Understanding International Conflict Management

Charity Butcher, Maia Carter Hallward, Charity Butcher, Maia Carter Hallward

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429826870
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Peace & Global Development
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This new textbook introduces key mechanisms and issues in international conflict management and engages students with a comprehensive interdisciplinary approach to mitigating, managing, and transforming international conflicts.

The volume identifies key historical events and international agreements that have shaped and defined the field of international conflict management, as well as key dilemmas facing the field at this juncture. The first section provides an overview of key mechanisms for international conflict management, such as negotiation, mediation, nonviolent resistance, peacekeeping, peacebuilding, transitional justice, and reconciliation. The second section tackles important cross-cutting themes, such as technology, religion, the economy, refugees and migration, and the role of civil society, examining how these issues contribute to international conflicts and how they can be leveraged to help address such conflicts. Each chapter includes a brief historical overview of the evolution of the issue or mechanism, identifies key theoretical and practical debates, and includes case studies, discussion questions, website links, and suggested further reading for further study and engagement. By providing a mixture of theory and practical examples, this textbook provides students with the necessary background to navigate this interdisciplinary field.

This volume will be of great interest to students of international conflict management, conflict resolution, peace studies, and international relations in general.

Part I
Introduction to international conflict management

1 Introduction to international conflict management

Charity Butcher and Maia Carter Hallward¹

Introduction

World War I was called “the war to end all wars,” and after the end of the Cold War, some scholars envisioned a Pax Americana, or a period of relative peace managed by the United States. However, violent conflict continues to plague the international system, demonstrating a great destructive capacity. War no longer affects only uniformed soldiers on the battlefield; instead, civilians are increasingly affected directly by inter- and intra-state wars. Advances in technology have resulted in changes in how wars are waged, how people learn about them, and how scholars, practitioners, and ordinary citizens can work to prevent, mitigate, and resolve violent conflict. Seemingly intractable conflicts with large numbers of domestic and international players, high death tolls and environmental fallout, and major negative impacts on neighboring (and distant) countries, such as those waged in Syria, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and Yemen at time of writing in 2019, have increasingly compelled the international community to explore methods beyond those in the traditional diplomatic toolbox. Civil society – which includes most of you reading this book – plays an increasing role in international conflict management, and any individual with a cell phone has the capacity to help track and respond to conflict at home and abroad. In a globally interconnected world, it is incumbent on all individuals to acquire the skills to actively promote and engage in constructive conflict management.

The desire to manage conflict peacefully is not new. World War I (1914–1918) and World War II (1939–1945) resulted in tens of millions of deaths around the world, including soldiers drafted from colonial holdings, those deemed politically or socially undesirable and who were murdered in Nazi work and death camps or in the Soviet gulags, and those exterminated by the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The destructive nature of World War I spurred the international community to create the League of Nations in 1920, a body that was intended to prevent another major war from occurring through institutionalizing the concept of collective security, whereby any member was obligated to come to the aid of any other member who was attacked. Although it was ultimately unsuccessful, in part due to the failure of the United States to join, the League of Nations specifically promoted a number of conflict management mechanisms that are now taken for granted in the international system, including efforts at disarmament and the management and settlement of disputes through negotiation and arbitration.² With the onset of World War II, the League of Nations collapsed, but the idea of an international organization designed to promote international peace and security continued. Following World War II, the international community created the United Nations, updated to reflect lessons learned as a result of the failures of the League and the devastation of World War II.

Created in 1945, the United Nations (UN) has evolved as the international community has expanded in size and is faced with new challenges. Reflecting the global power structure at the end of World War II, the United Nations is divided into the Security Council, with five permanent members (the nuclear powers and victors at the end of the war), and the General Assembly, in which every state has a vote. Article I of the United Nations Charter outlines the organization’s purpose, which includes to work collectively to suppress acts of aggression, to help settle international disputes, to develop friendly relations based on equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to promote cooperation on a range of international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character. This book takes as its starting point the international framework (albeit imperfect) established by the UN to examine a range of efforts taken since its creation to promote and maintain international peace and security.

