Suitable Negotiation Process
• Employee Empowerment and Conflict Resolution
• Workplace Conflicts and Rational Choice Theory
• Modern Workplace Issues: Stress, Conflict, Quality
• Interpersonal Conflict Resolution at the Workplace
• Intergenerational Conflict at the Workplace
• African Union Military Force in Darfur Conflict
• Motivation and Conflict: Analysis and Design Methods
• Co-Owners’ Conflict of Hiring New Employee
• Concourse Equity Inc.’s Conflict Management
• Managerial Conflict Resolution for Marketing Team
• Cultural Conflicts in Fadiman’s “The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down”
• Forgiveness for Workplace Conflict Resolution
• Oil in Fueling Violent Conflicts in Libya
• Abu Dhabi Department of Culture and Tourism’s Conflict Management
• Masdar City Project and Conflict Management
• Abu Dhabi Sports Council’s Conflict Management
• Male-Female Conflict in Education System
• Justice and Conflict & Cooperation and Competition
• Anxiety and Cultural Models in the Conflict
• Conflict of Interest and Ethical Administration
• Inner Conflicts in Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”
• Conflicts of Interest in the Financial Services Sector
• Arab National Identity in Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
• Conflict Perspective of the Immigrants
• Religious Conflicts in Rational Choice Theory
• Hybrid Channel Conflict in the Business
• Mergers and Acquisitions: Cultural Concerns
• The United States Preparing to Future Conflicts
• International Court Punishing Rape in Armed Conflict
• The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Theory and Analysis
• Conflict Management in Nursing Decision-Making
• Incentive Conflicts Caused by Communication Disruption
• Geographic Factors of Civil Conflicts’ Duration
• Teacher Shooting as an Organizational Conflict
• The Role of Early Years Education in War-Torn Nepal
• Stress, Conflict and Misunderstandings in the Workplace
• The 1994 Major League Baseball Strike and Conflict
• Empire and Democracy Conflict by Thucydides
• Sunni–Shia Religious Conflict in Iraq
• Principal’s Conflict Defusing Technique
• History of Yemen Conflict
• Intragroup Conflict in a Nursing Environment
• The Current Conflict Between Sunni and Shia
• Qatar and GCC Countries Conflict
• Human Resource Management: Conflict Case
• Benchmarking and Creativity’s Conflict
• Gender and Conflict in Prisons
• Conflict in Hobbes’, Marx’s, Rousseau’s, Plato’s Works
• The Arab-Israeli Conflict Analysis
• Marbles Construction Company’s Conflict Management
• Unnecessary Conflict in the Workplace: NDC Company
• Man-Animal Conflict: “To Build a Fire” by Jack London
• Employee Conflict Sources and Resolution Approach
• Multicultural Conflict in the Engineering Setting
• Interracial Conflict in “Dutchman” by LeRoi Jones
• Engineering Ethics and Conflict of Interests
• American Involvement in African and Eastern Conflicts
• Interweaving Conflict in “Star Wars” Series’ Plot
• Nile River Conflict Between Egypt, Ethiopia, Sudan
• Newlywed Conflict on Expectations and Duties
• Complementary Conflict Patterns in Families
• Internal Conflicts in Congo and Yemen
• Marxism vs. Feminism: Human Nature, Power, Conflict
• Conflicts and Negotiations in the Real World
• Middle Eastern Conflicts and Regional Factors
• The Libyan Conflict and Required Leadership Skills
• International Business Conflicts Resolution
• Native Americans and Colonists’ Conflict
• Project Regulation, Staffing, Conflict Resolution
• Conflict Criminology and Crime Causation Theories
• Conflict Management: Importance and Implications
• Western Media Portrayal of the Arab‐Israeli Conflict
• Conflict in South Sudan and Its Influence
• Regional Conflicts and Dubai Financial Markets
• Media Contribution to Majority-Minority Conflict
• Conflict in Teams: Leveraging Differences
• Ethnic Conflicts in “A Different Mirror” by Takaki
• Business Protocols and Personal Values Conflict
• Teams and Conflict: Triggers and Solutions
• Controlling Emotions in Conflict Situations
• General Hospital’s Conflict Resolution
• Ancient Rome: Visigoths’ and Rome’s Conflict
• Sudan Conflict: Historical Stages and Events
• The Balfour Declaration: Israel Creation and Palestinian Conflict
• Common Conflict Areas in Marital and Couple Relationships
• The Spratly Islands and Maritime Conflict
• The UAE’s Reaction to Yemeni Political Conflict
• The Renewal of Imperial Conflict
• Indians and Colonists Relations and Conflicts
• Organizational Conflict: Pros, Cons, Prevention
• Group Conflicts in Business Organizations
• Middle East’s Conflicts and History: What Went Wrong?
• Singapore Airlines Conflict Management and Negotiation
• Conflict of The Beatles and the Religious Far Right
• The South Sudanese Inter-Ethnic Conflicts
• Third Parties in Conflict Resolution
• Ethnic Group Conflict in the United States
• ISIS and the Middle East Conflict
• War and Conflict in North Africa and Southwest Asia
• Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Optimistic Prognosis
• Conflict Resolution in Management Teams
• Conflicts in Anglophone and Francophone Africa
• Conflict in Syria: Jihadi and Western Views
• Wal-Mart’s 2005 Channel Conflict and Resolution
• Conflict Resolution Theory in Arab-Israeli Issue
• Arab League and US in Israel-Palestine Conflict
• Uppsala Conflict Data Program’s Report for 2012
• Asia Pacific Regional Cooperation and Conflicts
• Project Success and Interpersonal Conflicts
• Maritime Conflict: Offshore Political Geography
• Ethnicity Significance in the Post-World War Conflicts
• Life Conflict: “Anna Karenina” by Leo Tolstoy
• Palestinian-Israeli Conflict in the Film Industry
• The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: History and Concept
• Race Conflict in London: Mark Duggan Case
• Battle of the Holy Land: The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
• The Conception of Conflict Between Iran and the US
• Global Conflict and Poverty Crisis
• The Police Agency’ Conflict Management
• Class Conflict: Karl Marx and Mikhail Bakunin Ideas
• “Divine Intervention” Film: The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict
• Bahrain Conflict: Historical and Analytical Study
• Conflict in Afghanistan: Pakistan Funds the Taliban Fighters
• Ethnic Conflicts and Misrepresentation of Rwandan Hutus
• Water Related Conflicts in Africa
• Basic Conflict in Antigone by Sophocle
• Negotiation and Conflict Resolution in Business
• Hutus and Tutsis Ethnic Groups Conflict
• Early Scholars’ Views on the Internet
• Family Conflicts Assessment
• When Ethics and Euthanasia Conflict?
• Wasta Company Conflict Managment
• Employee Motivation, Conflict and Personnel Management
• Prejudice, Aggression and Social Conflict
• Climate and Conflicts: Security Risks of Global Warming
• Communication: Negotiations, Pricing, and Conflict Resolution
• Conflict Theory as a Tool to Study Social Situations
• Human Security in International Conflicts
• Conflict Over Human Rights
• Dealing With Political Conflicts: Strengths and Weaknesses
• Ethno-Religious Nationalisms in Conflict in Bosnia
• India Political Conflicts in the XVII Century
• Organisational Conflict Resolution
• War and Conflict in Africa and Asia
• Conflict and Racial Hostility
• Riordan Manufacturing: Diversity and Conflict Management
• Effective Leadership: Coaching and Conflict
• Role of Coaching in Conflict Management
• The Main Characters’ Conflict in “Yellow” by Del Shores
• Management Issues: Conflict Mediation
• Organizational Conflict, Its Characteristics and Principles
• Public vs. Parochial Schools: The Principle Points of Conflict
• Managing Conflicts: U.S. Harvest Scandal
• Charter Team Work: Goals and Conflict Resolution
• Asian Studies: The Palestine-Israel Conflict Origin
• The US and Britain Role in the Middle East Conflict
• Conflicts in the South China Sea
• Cultural Differences and Conflicts in the Workplace
• Conflict Between Palestine and Israel
• ‘Guidelines for Resolving Conflict as a Counselor’
• Conflict Management in the Healthcare Sector
• Religious and Cultural Conflicts in Syria
• Sisters of Gion: A Conflict of Value Systems
• ALM Unlimited and the Trump Organization. Business Conflict
• Middle East Conflicts

