Conflict studies
Introduction
Since 1946 a record high number of conflicts at 59
The conflict landscape is becoming increasingly more complex with more conflict actors operating
within the same country
In 2023 there was an increase in battle deaths caused by 3 conflicts:
1. Tigray region in Ethiopia
2. The Russian invasion of Ukraine
3. Bombings of Gaza
World today developments
- Militarisation of Global Politics: use of force becoming a legitimate strategy
- New forms of political rule, democracy replaced by populism & authoritarianism
- 2011: rise in number of conflicts
- New trends
Current trends
- 2023: 59 conflicts involving a state and non-state actors in 34 countries
- 2023: 75 conflicts between non-state actors (2010: 32; 1991: 22)
- 2022: 277,000 direct victims (yet large part in limited number of cases)
- 2023: 92 countries involved in conflict outside territory
Map only where conflicts are happening, not which countries are involved
- Concentrated in Global South (Africa, M-E)
- No longer in low-income countries but rise also in Global North (Ukraine)
- Forced internally displaced people & refugees doubled over 10 years
1/5 countries involved in conflicts
Types of conflict
1. State-based conflict
= A contested incompatibility over government and/or territory, where at least one party is a state
and the use of armed force results in at least 25 battle-related deaths within a calendar year.
4 categories
- Colonial conflict
- Interstate conflict
- Civil conflict
- Internationalized civil conflict
1990: peak because of
- Cold war & accumulation of civil conflicts during
- Consequences after the break-up of the Soviet and Yugoslavia
2012: increase in the gap between a greater conflict per year and lesser number of countries
2015: increase because of the expansion of IS across Asia, Africa and the Middle East
,2023: peak in state-based conflict & internationalisation of civil conflicts
2. Non-state conflict
= The use of armed force between organized groups, none of which is the government of a state,
resulting in at least 25 battle-related deaths within a year.
- Formally organized groups: which are any non-governmental group of people who have
announced a name for their group and use armed force against another similarly organized
group
- Informally organized groups: composed of supporters of political parties
- Informally organized groups: often identify through a communal conflict, organized around a
common identity, such as religious, ethnic, national, tribal or clan lines
The rise in non-state conflicts is driven by a substantial increase in the number of conflicts
between formally organized groups.
- Brazil, Mexico: increase in violence between drug cartels
- Africa & Middle East: sharp decrease in non-state conflicts
3. One-sided violence
= The use of armed force against civilians by the government of a state or by a formally organized
group, which results in at least 25 battle-related deaths. Extrajudicial killings in custody are excluded.
Non-state groups perpetrated one-sided violence in several countries VB: DRC, transatlantic Islamist
groups
4. Battle-related deaths
= Fatalities caused by the warring parties that can be directly related to combat, including civilian
losses.
5. War
= A conflict or dyad which reaches at least 1,000 battle-related deaths in a calendar year
Cumulative number of battle-related deaths globally driven by high intensity conflicts, this case wars
but in 2023 significant decrease in number of battle-related deaths
New trends
1. Internationalization
Situation when there is no clear distinction between civil war & international conflict when mostly
always one other country, third party is involved
VB: Mali
Conflict consists between Touareg rebels in the north, jihadis that are wanting independence, and
the Malian government. Two international actors are present:
- ISIS & Al Qaeda
- Wagner group
It was Wagner task to task to track down rebels. Big attack from Touareg on Wagner group by using
drones, having technological expertise from Ukraine. Ukraine said that it gave the rebels information
and further assistance that enabled their victory against the Russian war criminals in the battle.
VB: Libia
,After the war 2 governments got shape. The GNA, interim government got recognized and supported
by UN while the other government gets support from other countries
2. Security becomes subcontracted to private military compagnies
Private military and security companies (PMSCs) are a new breed of security actor. They are active in
almost every conflict country & contains billions of dollars VB: SADAT Turkish version of Wagner
Challenges
- Military cooperation Is being ended in a lot of countries & UN peacekeeping forces are being
send out but being replaced by PMC’s
- Accountability: they often operate outside legal boundaries, don’t really care much about
human rights
- Loyalty might be challenged by financial objectives
- More PMC’s could mean escalating, prolonging or new conflicts to support their business
model
- What about the personnel and weapons when the conflict is over?
- State sovereignty: who monopolizes the use of violence?
VB: Syria
In 2018 Russian casualties were found after American bombs were dropped. These soldiers were not
there as official soldiers from Russia but from their private compagnie
3. Fragmented security landscape
In countries there are different zones of control that want to be in power, this bring us to different
challenges. It is very hard to claim a monopoly over the use of violence
VB: Africa
Protracted conflicts, new conflicts and the rise of terrorism have a major deterioration in its peace
and security outlook
4. Fake news
5. Identity politics
- Migration
- new communication technology
- Erosion of more inclusive political ideologies
Conflict studies as a field of research
Aim: understand & what strategies can be done to reduce conflict & turn it into something non-
violent. Understand that some researchers try to bring peace, so to study conflict is to bring peace
and reduce conflict.