International law and organizations

In addition to the UN, a series of international laws and organizations were established with the intent of preventing atrocities seen during the two World Wars, including two major bodies of law: humanitarian law and human rights law. While agreements protecting the wounded and sick, as well as religious and medical personnel, during wartime go back to 1864, these laws were updated and expanded in 1949 in the Geneva Conventions, which codify international humanitarian law and regulate armed conflict. The Second Geneva Convention of 1949 expanded previous agreements, including the 1907 Hague Conventions, to protect wounded, sick, and shipwrecked members of the armed forces at sea. The Third Geneva Convention updated laws for treatment of prisoners of war, and a Fourth Geneva Convention was created specifically to protect civilian populations. While the first three Geneva Conventions of 1949 built on previous agreements protecting combatants, the fourth was new, aimed at addressing the dangers facing noncombatants due to new military techniques and challenges facing civilians in occupied territories.³

Over 190 countries have signed and ratified the Geneva Conventions, signaling a commitment to safeguarding wounded and civilian bystanders. These agreements, however, are specific to conduct once states are engaged in war. They do not adjudicate regarding a state’s decision to go to war, which falls more under the purview of the United Nations Security Council, tasked with upholding international peace and security and determining whether a war was a justifiable act of self-defense or an act of aggression. Further, these Conventions do not address the treatment of civilians and issues of human rights outside of wartime. The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was drafted by representatives from around the world and proclaimed by the UN General Assembly on December 10, 1948. This declaration outlines political and civil rights, as well as social, economic, and cultural rights, that are considered fundamental rights of humankind. Unlike the Geneva Conventions, the UDHR considers rights more broadly and suggests that states are obligated to protect the rights of their citizens.

The international community has increasingly worked to protect populations from the most heinous acts of violence, including genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing. The International Criminal Court (ICC) was established by the Rome Stature in 1998 and entered into force in 2002. This court was unique in the international system as individuals were the responsible agents to the court, not states. Prior to the ICC, international courts, such as the International Court of Justice, only held states accountable for war crimes. While individuals had been held accountable in ad hoc tribunals set up following major conflicts, such as the Nuremburg and Tokyo Tribunals following World War II, the ICC was the first large-scale international attempt to hold individuals accountable for their actions during war.

The movement toward protecting civilians from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity has led to the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine in the international community, which suggests that states are first responsible to protect their civilians from such crimes, but if states are unable or unwilling to take responsibility for their citizens, or are the perpetuators of these crimes, the international community has a responsibility to intervene to protect these individuals. The R2P doctrine is still quite controversial but has clear importance for any discussion of conflict management. On the one hand, the R2P doctrine can help protect civilians from significant human rights abuses. On the other hand, R2P could be used by the international community or individual states to justify interventionist policies that could escalate, or even instigate, conflicts, as was the case with the NATO intervention in Libya in 2011. Finding the right balance between protecting civilians and creating or escalating conflict is a challenge faced by the international community.

Civil society approaches

Over the past decades civil society has played an increasing role in international conflict management, a complement to the state-based structure of the United Nations and its associated institutions. While civil society as a concept is quite diverse, it is generally understood to be comprised of voluntary activity between the state, the economic sphere, and the family/private sphere (Spurk 2010). Historically, civil society has been considered a Western notion, particularly with the professionalization of NGOs that had emerged with donor requirements for organizations receiving government aid. Civil society in other contexts has been comprised more of voluntaristic and charitable associations. While much of the scholarship has explored civil society in the context of democratization, an increased focus on the role of civil society in international conflict management and peacebuilding has occurred in the past decades, particularly since the end of the Cold War and an expansion of the scholarly focus beyond the dyadic rivalry between the United States and Soviet Union.

One of the first bodies of research on civil society and international conflict management focuses on Track II diplomacy, whereby a “second track” of influential members of society, such as academics and/or other socially engaged leaders, distinct from official Track I government representatives, from societies in conflict come together to problem solve and learn new communication and conflict management skills such as active listening. Often facilitated by trained conflict management scholar-practitioners, workshops have been held in interactable conflicts, such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Cyprus conflict (d’Estrée 2008; Kelman 2008; Rouhana 1995). According to an earlier generation of thinking by Lederach and others, Track II, or middle-level leaders, were able to connect government elites (Track I) and mass publics at the grassroots level (Track III) through their linkages to both constituencies (Lederach 1997). In practice, however, this assumption has not always resulted in tangible results, and many have criticized this triangle model and Track II workshops more broadly for failing to adequately delineate mechanisms for social change and social diffusion from the middle-level out. Further, a middle-level focus, particularly if it is donor-driven, can lead to the undue influence of outside actors, as well as the neglect of both the political process and grassroots needs and interests (Paffenholz 2015).