❓ Essay Questions on Conflict

• Are Science and Religion in Conflict?
• Can the Functional and Conflict Theories Help Us Understand Change?
• Does Ideology Cause Conflict or Is It Just an Exacerbating Factor?
• Does Nationalism Inevitably Breed Rivalry and Conflict?
• Does Nuclear Deterrence Work in Preventing Conflict?
• How Does Class Conflict Affect Society and What Are Its Consequences?
• How Does Lloyd Jones Present the Setting, and Use It to Develop Conflict?
• How Does Lofgren Manage Conflict?
• How Modern and Ancient Military Conflict Differs?
• What Are the Five Main Causes for Conflict?
• How the London Docklands Conflict With Its Current Development?
• How Would Conflict Theory Explain Homelessness?
• What Are Conflict and Functionalist Perspectives?
• What Are Some Types and Sources of Channel Conflict?
• What Are the Causes of Ethnic Conflict?
• What Are the Factors That Caused the Northern Ireland Conflict?
• What Causes Conflict in History?
• What Are the Historic and Current Factors Contributing to the Palestinian Conflict?
• What Causes Conflict Between Adolescents and Their Parents?
• When Does Ethnic Diversity Turn Into Ethnic Conflict?
• Why Have Nuclear Weapons Not Been Used in Conflict since 1945?
• What Was the Greatest Conflict in History?
• What Is Ideology Conflict?
• Which Two Ideology Were Involved in a Conflict during the Cold War?
• What Conflicts Is the US Currently Involved In?
• What Is the Biggest Conflict Right Now?
• What Are the Causes of Conflict in Europe?
• What Are the Major Conflicts in Africa?
• Public Relations Titles
• Ethical Dilemma Titles
• Cultural Psychology Ideas
• Family Relationships Research Ideas
• Forgiveness Essay Ideas
• Problem Solving Essay Ideas
• Sociological Perspectives Titles
• Team Management Paper Topics
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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ReviseSociology

A level sociology revision – education, families, research methods, crime and deviance and more!

How War and Conflict Harm Societies and Prevent Development

Immediate effects include death and injury, longer term consequences include destruction of infrastructure and disruption to social services.

Table of Contents

Last Updated on September 28, 2023 by Karl Thompson

War and conflict harm societies and prevent development through both immediate and longer term effects.

While immediate violent death or injury in battle are two of the more obvious direct consequences of war and conflict, there are many other direct immediate and indirect, longer term negative consequences.

Longer term consequences can drastically add to people’s misery and retard positive development for several years after a conflict ends.

NB – the distinction between direct/ indirect or immediate/ long term isn’t a hard and fast one, they can easily merge together, especially when a conflict drags on for several years – and the breakdown of social infrastructure (usually categorised as a long term, indirect consequence of war) kind of becomes more immediate and direct!)

The distinction is really just an analytical tool, the important thing it highlights is that immediate violent death and injury are usually just the start of the negative consequences of warfare – the consequences are much longer term!

The Immediate effects of War and Conflict

There have been over 10 million conflict deaths in the last 30 years.

There have been 15 conflicts since the Rwandan Genocide in 1994 with death tolls of more than 25 000 people, of which 9 are currently ongoing (in March 2021). The total number of deaths in these conflicts stands at just over 10 million people (upper estimate), but this doesn’t include the people dying in the many smaller conflicts which have taken place in the last 30 years in which fewer than 25 000 people died.

I picked the Rwandan Genocide as a starting point because it is very well-known and relevant to Crime and Deviance as an example of a state crime. It also stands out as one of the few examples of a country that has gone on to see a reasonable level of development since the conflict. (Also, going back 30 years is a pretty standard period for analysis in A-level Sociology!)

The conflicts with highest death tolls in the last 30 years were:

• The Rwandan Genocide needs a mention – there were an estimated 800 000 deaths, but within a very rapid time frame, and much of this done with hand-weapons like machetes, and it was ethnic cleansing, all in all making it particularly horrific.
• The Second Congo War – in central Africa with an upper estimate of 5 million deaths (NB given the relatively small geographical area this was kind of like World War Two in the middle of Africa)
• The War on Terror – 2001 to the present day – with over 1 million deaths
• The War on Iraq – 2003-2007, but which spilled over into a civil war, 2014-2017 – and a total of around 500 000 deaths between the two
• The Syrian Civil War – ongoing and an upper estimate of almost 600 000 deaths.