A study that came out of what has happened in the world
Origins
1. Hugo Grotius wrote On the Law of War and Peace.
2. World wars
Following WW I mass killings and huge economic loss triggered an innovative growth of pacifism
among various social, political, and economic peace movement organizations. The objective of these
, movements was to generate an anti-war sentiment and encourage the peaceful conduct of national
and international relations
1919: the start of International Relations as a discipline followed by social psychology, natural
scientists etc. to promote peace through research, develop new perspectives on peace and conflict,
and explore the causes and consequences of various forms of conflict
Addressing conflict with nonviolent approaches, the birth of peace and conflict studies with its focus
on arms race, revolutions, wars, peacemaking
- peace as a basic or minimum condition for cooperation
- conflict as the initial level of the cause of war and violence.
3. 1949: Geneva convention establishing rules on limiting the barbarity of war
4. Cold war Period
The origins of peace and conflict studies are often traced to this period. There was a focus on
programs to the prevention of future wars and promotion of culture of peace through reconciliation
Understanding violent conflict on three levels: domestic, interstate, and national and intrastate. The
Cold War significantly shaped conflict studies, with a focus on nuclear threat, deterrence, and
preventing total war between the US and USSR. Researchers investigated conflicts like the Cuban
Missile Crisis and Vietnam War, introducing a new dimension to the field.
Key figures included Johan Galtung, Kenneth Boulding, and John Burton, who contributed concepts
like structural violence and peace definitions. The Research Exchange movement for the prevention
of war (1952) - Boulding, Rapoport, Richardson
Conflict studies focus on the definition, analyses, and prescriptive thinking about the nature of
persistent conflicts and to want to understand violent conflict on three levels: domestic, interstate
and national or intrastate
But there was the need to widen the scope from focus on nuclear threat to liberation struggles,
reconciliation, larger social conflict. New forms of peace work were introduced: civil rights
movement, feminist movement, anti-war movements – non-violent conflict resolution as scope
5. Post-cold war
Fall of Berlin Wall (1989) and breakup of USSR (1991)
There was a short-lived post-cold war optimism: rise of new intra-state and transnational conflicts
and wars. The field is in crisis – end of cold war and of history
The ideological conflicts of the Cold War would be replaced by the post-Cold War conflicts of
ethnicity, religion, and nationalism, and these would be the dominating factors in the post-Cold War
international relations.
In the period between 1989-1992 there were 82 armed conflicts making conflict studies go from
inter- to intra-conflict, to a focus on the Global South
New set of tools post-cold war
- How to prevent conflict: much cheaper to prevent than resolve BUT not so good at it
- Not very successful interfering by UN
What do we do about these problems?
Introduction
Since 1946 a record high number of conflicts at 59
The conflict landscape is becoming increasingly more complex with more conflict actors operating
within the same country
In 2023 there was an increase in battle deaths caused by 3 conflicts:
1. Tigray region in Ethiopia
2. The Russian invasion of Ukraine
3. Bombings of Gaza
World today developments
- Militarisation of Global Politics: use of force becoming a legitimate strategy
- New forms of political rule, democracy replaced by populism & authoritarianism
- 2011: rise in number of conflicts
- New trends
Current trends
- 2023: 59 conflicts involving a state and non-state actors in 34 countries
- 2023: 75 conflicts between non-state actors (2010: 32; 1991: 22)
- 2022: 277,000 direct victims (yet large part in limited number of cases)
- 2023: 92 countries involved in conflict outside territory
Map only where conflicts are happening, not which countries are involved
- Concentrated in Global South (Africa, M-E)
- No longer in low-income countries but rise also in Global North (Ukraine)
- Forced internally displaced people & refugees doubled over 10 years
1/5 countries involved in conflicts
Types of conflict
1. State-based conflict
= A contested incompatibility over government and/or territory, where at least one party is a state
and the use of armed force results in at least 25 battle-related deaths within a calendar year.
4 categories
- Colonial conflict
- Interstate conflict
- Civil conflict
- Internationalized civil conflict
1990: peak because of
- Cold war & accumulation of civil conflicts during
- Consequences after the break-up of the Soviet and Yugoslavia
2012: increase in the gap between a greater conflict per year and lesser number of countries
2015: increase because of the expansion of IS across Asia, Africa and the Middle East
,2023: peak in state-based conflict & internationalisation of civil conflicts
2. Non-state conflict
= The use of armed force between organized groups, none of which is the government of a state,
resulting in at least 25 battle-related deaths within a year.
- Formally organized groups: which are any non-governmental group of people who have
announced a name for their group and use armed force against another similarly organized
group
- Informally organized groups: composed of supporters of political parties
- Informally organized groups: often identify through a communal conflict, organized around a
common identity, such as religious, ethnic, national, tribal or clan lines
The rise in non-state conflicts is driven by a substantial increase in the number of conflicts
between formally organized groups.
- Brazil, Mexico: increase in violence between drug cartels
- Africa & Middle East: sharp decrease in non-state conflicts
3. One-sided violence
= The use of armed force against civilians by the government of a state or by a formally organized
group, which results in at least 25 battle-related deaths. Extrajudicial killings in custody are excluded.