There is a long history of civil society engagement in conflict management and peace-building, from religious actors mediating conflict to actions taken by women or youth or artists to affect social change (Boulding 2000; Curle 1996). Several volumes document success stories of civil society efforts around the world, such as People Building Peace I and II collected by the European Centre for Conflict Prevention (van Tongeren et al. 2005). Civil society actors have also led the way in many civil resistance campaigns around the globe, most famously epitomized by Gandhi’s movement for Indian independence, the US Civil Rights movement, and the student-led Otpor movement that brought down Milosevic in Serbia, which have also been documented in a range of volumes (see for example Ackerman and DuVall 2000; Schock 2015; Zunes, Kurtz, and Asher 1999).

Current challenges for international conflict management

Despite the numerous efforts of state and civil society actors to create mechanisms for resolving and managing international conflict, complex and intractable conflicts continue to be waged by a range of actors around the globe. Further, with a recent rise in nationalist movements, states and non-state actors alike have exhibited decreased trust in international institutions and conflict management mechanisms. The United States withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in May 2018, for example, demonstrating a distrust in multilateral diplomacy as a means toward reducing tensions between Iran and its neighbors (Smith 2019). Further, conflict management mechanisms such as the adjudication leg of the World Trade Organization (WTO) have been undermined, as powerful members such as the United States have repeatedly blocked the appointment of new judges. While some statistics suggest that interstate war has declined, others point to the rise in intrastate conflict (SIPRI 2019). In July 2019, the International Crisis Group pointed to conflict risks in countries including Mali, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Malawi, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Algeria, with deteriorated situations in additional countries including Nagorno-Karabakh (Azerbaijan), Kazakhstan, Honduras, and Haiti (International Crisis Group 2019). There is increasing concern by many around the world that the key mechanisms developed to curb violent conflict at the international level are being systematically undermined. Knowledge of these mechanisms and their importance is critical to ensuring their survival in decades to come.

At the same time, many of the existing interstate mechanisms for international conflict management seem insufficient regarding several pressing global challenges, including climate change, terrorism, and the proliferation of non-state actors in the global arena. While none of these challenges is new, their reach has expanded, and their impacts resonate on a larger scale than they did previously. Accelerated effects of climate change impact livelihoods and patterns of migration, which in turn contribute to a variety of conflicts. Complex wars such as those in the DRC and Syria that involve myriad non-state armed groups (in addition to state parties) make the prospect of finding a negotiated agreement increasingly challenging. The current and new generations of scholars and practitioners must devote time and attention to refining existing mechanisms and developing new ones in order to effectively adapt skills and approaches to address the vital need for international conflict management in today’s world.

Organization of the book to follow

The field of international conflict management is interdisciplinary, with scholars approaching the field through a range of lenses shaped and informed by their disciplinary backgrounds. Chapter 2 introduces the diverse ontological and epistemological assumptions held by various scholarly disciplines and approaches to the field of study and provides a background for understanding some of the different theories and assumptions found in different approaches to international conflict management. The chapter also provides an introduction to the key concepts and terms in the field of international conflict management and a brief historical overview of the emergence of the field and introduces key concepts and the evolution of terms to describe and define the field.

Following Chapter 2, the remainder of the book is divided into two sections: one that considers the various mechanisms of managing international conflict, and a second that considers cross-cutting themes that are important in the field of international conflict management.

Mechanisms of international conflict management

The section on mechanisms of international conflict management begins with traditional approaches to conflict management, including negotiation, mediation, peacebuilding, and peacekeeping, along with approaches that, while not new, are more recently added to the mainstream, such as civil resistance, transitional justice, and reconciliation. Negotiation is often used in diplomatic channels and between states in international bodies. In Chapter 3, Doleys and Hedeen examin...