Thankfully the numbers seem to be coming down. According to one estimate, the total death toll for the 17 most deadly conflicts in the world stood at around 300 000 in 2016, but this had reduced to 100 000 deaths by 2020.

Physical Trauma and Injury

While it is possible to get death tolls statistics for conflicts, these are usually estimated, and estimates can range widely – the Syrian Civil War has a death toll range of between around 400 000 to 600 000 for example.

Given the problems with estimating death tolls in war, it should be unsurprising that it’s very difficult to find estimates for the number of people injured in war and conflict – either through serving on the front line, or civilians being brutalised by ‘soldiers.

In situations of war, when law and order are determined by violence, there must be several cases of violent assault which simply go unreported and unnoticed.

One particularly horrific aspect of physical injury and trauma in conflict zones is through the use of rape as a weapon of war – it’s estimated that 48 women are raped every hour in the DRC for example, a legacy of conflict in that country.

Rape can also be used against boys and men as a way of asserting authority over them.

This report by ReliefWeb provides an overview of the extent of rape as a weapon of war.

Displacement

A rational response to conflict in a region is to flee to another region or country, and many people do. The United Nations reports that there are currently 80 million refugees, or displaced people.

Most refugees come from Syria (5 million) and Turkey hosts the most (3 million). 80% of refugees are hosted in developing countries.

While Displacement is an immediate problem caused by conflict, and results in immediate problems related to living in temporary accommodation (tents), with possible poor sanitation and food shortages, there are also longer-term problems related to lack of status, children being out of education and so on.

Longer Term effects of War and Conflict

Conflicts can drag on for several years, even decades in some countries, with devastating longer-term consequences….

The destruction of physical infrastructure – such as buildings and roads mean that civilians who remain may be living in unsafe buildings with no running water, sewage or electricity – basically a war zone can turn a previously developed neighbourhood into a slum. Power stations and roads may also be damaged in conflicts, and these can be expensive to repair post-conflict, taking up a lot of money that might otherwise be spent on social development.

War also results in the destruction to the economic infrastructure – in a war-torn country business slows down or stops because it is unsafe – with a corresponding downturn in employment and income. Foreign companies may also leave the country, and imports may dry up as it is too risky to do business there. All of this means the cost of goods and the cost-of-living increases.

Disruption to education – schools may be forced to shut down, and refugee children may not be able to get an education. If children spend a year, or two, or more, out of formal education, they will struggle to catch up.

The disruption to health care services – health services have to focus on dealing with battle related injuries – dealing with immediate problems, which means there are fewer resources to go towards other health issues – such as dealing with vaccinations and maternity related health issues.

Longer term health issues – the trauma of war can be felt for decades – as witnessed in the high suicide rates of war Veterans, something which is probably mirrored in people who suffered rape and/ or torture as part of war.

Longer term economic problems – the Global Peace Index notes that the Economic impact of Global Violence in 2019 was over $40 trillion – an almost incomprehensibly high number, and certainly enough money to lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.

Basically, every social development indicator is negatively affected by war and conflict in a country!

Sources – find out More

• The Global Conflict Tracker
• The Global Peace Index 2023
• Human Rights Watch
• United Nations Refugee Agency
• Spiri – the consequences of conflict
• The Effects of Armed Conflict on Children .

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December 2, 2021

Peace Is More Than War’s Absence, and New Research Explains How to Build It

A new project measures ways to promote positive social relations among groups

By Peter T. Coleman , Allegra Chen-Carrel & Vincent Hans Michael Stueber

PeopleImages/Getty Images

Today, the misery of war is all too striking in places such as Syria, Yemen, Tigray, Myanmar and Ukraine. It can come as a surprise to learn that there are scores of sustainably peaceful societies around the world, ranging from indigenous people in the Xingu River Basin in Brazil to countries in the European Union. Learning from these societies, and identifying key drivers of harmony, is a vital process that can help promote world peace.

Unfortunately, our current ability to find these peaceful mechanisms is woefully inadequate. The Global Peace Index (GPI) and its complement the Positive Peace Index (PPI) rank 163 nations annually and are currently the leading measures of peacefulness. The GPI, launched in 2007 by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), was designed to measure negative peace , or the absence of violence, destructive conflict, and war. But peace is more than not fighting. The PPI, launched in 2009, was supposed to recognize this and track positive peace , or the promotion of peacefulness through positive interactions like civility, cooperation and care.

Yet the PPI still has many serious drawbacks. To begin with, it continues to emphasize negative peace, despite its name. The components of the PPI were selected and are weighted based on existing national indicators that showed the “strongest correlation with the GPI,” suggesting they are in effect mostly an extension of the GPI. For example, the PPI currently includes measures of factors such as group grievances, dissemination of false information, hostility to foreigners, and bribes.

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The index also lacks an empirical understanding of positive peace. The PPI report claims that it focuses on “positive aspects that create the conditions for a society to flourish.” However, there is little indication of how these aspects were derived (other than their relationships with the GPI). For example, access to the internet is currently a heavily weighted indicator in the PPI. But peace existed long before the internet, so is the number of people who can go online really a valid measure of harmony?

The PPI has a strong probusiness bias, too. Its 2021 report posits that positive peace “is a cross-cutting facilitator of progress, making it easier for businesses to sell.” A prior analysis of the PPI found that almost half the indicators were directly related to the idea of a “Peace Industry,” with less of a focus on factors found to be central to positive peace such as gender inclusiveness, equity and harmony between identity groups.

A big problem is that the index is limited to a top-down, national-level approach. The PPI’s reliance on national-level metrics masks critical differences in community-level peacefulness within nations, and these provide a much more nuanced picture of societal peace . Aggregating peace data at the national level, such as focusing on overall levels of inequality rather than on disparities along specific group divides, can hide negative repercussions of the status quo for minority communities.

