Comprehensive Study Notes on Conflict Theory, Typologies, and Just War
Foundations and Dynamics of Conflict
Definition of Conflict: Conflict is defined as a situation in which two or more actors perceive that they have mutually incompatible goals, values, or set objectives, and actively attempt to impose these objectives on one another. This imposition forces the opposing party to abandon their own goals in favor of the aggressor's. Merely having different values, opinions, or goals among individuals or groups does not constitute a conflict unless there is a perceived incompatibility and an active attempt at imposition.
Role of Perceptions: Conflict is heavily driven by perception. Actors often perceive their goals as mutually exclusive even when constructive dialogue could reveal a middle ground.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict Example: Ukraine perceives Russia as attempting to subdue its sovereignty. Conversely, Russia perceives Ukraine's desire to integrate with the European Union (EU) as an attempt to sever ties with Russia, which Russia interprets as an indirect imposition by the EU onto Russian security interests.
Functions and Necessity of Conflict: Conflict is an inevitable, permanent feature of human society. Society cannot exist completely devoid of conflict because human beings possess differing sets of values that naturally change over time.
Constructive Potential: In personal or societal relationships, conflict serves as an opportunity for development and improvement when approached constructively, rather than being avoided at all costs.
Historical Side Effects: While major conflicts and wars have historically yielded secondary benefits—such as rapid advancements in medicine, technology, and materials—these side effects do not morally justify the initiation of war.
The Conflict Triangle and Structural Complexity
The Conflict Triangle: Conflict consists of three interrelated components that continuously influence one another:
Conflict Situation (Incompatibility): The core issue or dispute. The nature and origin of a conflict situation are perceived radically differently by opposing sides (e.g., Ukraine vs. Russia, Hamas vs. Israel, or warring factions in Sudan).
Conflict Attitudes: The psychological elements, including prejudices, stereotypes, hatred, anger, frustration, and moral justifications for violence. Attitudes can be easily manipulated or created through media, social networks, artificial intelligence, peer pressure, or direct physical acts.
Examples: Nazi Germany systematically dehumanized the Jewish population to create societal conflict attitudes that justified total exclusion and violence. Similar processes of vilifying specific societal groups occur across modern political landscapes.
Conflict Behavior: The actions taken by actors in a conflict. These encompass both violent behaviors (bombing, kidnapping, physical assault) and nonviolent behaviors (hunger strikes, screaming/verbal intimidation, self-immolation, or political actions aimed at forcing change).
The Conflict Complex: As a conflict persists over time, its scope naturally expands.
Issue Proliferation: Conflicts frequently begin over a single, minor issue (e.g., dissatisfaction with pension reform). If unaddressed, grievances accumulate (e.g., demands for government resignation).
Actor Proliferation: Additional actors enter the dispute, each bringing new grievances to the "conflict pie." This transforms a simple disagreement into a highly complex, multi-actor downward spiral that becomes exponentially harder to resolve.
Neutrality in Conflict Analysis: Analyzing conflict requires setting aside personal moral judgments regarding absolute "right and wrong" or objective "truth." Analysts and mediators must mentally step into the shoes of each participating actor to comprehend their internal motivations and rationales without pre-judging them.
Stages of Conflict Development
Incipient Conflict: A stage where an objective conflict situation or incompatibility exists, but the actors involved are completely unaware of it. Because there is no awareness, no conflict attitudes or behaviors have developed.
Latent Conflict: A stage where actors are fully aware of the conflict situation () and have developed internal grievances or prejudices (), but no outward conflict action () is taken.
Suppression Mechanisms: Behavior is often suppressed due to power imbalances, fear of consequences, or external enforcement.
Historical Example: During the Cold War, underlying ethnic and regional conflicts were kept latent under the strict control of the opposing superpowers. Following the 1990 dissolution of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, these suppressed latent conflicts erupted into open, manifest conflicts.
Institutional Example: Students harboring intense grievances against an instructor may suppress conflict behavior until after final grades are submitted.
Manifest Conflict: The fully developed stage of conflict where all three vertices of the Conflict Triangle—Situation, Attitudes, and Behavior—are actively present and observable.
Typologies and Evolution of Modern Warfare
Conflict Typologies by Actors:
Interstate Conflict: Direct violent conflict between two or more sovereign states.
Intrastate Conflict: Violent conflict occurring within the borders of a single state between the government and non-state actors (e.g., rebel groups or insurgencies).
