{"id":1218,"date":"2022-03-31T19:23:35","date_gmt":"2022-03-31T18:23:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1218"},"modified":"2022-03-31T19:23:35","modified_gmt":"2022-03-31T18:23:35","slug":"why-is-conflict-resolution-not-as-recognised-as-it-should-be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/2022\/03\/why-is-conflict-resolution-not-as-recognised-as-it-should-be\/","title":{"rendered":"Why is conflict resolution not as recognised as it should be?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why do we expect politicians to be all-knowing multidisciplinary people? <\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This was asked on LinkedIn<\/a> by one of my fellow students at Lancaster University, someone I was very impressed with, Pilar Perez Brown<\/a>.\u00a0 The context was President Macron attempting mediation talks with Putin, despite not having the necessary academic background or training to do so.<\/p>\n

Mediators that comprehend the full political and strategic reality of the war are needed, people that know the best ways to guide this conflict and the relations in it. We need economists and strategists that can explain the depth of both sides’ demands, as well as many other specialists who are equally necessary despite not being politicians.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A discussion began.<\/p>\n

Conflict analysis and responses have changed enormously this past few decades.\u00a0 There are far more options and interventions available to prevent conflict, transform conflict and resolve conflict than most people are aware of.\u00a0 Somehow, we need to get conflict resolution recognised and given a much higher profile in diplomacy and international relations incident management.<\/p>\n

Exactly! Thank you for your insight. Indeed the nature of conflict has changed, and so the analysis of it has enhanced, therefore presenting more opportunities to transform and resolve conflicts, as you mention.
\nWhy do you think these processes are not as recognised as they should be?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think these are some factors:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The nature of the media<\/strong>.\u00a0 “If it bleeds, it leads<\/em>“.\u00a0 War is exciting and attracts readers \/ viewers so it is the lead story (to help sell advertising and raise revenue for the media).\u00a0 Peace is not exciting: there is no blood, no blown up cars, no crying children or other images to bring in the readers.\u00a0 So the media do not cover peace.\u00a0 Hence people do not know peace-making is happening all the time.\u00a0 This makes people assume war is the natural outcome of conflict.<\/li>\n
  2. The warring leaders do not want to look weak<\/strong>.\u00a0 All conflict ends by talking<\/span>.\u00a0 When powerful people who publicly say they hate each other come to meet and compromise, they do not want their supporters to know they are doing so.\u00a0 They think it makes them look like they are backing down and are weak.\u00a0 So negotiation talks are kept secret.\u00a0 Hence people do not get to hear about them.\u00a0 When the outcome is a peaceful solution, even then the conflict resolution talks are not mentioned.\u00a0 So people do not get to hear about how conflict resolution was involved and worked.<\/li>\n
  3. Sometimes powerful third parties are involved<\/strong> in the conflict who want their involvement kept secret<\/strong>.\u00a0 When it becomes politically or economically expedient to have this conflict resolved, it is not necessarily desirable to have the rest of the world see into the detail of the conflict.\u00a0 Revealing their involvement in the peace process could reveal their role in causing or feeding the conflict, or appear hypocritical because of what they are doing somewhere else.\u00a0 So they do not want any media coverage of the process of resolving the conflict.\u00a0 It just quietly fizzles out, without the rest of the world noticing a process was followed.<\/li>\n
  4. Revealing the presence of peace-making mediators makes them a target<\/strong> and can cause more conflict.\u00a0 Some people will not want the conflict resolved and may attack the mediators.\u00a0 Once mediation has been successful, knowing they were involved could make them vulnerable when they get involved in a later conflict.\u00a0 So their involvement is never revealed.\u00a0 This can be high profile individuals or specialist mediation agencies.\u00a0 Again, the conflict resolution process does not get talked about, this time for reasons of mediator personal security.<\/li>\n
  5. Historical precedent<\/strong>.\u00a0 One view of Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler was that it bought the rest of us a year to re-arm and prepare for the inevitable war.\u00a0 But he has gone down in history as a weak man and a failure.\u00a0 I suspect politicians are frightened of ending up in the history books for the same reason.\u00a0 However, if you fight a war and lose, you can still be recorded as the brave hero who refused to give in.\u00a0 It may seem better politically to go into a war and risk losing, then go into mediation talks that might fail and result in war anyway.\u00a0 So a guaranteed war is actually more attractive than the risk of one.\u00a0 Hence getting involved in peace talks risks losing one’s political credibility, so there is no interest, and no desire to have anyone know if they do so.<\/li>\n
  6. President Eisenhower warned of the military-industrial complex<\/strong> and how they have a vested financial interest to influence public policy toward fear of conflict.\u00a0 Governments and academia get added to this mix, depending on the theory.\u00a0 I cannot imagine NATO or Lockheed Martin lobbying to have their funds are reduced and diverted to investment into conflict resolution research and promotion.\u00a0 Mediation specialists have small budgets for advertising and little need to do so to the general public.\u00a0 The arms industry and the military and their activities get plenty of coverage for free.\u00a0 That normalises conflict for the public.<\/li>\n
  7. The immaturity of International Relations Theory<\/strong>.\u00a0 It is still based around the Realist \/ Liberalist \/ Marxist tripartite.\u00a0 The Realist theory is simplest, oldest and most embedded in our culture as “might is right<\/em>” and international relations being anarchic, amoral and all about survival.\u00a0 Liberal theory has had to be modified many times to try to match current affairs, making it look weak and reactive and so of little use as a theory.\u00a0 Marxist theory is a political non-starter.\u00a0 When people have studied international relations theory, it has typically been this academic view, one which is not about conflict resolution.\u00a0 Instead, it is about studying how war is just and inevitable, based on past experience.\u00a0 However, that does not cover what actual practitioners have been doing in reality, nor count the times a war was avoided.\u00a0 Huge progress has been made in understanding how people are motivated and how to achieve change painlessly and so that it sticks.\u00a0 These practitioner fields and their modern techniques are not taught so much as IR Theory in generalist politics degrees.<\/li>\n
  8. But I blame the media foremost.
    \nCreate a cease-fire in a war: it’s an editorial on page 7.
    \n    Slap someone on TV for mocking your partner’s medical complaint<\/a>: it’s front-page news and it fills social media (about 4,810,000,000 results on a Google search!)
    \nViolence increases sales and increases advertising revenue, conflict resolution does not.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Why do we expect politicians to be all-knowing multidisciplinary people? This was asked on LinkedIn by one of my fellow students at Lancaster University, someone I was very impressed with, Pilar Perez Brown.\u00a0 The context was President Macron attempting mediation … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[287,341,234,356,10,26,288,357,175,70,311,286,71,340,235],"tags":[290,343,236,358,109,123,289,359,14,74,315,285,75,342,237],"class_list":["post-1218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conflict-resolution","category-conflict-transformation","category-how-wars-happen","category-international-relations-theory","category-media","category-media-reaction","category-mediation","category-military-industrial-complex","category-peace-and-reconciliation","category-politicians","category-practitioners","category-techniques","category-the-media","category-training","category-why-wars-happen","tag-conflict-resolution","tag-conflict-transformation","tag-how-wars-happen","tag-international-relations-theory","tag-media","tag-media-reaction","tag-mediation","tag-military-industrial-complex","tag-peace-and-reconciliation","tag-politicians","tag-practitioners","tag-techniques","tag-the-media","tag-training","tag-why-wars-happen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1218"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1219,"href":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1218\/revisions\/1219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}