To fix these deficiencies, we and our colleagues have been developing an alternative approach under the umbrella of the Sustaining Peace Project . Our effort has various components , and these can provide a way to solve the problems in the current indices. Here are some of the elements:

Evidence-based factors that measure positive and negative peace. The peace project began with a comprehensive review of the empirical studies on peaceful societies, which resulted in identifying 72 variables associated with sustaining peace. Next, we conducted an analysis of ethnographic and case study data comparing “peace systems,” or clusters of societies that maintain peace with one another, with nonpeace systems. This allowed us to identify and measure a set of eight core drivers of peace. These include the prevalence of an overarching social identity among neighboring groups and societies; their interconnections such as through trade or intermarriage; the degree to which they are interdependent upon one another in terms of ecological, economic or security concerns; the extent to which their norms and core values support peace or war; the role that rituals, symbols and ceremonies play in either uniting or dividing societies; the degree to which superordinate institutions exist that span neighboring communities; whether intergroup mechanisms for conflict management and resolution exist; and the presence of political leadership for peace versus war.

A core theory of sustaining peace . We have also worked with a broad group of peace, conflict and sustainability scholars to conceptualize how these many variables operate as a complex system by mapping their relationships in a causal loop diagram and then mathematically modeling their core dynamics This has allowed us to gain a comprehensive understanding of how different constellations of factors can combine to affect the probabilities of sustaining peace.

Bottom-up and top-down assessments . Currently, the Sustaining Peace Project is applying techniques such as natural language processing and machine learning to study markers of peace and conflict speech in the news media. Our preliminary research suggests that linguistic features may be able to distinguish between more and less peaceful societies. These methods offer the potential for new metrics that can be used for more granular analyses than national surveys.

We have also been working with local researchers from peaceful societies to conduct interviews and focus groups to better understand the in situ dynamics they believe contribute to sustaining peace in their communities. For example in Mauritius , a highly multiethnic society that is today one of the most peaceful nations in Africa, we learned of the particular importance of factors like formally addressing legacies of slavery and indentured servitude, taboos against proselytizing outsiders about one’s religion, and conscious efforts by journalists to avoid divisive and inflammatory language in their reporting.

Today, global indices drive funding and program decisions that impact countless lives, making it critical to accurately measure what contributes to socially just, safe and thriving societies. These indices are widely reported in news outlets around the globe, and heads of state often reference them for their own purposes. For example, in 2017 , Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, though he and his country were mired in corruption allegations, referenced his country’s positive increase on the GPI by stating, “Receiving such high praise from an institute that once named this country the most violent in the world is extremely significant.” Although a 2019 report on funding for peace-related projects shows an encouraging shift towards supporting positive peace and building resilient societies, many of these projects are really more about preventing harm, such as grants for bolstering national security and enhancing the rule of law.

The Sustaining Peace Project, in contrast, includes metrics for both positive and negative peace, is enhanced by local community expertise, and is conceptually coherent and based on empirical findings. It encourages policy makers and researchers to refocus attention and resources on initiatives that actually promote harmony, social health and positive reciprocity between groups. It moves away from indices that rank entire countries and instead focuses on identifying factors that, through their interaction, bolster or reduce the likelihood of sustaining peace. It is a holistic perspective.  

Tracking peacefulness across the globe is a highly challenging endeavor. But there is great potential in cooperation between peaceful communities, researchers and policy makers to produce better methods and metrics. Measuring peace is simply too important to get only half-right. 

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International Edition

Essays About War: Top 5 Examples and 5 Prompts

War is atrocious and there is an almost universal rule that we should be prevented; if you are writing essays about war, read our helpful guide.

Throughout history, war has driven human progress. It has led to the dissolution of oppressive regimes and the founding of new democratic countries. There is no doubt that the world would not be as it is without the many wars waged in the past.

War is waged to achieve a nation or organization’s goals, but what is the actual cost of progress? War has taken, and continues to take, countless lives. It is and is very costly in terms of resources as well. From the American Revolution to World Wars I and II to the Crusades and Hundred Years’ War of antiquity, wars throughout history have been bloody, brutal, and disastrous. 

If you are writing essays about war, look at our top essay examples below.

1. War Is Not Part of Human Nature by R. Brian Ferguson

2. essay on war and peace (author unknown), 3. the impacts of war on global health by sarah moore.

• 4.  The Psychosocial Impacts of War and Armed Conflict on Children by Iman Farajallah, Omar Reda, H. Steven Moffic, John R. Peteet, and Ahmed Hankir

5. ​​Is war a pre-requisite for peace? by Anna Cleary

5 prompts for essays about war, 1. is war justified, 2. why do countries go to war, 3. the effects of war, 4. moral and ethical issues concerning war, 5. reflecting on a historical war.

“Debate over war and human nature will not soon be resolved. The idea that intensive, high-casualty violence was ubiquitous throughout prehistory has many backers. It has cultural resonance for those who are sure that we as a species naturally tilt toward war. As my mother would say: “Just look at history!” But doves have the upper hand when all the evidence is considered. Broadly, early finds provide little if any evidence suggesting war was a fact of life.”

Ferguson disputes the popular belief that war is inherent to human nature, as evidenced by archaeological discoveries. Many archaeologists use the very same evidence to support the opposing view. Evidence reveals many instances where war was waged, but not fought. In the minds of Ferguson and many others, humanity may be predisposed to conflict and violence, but not war, as many believe. 

“It also appears that if peace were to continue for a long period, people would become sick of the monotony of life and would seek war for a changed man is a highly dynamic creature and it seems that he cannot remain contented merely with works of peace-the cultivation of arts, the development of material comforts, the extension of knowledge, the means and appliances of a happy life.”

This essay provides an interesting perspective on war; other than the typical motivations for war, such as the desire to achieve one’s goals; the author writes that war disrupts the monotony of peace and gives participants a sense of excitement and uncertainty. In addition, it instills the spirit of heroism and bravery in people. However, the author does not dispute that war is evil and should be avoided as much as possible. 

“War forces people to flee their homes in search of safety, with the latest figures from the UN estimating that around 70 million people are currently displaced due to war. This displacement can be incredibly detrimental to health, with no safe and consistent place to sleep, wash, and shelter from the elements. It also removes a regular source of food and proper nutrition. As well as impacting physical health, war adversely affects the mental health of both those actively involved in conflict and civilians.”

