Conflict and International

Disputes and Contemporary

Security Systems

Presented by Vanessa Tinker, PhD

Week 1
Introductions
Overview of presentation
Part I – Syllabus and course overview
Part II – Context the field of Conflict Resolution emerged
Review Syllabus
• Note Modification – Journaling has been removed and
added weight given to in-class presentations and final
group paper (25% and 35% respectively)
“Never Again”
Post-WWII World Order – ‘Prevent
War’
• 1945 UN established to ‘save succeeding generations from the
scourge of war’
• Charter based on principle of collective security and cooperation
between permanent members of the Security Council to prevent
armed conflict (outlined in Chapter VII).
• Chapter VII – discusses powers of Security Council, including:
• to "determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of
the peace, or act of aggression"
• to take military and nonmilitary action to "restore
international peace and security".
• The UN Charter’s commitment to create and maintain peace through
economic, social, or political agreements between states =
foundation of the UN
Underdeveloped areas of UN
Charter
• How to attain a just and sustainable peace within
member states
• How to maintain peace once a conflict broke out (UN
Chart Article 1, para. 1)
• Preamble reaffirms need to uphold fundamental
human rights and promotion of ‘social progress and
better standards of life in the larger freedom’
• Little prescriptions for the parameters of durable peace in a
state of transition (UN Charter, Preamble)
• Efforts underway since to discern what peace means
and to develop strategies to sustain it.
Cold War – ‘Contain Conflicts’
• Tensions of the Cold War from 1947 onwards made enacting
chapter VII of the charter inoperable (requires unanimity in SC)
• Peacekeeping, not mentioned in UN Charter, invented as pragmatic
way to get around veto in SC so UN could prevent or contain
conflicts
• During the Cold War, superpowers never directly engaged in
armed conflict within their own territories and spheres of influence
• Bipolar context had two effects:
• 1. suppressed latent conflicts within the superpowers’
sphere of influence (e.g. Eastern Europe and Central Asia);
• 2. exacerbated conflicts in the global South (e.g. Horn of Africa
and Central America)
• Conflicts fought primarily in territories of the periphery –the “
global South” (e.g. Africa, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Latin
America).
• The “global North” – namely Europe and North America in Cold War
remained “cold”
• Wars fought in fragile territories were basic human needs not met
and money spent on military expenditures rather than health and
education.
• 95% of arms exports came from the global North, while imports
of weapons moved to hot spots in the global “South” explaining
why these countries were flooded with weapons from superpowers at
the end of the Cold War
Rise of Intrastate
Conflicts 1990s

• Initial optimism ‘end of

history’ post-Cold War
world order dashed when
a series of intrastate/civil
wars broke out
• Pictured Left clockwise:
Rwanda genocide,
Somalia famine, North
Ireland (The Troubles),
Bosnia’s ethnic cleansing
Context Peacebuilding Emerged
• Intra-state conflicts within a member state of the system by
forces of the regime against an insurgent group/s (e.g.
Cambodia, Somalia, Rwanda, Northern Ireland, Sierra Leone, Sri
Lanka, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Libya, Syria to name just a few)
o governance and pursuit of autonomy or self-government for certain regions or
groups (e.g. redefinition of territory, state formation or control of the state)
o “identity” conflicts –group and community rights, not just individual human rights
o Breakdown of governance and political system
o Strategies include torture, mass rape, ethnic/ social cleansing, genocide
• 90% of the causalities have been civilians, in particular women, elderly and children/youth
• Intrastate conflicts often lead to refugee crisis and internally displaced persons
• Understood by the SC and GA objectives of peace, development, human rights and justice
are interdependent of each other i.e. no sustainable peace without human rights and justice,
and no human rights and justice without peace.
 Post-Cold Wars = ‘Resolve
Conflicts’
• Intra-state conflicts characterized as ‘new wars’ (Kaldor 2013) or ‘wars of a third kind’
• Actors – (no longer only state actors, also non-state actors)
• political goals (no longer foreign policy interests of states but the consolidation of new
forms of power based on ethnic homogeneity);
• ideologies (no longer confined to democracy, fascism, or socialism, but also include
tribalism and communalist identity politics;
• forms of mobilization (no longer conscription or appeals to patriotism, but now include
fear, corruption, religion, magic and the media);
• external support(no longer superpowers or ex-colonial powers, but diaspora, foreign
mercenaries, criminal mafia, regional powers);
• mode of warfare (no longer formal and organized campaigns with demarcated front lines,
bases and heavy weapons, but fragmented and dispersed, involving paramilitary and
criminal groups, child soldiers, light weapons, and the use of atrocity, famine, rape
and siege);
• war economy (no longer funded by taxation and generated by state mobilization, but
sustained by outside emergency assistance and the parallel economy, including
unofficial export of timber and precious metals, drug-trafficking, criminal rackets, plunder
(Ramsbotham et al 2012: 97-98)
UN Agenda for Peace 1992
• Provide analysis and recommendations to strengthen and improve UN
response to conflicts within the framework outlined in the UN
Charter for preventive diplomacy, peacemaking, and peacekeeping
• Addresses Changes in the international context requiring revision and
update of UN responses
• End of Cold War, bipolar world order, ideological divide
• UN original ambitions could now be pursued
• Addresses the contradictory trends at the regional and global level
• collapse of authoritarian regimes, decolonization
• rise of nationalism and sovereignty demands threating state cohesion via
ethnic, religious, social, cultural or linguistic divisions
• new forms of discrimination, exclusion and acts of terrorism to undermine
evolution and change through democratic means (para. 12)
UN’s Preventative Diplomacy:
Strategies to • Preventive diplomacy seeks to resolve disputes before
violence breaks out;
Maintain • To limit the spread of the latter when they occur.
Peace and • (photo: UN Security Council, plus Germany came to
agreement about Iran‘s nuclear program)
Security
Peacemakin
g

• Resolve issues when

conflicts erupt
• Bring hostile parties
to agreement
(Egyptian President Anwar
Sadat (L), former President
Jimmy Carter (M), Prime
Minister of Israel
Menachem, after signing a
peace treaty March 26,
1979)
Peacekeepin
g

• Preserve peace once

cease-fire agreed on &
implement PA
• United Nations blue
helmets deployed with
consent of all involved
parties – military, police,
civilians
• Deployment possible both
the prevention of
conflict and the making
of peace
 Peacebuilding
• Identify and support
structures to strengthen
and solidify peace to avoid a
relapse into conflict i.e. rebuild
institutions, infrastructure,
develop bonds between waring
factions
• Prevent recurrence of
violence among nations and
peoples
• Address deepest root
causes of conflict i.e.
economic despair, social
injustice, political oppression
• Long-term intervention
• (Mostar bridge after the war
and now)
Evolution of
Peacebuildin
g
• Initially post-
conflict support of
peace accords and
the rebuilding of
war-torn societies
• Now includes full
array of processes,
approaches and
stages needed to
transform conflict
towards more
sustainable peaceful
relationships
• Inclusion of
marginalized voices
at the
local/grassroots
• For the remainder of this course we will study these
strategies in greater detail and discuss how they
address contemporary global challenges.
• We will also identify and discuss international
contemporary security systems that are involved in
employing these strategies.