Non-state groups perpetrated one-sided violence in several countries VB: DRC, transatlantic Islamist
groups
4. Battle-related deaths
= Fatalities caused by the warring parties that can be directly related to combat, including civilian
losses.
5. War
= A conflict or dyad which reaches at least 1,000 battle-related deaths in a calendar year
Cumulative number of battle-related deaths globally driven by high intensity conflicts, this case wars
but in 2023 significant decrease in number of battle-related deaths
New trends
1. Internationalization
Situation when there is no clear distinction between civil war & international conflict when mostly
always one other country, third party is involved
VB: Mali
Conflict consists between Touareg rebels in the north, jihadis that are wanting independence, and
the Malian government. Two international actors are present:
- ISIS & Al Qaeda
- Wagner group
It was Wagner task to task to track down rebels. Big attack from Touareg on Wagner group by using
drones, having technological expertise from Ukraine. Ukraine said that it gave the rebels information
and further assistance that enabled their victory against the Russian war criminals in the battle.
VB: Libia
,After the war 2 governments got shape. The GNA, interim government got recognized and supported
by UN while the other government gets support from other countries
2. Security becomes subcontracted to private military compagnies
Private military and security companies (PMSCs) are a new breed of security actor. They are active in
almost every conflict country & contains billions of dollars VB: SADAT Turkish version of Wagner
Challenges
- Military cooperation Is being ended in a lot of countries & UN peacekeeping forces are being
send out but being replaced by PMC’s
- Accountability: they often operate outside legal boundaries, don’t really care much about
human rights
- Loyalty might be challenged by financial objectives
- More PMC’s could mean escalating, prolonging or new conflicts to support their business
model
- What about the personnel and weapons when the conflict is over?
- State sovereignty: who monopolizes the use of violence?
VB: Syria
In 2018 Russian casualties were found after American bombs were dropped. These soldiers were not
there as official soldiers from Russia but from their private compagnie
3. Fragmented security landscape
In countries there are different zones of control that want to be in power, this bring us to different
challenges. It is very hard to claim a monopoly over the use of violence
VB: Africa
Protracted conflicts, new conflicts and the rise of terrorism have a major deterioration in its peace
and security outlook
4. Fake news
5. Identity politics
- Migration
- new communication technology
- Erosion of more inclusive political ideologies
Conflict studies as a field of research
Aim: understand & what strategies can be done to reduce conflict & turn it into something non-
violent. Understand that some researchers try to bring peace, so to study conflict is to bring peace
and reduce conflict.
A study that came out of what has happened in the world
Origins
1. Hugo Grotius wrote On the Law of War and Peace.
2. World wars
Following WW I mass killings and huge economic loss triggered an innovative growth of pacifism
among various social, political, and economic peace movement organizations. The objective of these
, movements was to generate an anti-war sentiment and encourage the peaceful conduct of national
and international relations
1919: the start of International Relations as a discipline followed by social psychology, natural
scientists etc. to promote peace through research, develop new perspectives on peace and conflict,
and explore the causes and consequences of various forms of conflict
Addressing conflict with nonviolent approaches, the birth of peace and conflict studies with its focus
on arms race, revolutions, wars, peacemaking
- peace as a basic or minimum condition for cooperation
- conflict as the initial level of the cause of war and violence.
3. 1949: Geneva convention establishing rules on limiting the barbarity of war
4. Cold war Period
The origins of peace and conflict studies are often traced to this period. There was a focus on
programs to the prevention of future wars and promotion of culture of peace through reconciliation
Understanding violent conflict on three levels: domestic, interstate, and national and intrastate. The
Cold War significantly shaped conflict studies, with a focus on nuclear threat, deterrence, and
preventing total war between the US and USSR. Researchers investigated conflicts like the Cuban
Missile Crisis and Vietnam War, introducing a new dimension to the field.
Key figures included Johan Galtung, Kenneth Boulding, and John Burton, who contributed concepts
like structural violence and peace definitions. The Research Exchange movement for the prevention
of war (1952) - Boulding, Rapoport, Richardson
Conflict studies focus on the definition, analyses, and prescriptive thinking about the nature of
persistent conflicts and to want to understand violent conflict on three levels: domestic, interstate
and national or intrastate
But there was the need to widen the scope from focus on nuclear threat to liberation struggles,
reconciliation, larger social conflict. New forms of peace work were introduced: civil rights
movement, feminist movement, anti-war movements – non-violent conflict resolution as scope
5. Post-cold war
Fall of Berlin Wall (1989) and breakup of USSR (1991)
There was a short-lived post-cold war optimism: rise of new intra-state and transnational conflicts
and wars. The field is in crisis – end of cold war and of history
The ideological conflicts of the Cold War would be replaced by the post-Cold War conflicts of
ethnicity, religion, and nationalism, and these would be the dominating factors in the post-Cold War
international relations.
In the period between 1989-1992 there were 82 armed conflicts making conflict studies go from
inter- to intra-conflict, to a focus on the Global South
New set of tools post-cold war
- How to prevent conflict: much cheaper to prevent than resolve BUT not so good at it
- Not very successful interfering by UN
What do we do about these problems?