Moore discusses the side effects that war has on civilians. For example, it diverts resources used on poverty alleviation and infrastructure towards fighting. It also displaces civilians when their homes are destroyed, reduces access to food, water, and sanitation, and can significantly impact mental health, among many other effects. 

4.   The Psychosocial Impacts of War and Armed Conflict on Children by Iman Farajallah, Omar Reda, H. Steven Moffic, John R. Peteet, and Ahmed Hankir

“The damage done by war-related trauma can never be undone. We can, however, help reduce its long-term impacts, which can span generations. When we reach within ourselves to discover our humanity, it allows us to reach out to the innocent children and remind them of their resilience and beauty. Trauma can make or break us as individuals, families, and communities.”

In their essay, the authors explain how war can affect children. Children living in war-torn areas expectedly witness a lot of violence, including the killings of their loved ones. This may lead to the inability to sleep properly, difficulty performing daily functions, and a speech impediment. The authors write that trauma cannot be undone and can ruin a child’s life.  

“The sociologist Charles Tilly has argued that war and the nation state are inextricably linked. War has been crucial for the formation of the nation state, and remains crucial for its continuation. Anthony Giddens similarly views a link between the internal pacification of states and their external violence. It may be that, if we want a durable peace, a peace built on something other than war, we need to consider how to construct societies based on something other than the nation state and its monopoly of violence.”

This essay discusses the irony that war is waged to achieve peace. Many justify war and believe it is inevitable, as the world seems to balance out an era of peace with another war. However, others advocate for total pacifism. Even in relatively peaceful times, organizations and countries have been carrying out “shadow wars” or engaging in conflict without necessarily going into outright war. Cleary cites arguments made that for peace to indeed exist by itself, societies must not be built on the war in the first place. 

Many believe that war is justified by providing a means to peace and prosperity. Do you agree with this statement? If so, to what extent? What would you consider “too much” for war to be unjustified? In your essay, respond to these questions and reflect on the nature and morality of war. 

Wars throughout history have been waged for various reasons, including geographical domination, and disagreement over cultural and religious beliefs. In your essay, discuss some of the reasons different countries go to war, you can look into the belief systems that cause disagreements, oppression of people, and leaders’ desire to conquer geographical land. For an interesting essay, look to history and the reasons why major wars such as WWI and WWII occurred.

In this essay, you can write about war’s effects on participating countries. You can focus on the impact of war on specific sectors, such as healthcare or the economy. In your mind, do they outweigh the benefits? Discuss the positive and negative effects of war in your essay. To create an argumentative essay, you can pick a stance if you are for or against war. Then, argue your case and show how its effects are positive, negative, or both.

Many issues arise when waging war, such as the treatment of civilians as “collateral damage,” keeping secrets from the public, and torturing prisoners. For your essay, choose an issue that may arise when fighting a war and determine whether or not it is genuinely “unforgivable” or “unacceptable.” Are there instances where it is justified? Be sure to examples where this issue has arisen before.

Humans have fought countless wars throughout history. Choose one significant war and briefly explain its causes, major events, and effects. Conduct thorough research into the period of war and the political, social, and economic effects occurred. Discuss these points for a compelling cause and effect essay.

For help with this topic, read our guide explaining “what is persuasive writing ?”If you still need help, our guide to grammar and punctuation explains more.

Martin is an avid writer specializing in editing and proofreading. He also enjoys literary analysis and writing about food and travel.

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Essay on War and Its Effects

Students are often asked to write an essay on War and Its Effects in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on War and Its Effects

Introduction.

War is a state of armed conflict between different countries or groups within a country. It’s a destructive event that causes loss of life and property.

The Devastation of War

Wars cause immense destruction. Buildings, homes, and infrastructure are often destroyed, leaving people homeless. The loss of resources makes it hard to rebuild.

The human cost of war is huge. Many people lose their lives or get injured. Families are torn apart, and children often lose their parents.

Psychological Impact

War can cause severe psychological trauma. Soldiers and civilians may suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.

War has devastating effects on people and societies. It’s important to promote peace and understanding to prevent wars.

250 Words Essay on War and Its Effects

War, a term that evokes immediate images of destruction and death, has been a persistent feature of human history. The consequences are multifaceted, influencing not only the immediate physical realm but also the socio-economic and psychological aspects of society.

Physical Impact

The most direct and visible impact of war is the physical destruction. Infrastructure, homes, and natural resources are often destroyed, leading to a significant decline in the quality of life. Moreover, the loss of human lives is immeasurable, creating a vacuum in societies that is hard to fill.

Socio-Economic Consequences

War also has profound socio-economic effects. Economies are crippled as resources are diverted towards war efforts, leading to inflation, unemployment, and poverty. Social structures are disrupted, with families torn apart and communities displaced.

Psychological Effects

Perhaps the most enduring impact of war is psychological. The trauma of violence and loss can have long-term effects on mental health, leading to conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder. Society at large also suffers, with the collective psyche marked by fear and mistrust.

In conclusion, war leaves an indelible mark on individuals and societies. Its effects are far-reaching and long-lasting, extending beyond the immediate physical destruction to touch every aspect of life. As we continue to study and understand these impacts, it underscores the importance of pursuing peace and conflict resolution.

500 Words Essay on War and Its Effects

War, an organized conflict between two or more groups, has been a part of human history for millennia. Its effects are profound and far-reaching, influencing political, social, and economic aspects of societies. Understanding the impact of war is crucial to comprehend the intricacies of global politics and human behavior.

The Political Impact of War

War significantly alters the political landscape of nations. It often leads to changes in leadership, shifts in power dynamics, and amendments in legal systems. For instance, World War II resulted in the downfall of fascist regimes in Germany and Italy, giving rise to democratic governments. However, war can also destabilize nations, creating power vacuums that may lead to further conflicts, as seen in the aftermath of the Iraq War.

Social Consequences of War

Societies bear the brunt of war’s destructive nature. The loss of life, displacement of people, and the psychological trauma inflicted upon populations are some of the direct social effects. Indirectly, war also affects societal structures and relationships. It can lead to changes in gender roles, as seen during World War I and II where women took on roles traditionally held by men, leading to significant shifts in gender dynamics.