Internationalized Intrastate Conflict: An intrastate conflict in which external secondary actors (foreign states or alliances) intervene. They participate due to resource access, military alliances, trade arrangements, or foreign policy stakes. Virtually all modern intrastate conflicts (including those in Ukraine and Gaza) are internationalized.
Non-State Conflict: Direct violent conflict between non-state entities where the state government is not an active participant (e.g., rival drug cartels or organized crime networks fighting in Colombia). If the state military or police intervene, it reclassifies as an intrastate conflict.
Shift in Casualty Demographics: The nature of violence and warfare has shifted dramatically over the last century regarding who suffers casualties:
World War I: of casualties were military personnel; were civilians.
World War II: of casualties were military personnel; were civilians.
Modern Conflicts: of casualties are civilians; only are military combatants. In several modern African conflicts, individuals are statistically safer inside an armed group than living as civilians.
Characteristics of Contemporary Conflicts:
Child Soldiers: Armed groups systematically recruit children to project power and intimidation within local communities.
Arms Proliferation & Security Privatization: Weak or fragile states lead to the proliferation of small arms and the outsourcing of military functions to Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs).
Examples of PMSCs: Entities like Blackwater (prominent in the Iraq conflict) and the Wagner Group operate as private, corporate actors. They are hired by states to guard oil pipelines, infrastructure, and leaders, operating largely outside the governance of international humanitarian law.
Rise of Anocracy: Anocracy defines a regime type that is neither fully autocratic nor fully democratic, but trapped in between. These regimes maintain superficial democratic processes (such as holding elections) alongside autocratic practices. Global trends show a stagnation in liberal democracies and a high prevalence of anocracies.
Defining and Measuring War
Standard Definition of War: A direct, violent conflict between two or more organized entities, where at least one of the primary entities is a sovereign state.
Traditional Quantitative Thresholds: Historically, quantitative conflict databases categorized a conflict as a "war" only if it resulted in at least deaths per year, strictly calculated as Battlefield-Related Deaths (BRDs).
Flaws in Measuring Conflict Intensity:
Inadequacy of BRDs: Because of modern conflict casualties are non-combatant civilians, relying solely on battlefield combat deaths severely undercounts actual mortality.
Conflict-Related Deaths: Comprehensive statistics must account for indirect deaths caused by landmines, destruction of agricultural livelihoods leading to starvation, collapse of healthcare infrastructure preventing medical treatment, and conflict-induced suicides among affected populations.
Moral, Legal, and Philosophical Frameworks of War
Self-Defense Frameworks: The UN Charter explicitly recognizes the inherent right of individual and collective self-defense. However, defining the exact threshold where self-defense begins is difficult.
Legal Constraints: Under legal systems such as Swedish law, self-defense is justifiable only while an active, immediate threat exists. Using force beyond the duration or intensity of the threat constitutes a criminal offense.
Empirical Reality of Escalation: During the Syrian Revolution, peaceful civilian protesters initially demanded reform without arms. After three years of continuous regime violence, torture, and denial of education and resources, citizens systematically took up arms, concluding that violent resistance was preferable to passive destruction.
Just War Theory (Jus ad Bellum and Jus in Bello): Developed in the century within Catholic canon law and scholastic tradition (e.g., St. Thomas Aquinas), Just War Theory establishes ethical criteria for force:
Jus ad Bellum (Law to Go to War): The moral justification for entering war. Key criteria include Just Cause, Legitimate Authority (in modern international law, primarily the UN Security Council), Right Intention, Last Resort, and Macro-Proportionality.
Jus in Bello (Law in War): Rules governing conduct during warfare. Key criteria include Discrimination/Distinction (prohibiting direct targeting of non-combatants and condemning the use of human shields) and Micro-Proportionality in military strikes.
Militaristic and Social Darwinist Philosophies:
Historically, certain militarist thinkers (notably in -century Germany) argued that war is inherently beneficial to human society, claiming it cleanses "weakened" generations and instills a true appreciation of life.
These views improperly applied biological Social Darwinism () to international relations, viewing war as a natural biological mechanism to purge weak states from the global order.
Democratic Peace Theory:
Core Hypothesis: Democratic states rarely, if ever, go to war with one another.
Caveat: Democracies frequently go to war against non-democratic states, often justifying conflict as an effort to spread democracy.
Instability of Democratic Regimes: Democracies are susceptible to internal decay. As demonstrated by Weimar Germany, a democratic system can democratically elect autocratic leadership that subsequently dismantles democratic institutions from within.