2. Read the text again. Structure the information in the form of a mind map. Use your mind map to summarise the text.

* Appendix 1 p. 145

Unit 6. Conflict resolution in a changing world

1. Read the text and answer the questions.

1. What are the essential features of modern era?

2. How have conflict resolution and peace-making practices changed with the time?

3. What does the modern term ‘international conflict’ imply?

4. What are the main goals of conflict resolution in a changing world?

The world has transformed rapidly in the decade since the end of the Cold War. An old system is gone and, although it is easy to identify what has changed, it is not yet clear that a new system has taken its place. Old patterns have come unstuck, and if new patterns are emerging, it is still too soon to define them clearly. The list of potentially epoch-making changes is familiar by now: the end of era of bipolarity, a new wave of democratisation, increasing globalisation of information and economic power, more frequent efforts at international coordination of security policy, a rash of sometimes-violent expressions of claims to rights based on cultural identity, and a redefinition of sovereignty that imposes on states new responsibilities to their citizens and the world community.

These transformations are changing much in the world, including, it seems, the shape of organised violence and the ways in which governments and others try to set the limits. One indication of change is the noteworthy decrease in the frequency and death toll of international wars in the 1990s. Subnational ethnic and religious conflicts, however, have been so intense that the first post-Cold War decade was marked by enough deadly lower-intensity conflicts to make it the bloodiest since the advent of nuclear weapons. It is still too soon to tell whether this shift in the most lethal type of warfare is a lasting change: the continued presence of contested borders between military potent states - in Korea, Kashmir, Taiwan, and the Middle East - gives reason to postpone judgment. It seems likely, though, that efforts to prevent outbreaks in such hot spots will take different forms in the changed international situation.

A potentially revolutionary change in world politics has been a de facto redefinition of “international conflict”. International conflict still includes the old-fashioned war, a violent confrontation between nation states acting through their own armed forces or proxies with at least one state fighting outside its borders. But now some conflicts are treated threats to international peace and security even if two states are not fighting. Particularly when internal conflicts involve violations of universal norms such as self-determination, human rights, or democratic governance, concerted international actions - including the threat or use of force - are being taken to prevent, conclude, or resolve them just as they sometimes have been for old-fashioned wars. In this sense some conflicts within a country’s borders are being treated as international.

How important are such recent development? In particular, do they make any important difference in how the actors on the world scene should deal with international conflicts? Do the tools developed for managing international conflicts under the old world system still apply? Are they best applied in new ways or by new entities? Are there new tools that are more appropriate for the new conditions? How do the old and new tools relate to each other?

The term conflict resolution is broadly referred to efforts to prevent or mitigate violence resulting from intergroup or interstate conflict, as well as efforts to reduce the underlying disagreements. Presumably, the conflict between social groups is an inevitably recurring fact of life and the goal of conflict resolution is to keep conflicts channeled within a set of agreed norms that foster peaceful discussion of differences, proscribe violence as a means of setting disputes, and establish rules for the limited kinds of violence that are condoned (e.g., as punishment for violations of codes of criminal conduct).

The new world conditions are validating some past conflict resolution practices that can now be more precisely defined and conceptualised and are bringing to prominence some techniques that had not been taken very seriously by diplomatic practitioners in the recent past.

Committee on international Conflict resolution