Economic Ramifications of War

Economically, war can have both destructive and stimulating effects. On one hand, it leads to the destruction of infrastructure, depletion of resources, and interruption of trade. On the other, it can stimulate economic growth through increased production and technological advancements. The economic boom in the United States during and after World War II is an example of war-induced economic stimulation.

The Psychological Impact of War

War leaves a deep psychological imprint on those directly and indirectly involved. Soldiers and civilians alike suffer from conditions like Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Moreover, societies as a whole can experience collective trauma, impacting future generations. The psychological scars of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings continue to affect Japanese society today.

In conclusion, war is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon with profound effects that can shape nations and societies in significant ways. Its impacts are not confined to the battlefield but reach deep into the political, social, economic, and psychological fabric of societies. Therefore, understanding its effects is not only essential for historians and political scientists but also for anyone interested in the complexities of human societies and their evolution.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

• Essay on Kargil War
• Essay on Disadvantages of War
• Essay on Consequences of War

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Guest Essay

America’s Military Is Not Prepared for War — or Peace

By Roger Wicker

Mr. Wicker, a Republican, is the ranking member of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee.

“To be prepared for war,” George Washington said, “is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.” President Ronald Reagan agreed with his forebear’s words, and peace through strength became a theme of his administration. In the past four decades, the American arsenal helped secure that peace, but political neglect has led to its atrophy as other nations’ war machines have kicked into high gear. Most Americans do not realize the specter of great power conflict has risen again.

It is far past time to rebuild America’s military. We can avoid war by preparing for it.

When America’s senior military leaders testify before my colleagues and me on the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee behind closed doors, they have said that we face some of the most dangerous global threat environments since World War II. Then, they darken that already unsettling picture by explaining that our armed forces are at risk of being underequipped and outgunned. We struggle to build and maintain ships, our fighter jet fleet is dangerously small, and our military infrastructure is outdated. Meanwhile, America’s adversaries are growing their militaries and getting more aggressive.

In China, the country’s leader, Xi Jinping, has orchestrated a historic military modernization intended to exploit the U.S. military’s weaknesses. He has overtaken the U.S. Navy in fleet size, built one of the world’s largest missile stockpiles and made big advances in space. President Vladimir Putin of Russia has thrown Europe into war and mobilized his society for long-term conflict. Iran and its proxy groups have escalated their shadow war against Israel and increased attacks on U.S. ships and soldiers. And North Korea has disregarded efforts toward arms control negotiations and moved toward wartime readiness.

Worse yet, these governments are materially helping one another, cooperating in new ways to prevent an American-led 21st century. Iran has provided Russia with battlefield drones, and China is sending technical and logistical help to aid Mr. Putin’s war. They are also helping one another prepare for future fights by increasing weapons transfers and to evade sanctions. Their unprecedented coordination makes new global conflict increasingly possible.

That theoretical future could come faster than most Americans think. We may find ourselves in a state of extreme vulnerability in a matter of a few years, according to a growing consensus of experts. Our military readiness could be at its lowest point in decades just as China’s military in particular hits its stride. The U.S. Indo-Pacific commander released what I believe to be the largest list of unfunded items ever for services and combatant commands for next year’s budget, amounting to $11 billion. It requested funding for a raft of infrastructure, missile defense and targeting programs that would prove vital in a Pacific fight. China, on the other hand, has no such problems, as it accumulates the world’s leading hypersonic arsenal with a mix of other lethal cruise and attack missiles.

Our military leaders are being forced to make impossible choices. The Navy is struggling to adequately fund new ships, routine maintenance and munition procurement; it is unable to effectively address all three. We recently signed a deal to sell submarines to Australia, but we’ve failed to sufficiently fund our own submarine industrial base, leaving an aging fleet unprepared to respond to threats. Two of the three most important nuclear modernization programs are underfunded and are at risk of delays. The military faces a backlog of at least $180 billion for basic maintenance, from barracks to training ranges. This projects weakness to our adversaries as we send service members abroad with diminished ability to respond to crises.

Fortunately, we can change course. We can avoid that extreme vulnerability and resurrect American military might.

On Wednesday I am publishing a plan that includes a series of detailed proposals to address this reality head-on. We have been living off the Reagan military buildup for too long; it is time for updates and upgrades. My plan outlines why and how the United States should aim to spend an additional $55 billion on the military in the 2025 fiscal year and grow military spending from a projected 2.9 percent of our national gross domestic product this year to 5 percent over the next five to seven years.

It would be a significant investment that would start a reckoning over our nation’s spending priorities. There will be conversations ahead about all manner of budget questions. We do not need to spend this much indefinitely — but we do need a short-term generational investment to help us prevent another world war.

My blueprint would grow the Navy to 357 ships by 2035 and halt our shrinking Air Force fleet by producing at least 340 additional fighters in five years. This will help patch near-term holes and put each fleet on a sustainable trajectory. The plan would also replenish the Air Force tanker and training fleets, accelerate the modernization of the Army and Marine Corps, and invest in joint capabilities that are all too often forgotten, including logistics and munitions.

The proposal would build on the $3.3 billion in submarine industrial base funding included in the national security supplemental passed in April, so we can bolster our defense and that of our allies. It would also rapidly equip service members all over the world with innovative technologies at scale, from the seabed to the stars.

We should pair increased investment with wiser spending. Combining this crucial investment with fiscal responsibility would funnel resources to the most strategic ends. Emerging technology must play an essential role, and we can build and deploy much of it in less than five years. My road map would also help make improvements to the military procurement system and increase accountability for bureaucrats and companies that fail to perform on vital national security projects.

This whole endeavor would shake our status quo but be far less disruptive and expensive than the alternative. Should China decide to wage war with the United States, the global economy could immediately fall into a depression. Americans have grown far too comfortable under the decades-old presumption of overwhelming military superiority. And that false sense of security has led us to ignore necessary maintenance and made us vulnerable.

Our ability to deter our adversaries can be regained because we have done it before. At the 50th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, in the twilight of the Soviet Union, George H.W. Bush reflected on the lessons of Pearl Harbor. Though the conflict was long gone, it taught him an enduring lesson: “When it comes to national defense,” he said, “finishing second means finishing last.”

Regaining American strength will be expensive. But fighting a war — and worse, losing one — is far more costly. We need to begin a national conversation today on how we achieve a peaceful, prosperous and American-led 21st century. The first step is a generational investment in the U.S. military.

