War is as pervasive as the wish for peace is universal. Hostilities have already resumed in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and are yet to cease in Ukraine. Indeed around half of all peace agreements collapse within five years. The use of force in inter-group relations has preoccupied the minds of rulers and scholars alike since time immemorial. But so too have some of the most charismatic and influential personalities in human history reflected on the renunciation of force and the possibility of eliminating it from human relationships. Numerous efforts were made in the 20th century to place increasing normative, legislative and operational fetters on the right of states to go to war. Yet the last century turned out to be the most murderous in human history. What if warfare is the normal condition of human society, and peace the exception that requires explanation? This century has witnessed the return of large-scale land warfare in the heart of Europe in Ukraine, the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust, the biggest spike in geopolitical tensions in decades and the relentless rise of China as a modern military power while still ruled by its communist party. Of course, every conflict is unique and has its own distinctive attributes and dynamics. In addition, though, there are many factors that tilt the balance towards their perpetuation.
Sadly, it takes two to make peace, but only one to keep conflicts going. Thus North Korea cannot afford to make peace for fear of regime identity being completely submerged in a unified Korea. But it can’t afford to go to war, knowing that it would lose. So its policy is to continue the conflict by maintaining tension at a level short of provoking war. The same comments apply to Pakistan vis-à-vis India. Most long-lived conflicts develop an equilibrium and a set of vested interests which militate against efforts at finding peaceful solutions. In Kashmir, for example, a peaceful resolution of another possible nuclear flashpoint would diminish the role of the military in Pakistani politics and destroy the privileged position that it has enjoyed for all of Pakistan’s history. On the Indian side, the dispute with Pakistan is a potent political mobilisation force for the ruling BJP party. Kashmir is also a good example of competitive nationalisms, where the secular nationalism of India collides with the religious nationalism of Pakistan and the ethnic nationalism of Kashmiris. Conflicts can also be kept alive through appeals to kinship loyalties (and pocketbooks) of expatriate groups around the world like Irish Catholics, Sri Lankan Tamils and Indian Sikhs.
Sometimes the vested interest is financial. Examples of the profitable political economy of war include the so-called conflict diamonds in Angola and Sierra Leone. Aspects of global ‘uncivil society’ (for example those involved in trafficking women, arms and drugs, mercenaries and laundering money) may also do very nicely out of protracted conflicts, thank you very much. Wars may start over control of lucrative resources or they may be rooted in group grievances but still end up being sustained by the greed of those who discover that profits can be made from fighting. Many of Africa’s post-Cold War conflicts fell into the pattern of greed and grievance. International conflict resolution modalities are designed for inter-state warfare. Yet most armed conflicts in recent times have been internal, albeit some with international dimensions. Is Taiwan – the most likely potential warzone in East Asia – a purely internal affair because it’s a province of China as claimed by Beijing? Have other countries kept the tensions in check or prolonged the conflict by going along with China’s pretend claims? It is also a particularly acute dilemma for the UN, as China is a permanent member of the Security Council – also a relevant consideration for Russia vis-à-vis Ukraine. Often, excluded and oppressed groups can launch wars of state formation based in their separate sense of national identity: Kosovars in Serbia, Tamils in Sri Lanka, Timorese in Indonesia. Many countries experienced wars of national liberation from colonial rule followed by wars of national debilitation of artificially constructed states.
Conflicts can be sustained by multiple contradictory logics, starting with peace and justice. Peace is forward-looking, problem-solving and integrative, requiring reconciliation between past enemies within an all-inclusive political community. Justice is backward-looking, finger-pointing and retributive, requiring trial and punishment of the perpetrators of past crimes. The logic of power is inconsistent with that of justice. Peace in Ukraine or the Middle East cannot be grasped without bending to the military superiority of Russia and Israel. But no peace agreement will last if it is fundamentally unjust to any substantial population group. The logic of negotiation tends to be contradictory. The stronger see no reason to compromise. The weaker fear that negotiations, if not delayed until parity or superiority has been attained, will force them into a humiliating sell-out of their cause. The logics of steadfast resolution and negotiated resolution are often at odds, as we are seeing with Trump’s efforts to broker a peace in Ukraine. Inflamed national passions fight against any negotiated compromise: principles are neither negotiable nor for sale and the aggressor must never be rewarded. Describing a war as values-based rather than in pursuit of national interests further circumscribes the scope for negotiations and compromise. The logics of the past and future can collide. If they are to enjoy peaceful coexistence, communities need to jettison the inherited baggage of historical hatreds. But competing myths are important for the social construction of political identity and history is a fiercely contested terrain. How can one be a Jew today without internalising the collective consciousness of the Holocaust? Palestinian refugees view efforts to refuse them the right to repatriation as an attempt to deny their collective history and identity.
History is also full of examples of missed opportunities. Yasser Arafat missed his moment at Camp David in 2000. Yet politically, he simply could not have sold that package to the Palestinian people and his fellow Arabs at that time. Could the same peace agreements have been signed over Cambodia and Northern Ireland five or 10 years earlier, or did we have to wait in both cases for mutual exhaustion in a stalemated conflict? It seems likely that the deal now available to Ukraine will be worse than what was within their grasp in the negotiations in March to April 2022: a withdrawal by Russia to pre-invasion borders if Ukraine agreed not to join NATO. Several officials from different countries have said that Western powers pressured Kyiv to scuttle the deal, including Boris Johnson during a visit to Kyiv in April 2022. This was confirmed by David Arahamiya, head of the Ukrainian delegation in the 2022 talks, in an interview on November 24th 2023. Conversely and more often, agreements are imposed by external actors against the will of one or both local warring parties. As soon as circumstances change, war resumes.
Ramesh Thakur is a former United Nations Assistant Secretary-General and Emeritus Professor in the Crawford School of Public Policy, the Australian National University. This article was first published in Spectator Australia.
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