Roger Wicker is the senior U.S. senator from Mississippi and the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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Causes Of War And Conflict (Essay Sample)

War has continuously been part of human history since before its documentation existed, and it presently exists becoming more severe and destructive as industrialization and advancement of technology occasions. War is the clash of interests among citizens of a country, parties and countries against others by the use of force, resulting in minimal or massive destruction and loss of lives. War and conflict occasions due to several reasons as discussed below.

The primary cause of war and conflict is economic gains. All countries always want to control territories where numerous expensive resources are present. In most cases, these resources reside in other nations and its access is impossible. Therefore, to have access to them, countries invade others and instigate wars, in most situations often disguised, to take control of other’s wealth and to satisfy their shortage of said resources. Among the resources fought for, include gold, silver, and livestock in the early days and oil, minerals and manufacturing products in present times. For instance, the presence of oil fueled the Gulf War of 1990 to 1991. Politics is another key contributor to the onset of war and conflict. Different governments hold extreme views different from other governments. These views in most cases create rifts, disagreements, and lack of cooperation among countries when one declines to agree with another or fail to consider the other country’s opinion. Thus, when collaboration and agreement fail country’s cause to war as a measure to publicize their stand. For example, in World War II, the Germans invaded Poland, thereby consequencing Britain to join the fight in support of Poland who was their allies.

Religion influences the onset of various wars and conflicts. In a world full of different faiths, there lies different rules, regulations, beliefs, and views. Different religions obey different gods such as God for Christians and the bible, Allah for Muslims and the Koran among others. The diverse views and observation of the society often lead to conflicts because of the different religious groups failing to exercise tolerance and understanding of each other and instead, question and challenge other religions. For example, The Crusades war came up through the attempt of the Catholic Church trying to restore their right of entry to holy places in Jerusalem.

Nationalism is the belief that countries accrue profits by acting independently instead of working together and asserting their dominance among others. Nationalism provokes war and conflict by countries inciting others to violence in particular through invasion. Since they do not want other countries to dictate to them what to do or share with them, they, therefore, opt to suppress other nations by imposing their will on them hence, provoking war. For instance, the Second World War and the Cold war between Russia and America.

The historical rivalry continuously accentuates war and conflict. Some countries have for a long time failed to solve their long-standing differences with each. England and Scotland for example, whose rivalry began between the Scottish Kingdom and the Anglo-Saxon kingdom, have had a long-standing rivalry. The lack of peace between them government after government leads to these countries carrying forward these differences and making more along the way. As a result, the disagreements have caused several wars perceived as payback for previous grievances that in turn attract retaliation thereby creating endless attacks back and forth.

War is conflict occasioning from the use of force and weaponry between countries and states. Humankind has continuously depicted war as part and always will be part of its nature. When aspects such as economic dominance, religion, politics, nationalism, history, and perceptiveness create differences among them, they become the fueling aspects of warfare.

The Assassination that Sparked the Flames of World War i

This essay is about the event that triggered World War I: the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary. On June 28, 1914, Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb nationalist, killed the archduke and his wife in Sarajevo. This act set off a chain reaction among European powers due to existing alliances and rising tensions. Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, prompting Russia to mobilize in defense of Serbia. Germany then declared war on Russia, pulling in France and Britain. The assassination was the spark in an already volatile Europe, marked by nationalism, militarism, and imperial ambitions. The war that followed resulted in unprecedented devastation, reshaping nations and influencing future conflicts.

How it works

The outbreak of World War I, a conflict that dramatically altered the course of history, can be traced back to a singular, dramatic event: the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary. On June 28, 1914, in the vibrant and tumultuous city of Sarajevo, this heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, along with his wife, Sophie, was shot and killed by Gavrilo Princip, a young Bosnian Serb nationalist. While this assassination might initially appear as an isolated act of violence, it was the spark that ignited a catastrophic chain reaction among the major powers of Europe, culminating in a war that reshaped the world.

To fully understand the gravity of this event, it’s crucial to delve into the political and social context of early 20th-century Europe. The continent was a cauldron of nationalistic fervor, political alliances, and military preparations. Decades of treaties and alliances meant that any localized conflict had the potential to escalate rapidly into a full-scale war. Austria-Hungary, a vast empire struggling to maintain its cohesion in the face of rising nationalist movements, saw the assassination as an opportunity to assert its dominance and curb Serbia’s growing influence in the Balkans.

Austria-Hungary’s response to the assassination was swift and uncompromising. With Germany’s backing, the Austro-Hungarian government issued an ultimatum to Serbia, demanding stringent measures to suppress nationalist activities and to allow Austro-Hungarian officials to partake in the investigation and suppression of anti-Austrian activities within Serbia. The terms were deliberately harsh, designed to be unacceptable, thereby providing a pretext for war. When Serbia’s response, while conciliatory, fell short of meeting all the demands, Austria-Hungary declared war on July 28, 1914.

This declaration of war set off a domino effect among the European powers, thanks to the intricate system of alliances in place. Russia, bound by ethnic and political ties to Serbia, began to mobilize its forces in defense. Germany, perceiving Russian mobilization as a direct threat, declared war on Russia on August 1, 1914. The complex alliance system further involved France and Britain. Germany’s Schlieffen Plan, which entailed a rapid invasion of neutral Belgium to outflank French forces, brought Britain into the war in defense of Belgian neutrality. What might have remained a regional conflict thus erupted into a full-scale global war.

The assassination of Franz Ferdinand was not merely the trigger for the war; it was a reflection of the deep-seated tensions that had been simmering in Europe for years. Nationalism was on the rise, with various ethnic groups within the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires seeking independence. Militarism had led to an arms race, with the major powers of Europe amassing vast armies and navies, each preparing for a potential conflict. The scramble for colonies and imperial ambitions further strained relations among these nations. The alliance system meant that countries were bound by treaties to support each other, even if it meant going to war.

The immediate aftermath of the assassination saw a flurry of diplomatic efforts, but the momentum towards war was unstoppable. Austria-Hungary’s aggressive stance, bolstered by Germany’s support, ensured that any diplomatic resolution was unlikely. The alliances kicked into gear, and within weeks, Europe was engulfed in war. The initial months of the conflict saw rapid movements and a widespread belief that the war would be short-lived. However, this illusion was quickly shattered as the war settled into a grim stalemate.

On the Western Front, stretching from the North Sea to the Swiss border, soldiers from both sides dug in, creating an extensive network of trenches. Life in the trenches was horrific, marked by mud, disease, and constant danger from enemy fire. The introduction of new weapons, such as machine guns, poison gas, and heavy artillery, led to unprecedented levels of carnage. Battles like the Somme and Verdun became synonymous with mass slaughter, with hundreds of thousands of casualties for minimal territorial gain. The war of attrition took a terrible toll on the soldiers and civilians alike, with entire towns and villages destroyed in the relentless fighting.

The Eastern Front was no less brutal, characterized by vast battles and significant losses. The Russian army, despite its size, was poorly equipped and suffered devastating defeats at the hands of the Germans. The strain of the war contributed to internal unrest in Russia, leading to the February and October Revolutions of 1917 and ultimately the withdrawal of Russia from the war following the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. The collapse of the Russian front allowed Germany to concentrate its forces on the Western Front, leading to renewed offensives in 1918.

As the war dragged on, it drew in more nations, becoming truly global in scope. The Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria joined the Central Powers, while Italy, initially part of the Triple Alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary, switched sides to join the Allies. The United States entered the war in 1917, bringing fresh troops and resources that were crucial in tipping the balance in favor of the Allies. The war also extended to the colonies of the European powers, with battles fought in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.

The impact of World War I was profound and far-reaching. The war led to the deaths of millions of soldiers and civilians, the collapse of empires, and the redrawing of national borders. The Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, German, and Russian empires all fell in the aftermath of the war, giving rise to new nations and setting the stage for political tensions that would later lead to World War II. The Treaty of Versailles, signed in 1919, imposed harsh penalties on Germany, sowing the seeds of resentment and economic hardship that contributed to the rise of Adolf Hitler and the outbreak of the second global conflict.

In reflecting on the causes of World War I, it is clear that the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was the immediate catalyst, but it was not the sole cause. The war was the result of a complex interplay of factors, including nationalism, militarism, imperialism, and the alliance system. These underlying tensions had been building for years, and the assassination merely provided the spark that ignited the explosive mix. Understanding the multifaceted origins of World War I is essential not only for comprehending the war itself but also for appreciating the intricate web of historical forces that continue to shape our world today.

The assassination in Sarajevo was indeed the match that lit the fuse, but the powder keg had been long prepared, ready to explode. As we remember the centennial of World War I, it is crucial to reflect on the lessons of history and the importance of diplomacy, cooperation, and understanding in preventing such devastating conflicts in the future. The legacy of World War I serves as a poignant reminder of the human cost of war and the enduring quest for peace.

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June 3, 2024

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New data indicate record number of armed conflicts in the world

by Uppsala University

Never before have there been so many armed conflicts across the globe. This has been shown by new statistics from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program, UCDP, at Uppsala University. In 2023, the number of conflicts involving states totaled 59, the highest number ever since the data collection's starting point in 1946. Previous peaks were seen in 2020 and 2022, each with 56 conflicts.

At the same time, the number of deaths from conflict violence halved compared to the previous year, which was mainly due to the ending of the extremely bloody war in the Tigray region of Ethiopia at the end of 2022.

"However, we can still see several unusually deadly wars going on, such as the war in Ukraine with almost 71,000 deaths last year, and Israel's war against Hamas where UCDP recorded over 22,000 deaths in 2023," explains Shawn Davies, Senior Analyst at UCDP.

Although the total number of deaths from organized violence worldwide halved last year compared to the year before, from 310,000 to 154,000, 2023 was one of the bloodiest years since UCDP began collecting data on deaths in conflicts in 1989.

"Only three years have been more deadly than 2023. Aside from the 1994 Rwandan genocide, 2021 and 2022 make it onto that list," continues Davies.

There were nine wars in 2023 (conflicts with more than 1,000 deaths per year), one more than the year before and the highest figure since 2017. Most wars took place in Africa, with the civil war in Sudan that broke out in 2023 being the third deadliest conflict of the year, after the wars in Ukraine and Israel/Palestine.

In many conflicts, the civilian population is also targeted by the warring parties. Although the UCDP recorded a fall in the overall number of deaths in one-sided violence against civilians last year, thousands of civilians fell victim to this type of violence in conflicts in Sudan, Burkina Faso, Israel and Myanmar, among others. In total, just over 10,000 civilian deaths were recorded in this type of targeted violence, compared to 12,000 the year before.

"For the ninth consecutive year, IS, also known as Daesh, was the group that killed the most civilians in one-sided violence, although the total number fell sharply compared to the previous year. The group was active in 16 different countries where they carried out various acts such as shootings, beheadings and large coordinated suicide bombings," says Therese Pettersson, Senior Analyst and Project Manager at UCDP.

In conflicts between groups where the state is not involved, known as non-state conflicts, the UCDP noted a slight decline in 2023. A total of 20,900 deaths were recorded in 75 non-state conflicts.

"It's too early to call this is a break in the trend, however. The last ten years have been the ten most deadly when it comes to this type of violence, which in recent years has almost exclusively involved violent clashes between gangs and cartels," notes Pettersson.

The majority of non-state conflicts take place in Latin America, of which the bloodiest have been seen in Mexico and Brazil, where violence is concentrated in cities and along major drug trafficking routes.

"But this type of violence has also become more present in Europe, and in 2023, the first ever active gang conflict in Europe was recorded when two rival gangs in the French city of Marseille entered into a conflict. Many of the patterns that characterize gang violence in the UCDP statistics can also be observed in Sweden, such as waves of violence triggered by splits and alliances, and the occurrence of increasingly younger perpetrators," notes Garoun Engström, Senior Analyst at UCDP.

So far, however, the conflicts in Sweden do not reach the level of active conflict as defined by the UCDP. This definition, which has become standard in the field of peace and conflict research, includes conflicts between two specific parties that cause at least 25 battle-related deaths in a calendar year. The definition of war is conflict that results in at least 1,000 deaths in a year.

The 2023 statistics now published will be analyzed and presented in a report to be published in the Journal of Peace Research in July.

Provided by Uppsala University

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