Military Force, Wars,

Terrorism & Conflicts

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Conflict – A Definition
A conflict is a struggle or opposition between two or
more parties.
An international conflict is referred to conflicts
between different nation-states (traditional def.) and
conflicts between people, organizations, non-state
actors in the same or in different nation-states
(contemporary def.).

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Types of International Conflicts
Conflicts of Ideas Territorial Disputes
Nationalism Conflict of Governments
Ethnic Conflict Economic Conflicts
Genocide
Religious Conflict
Ideological Conflict

Conflicts of Interests
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Conflicts of Ideas- Nationalism
A nation is a population that shares an identity, usually including a
language and culture.
Self-determination implies that people who identify as a nation
should have the right to form a state and exercise sovereignty over
their affairs.
Sovereignty means noninterference in other states’ internal affairs.
Self determination is generally secondary to sovereignty and
territorial integrity.
When the borders of (perceived) nations do not match those
of states, conflicts almost inevitably arise.
Examples  Israel-Palestine, India-Pakistan, Sudan, entire Balkans

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Conflicts of Ideas- Ethnic Conflict
Ethnic groups are large groups of people who share
ancestral, language, cultural, or religious ties and a common
identity.
There are two aspects of ethnic conflict: Control over

Control over government

or territory
independence movements, claims to redraw borders etc. e.g.
Kurds  Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Syria.
Borders may divide ethnic groups, This might cause
secessionist actions, claims to redraw borders, territorial
disputes between two countries  Turkmens in Iraq and
Turkey, Albanians in Kosovo and Serbia.
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Conflicts of Ideas- Ethnic Conflict
Why do different ethnic groups do not like each
other often?
 Long standing historical conflicts over specific
territories or natural resources
 One ethnic group’s economic exploitation or political

Hatred
domination of another
 Social psychology – group identity (ethnocentrism is
the tendency to see one’s own group in favorable
terms and an out-group in unfavorable terms)
Hatred cause civil wars, genocide and sometimes
international wars
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Conflicts of Ideas- Genocide
 Genocide systematic extermination of ethnic or religious groups
in whole or in part. Especially scapegoats or political rivals
 Usually governments use genocide but there are cases some
ethnic groups systematically exterminate others in civil wars or
during times of conflicts.
 In cases of both genocide and less extreme scapegoating, ethnic
hatreds do not merely bubble up naturally. Rather,
politicians provoke and channel hatred to strengthen their
own power
 Rwandian Genocide Hutus massacred over 800000 Tutsis
 Nazi Germany Genocide Nazis massacred over 7000000 Jews,
Romans and Communists.
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Conflicts of Ideas- Religious Conflict
Religious differences hold the potential to make
existing conflicts more intractable, because religions
involve core values, which are held as absolute truth.
The rise of fundamentalism some people organize
their lives around their religious beliefs; many are
willing to sacrifice, kill, and die for those beliefs.
Fundamentalists challenge not only religious beliefs of
other groups but also secular political organizations.

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Conflicts of Ideas- Ideological Conflict
Ideology is a system of ideas and ideals, especially
one which forms the basis of economic or political
theory and policy.
Quite similar to religion, ideology intensifies and
symbolizes conflicts between all actors in international
relations , because it holds some core values and
absolute truths.
In global era, it is often told that ideologies lost their
strength.
The most known ideological conflict in world politics is
the Cold War.
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Conflicts of Interests-Territorial Disputes
Nation state is a territorial entity.
Territorial disputes are conflicts over where to draw borders.
 How to decide the borders of new states when a larger state
dissolved. e.g. demise of the Soviet Union
 How to decide the ownership of lands which are not clearly
defined in international agreements. e.g. Falklands between
Argentina end Britain
 How to decide where territorial waters and airspace begins and
ends. e.g. dispute between Turkey and Greece over Aegean sea
The strong international norms of sovereignty and territorial
integrity are the main causes of conflicts based on territory.
Also territory is seen as a resource.
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Conflicts of Interests-Control of
Governments
In theory, states do not interfere in each other’s
governance, because of the norm of sovereignty. In practice,
however, states often have strong interests in the
governments of other states and use a variety of means of
leverage to influence who holds power in those states.
Some states wants to change the government of other state.
e.g. Soviet Union Czech Republic Cold War; U.S.A. Iraq 2003.
Or some states promote and support some rebel groups in
order to change or put pressure over another states
government. e.g. Afghanistan U.S.A. supported Taliban
against Soviet Union. Angola the rivalry between USA and
Soviets sponsored civil war.
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Conflicts of Interests-Economic Conflict
Economic conflict seldom leads to violence today because
military forms of leverage are no longer very effective in
economic conflicts. Because of the high cost of military actions
both in terms of material and reputational costs.
The era of mercantilism and colonialism was marked by
economic wars.
Main reasons of economic conflicts are;
 Distribution of wealth among states
 Mercantilism
 Concerns of military sector
 Lateral pressure (economic growth of states leads to geographic
expansion as they seek natural resources beyond their borders)
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Wars
War; in international relations theory and especially
in the English school theory; is seen as an institution
of international relations to resolve conflicts and a way
to stand against hegemony.
Can every violent activity be described as War?
Usually number of deaths are used as a criteria to
distinguish wars from other low level violent activities

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Wars-Types of Wars
Hegemonic war is a war over control of the entire
world order —the rules of the international system as a
whole, including the role of world hegemony WWI
and WWII.
Total war is warfare by one state waged to conquer
and occupy another Napoleonic Wars. World Wars.
Limited war includes military actions carried out to
gain some objective short of the surrender and
occupation of the enemy. First Iraq War

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Wars-Types of Wars
Civil war refers to war between factions within a state
trying to create, or prevent, a new government for the
entire state or some territorial part of it.  War in
Syria, The US civil War in 1860s
Guerrilla war , which includes certain kinds of civil
wars, is warfare without front lines.

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Military Force
Purposes of having military forces:
National defence
Deterring attacks from other actors
Threatening other actors in order to compel them to
behave in a certain way
Humanitarian reasons

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Military Force-Conventional Forces
Land forces;
 The main purpose of land forces are controlling territory: To
take, to hold and to defend territory foot soldiers named
infantry is used. Artillery and armored vehicles are other types
of ground forces. Territory is extremely important in
international system.
Naval forces;
 Main aim is to control passage through the seas and to attack
land near coastlines. Blockading ports, securing naval
transport and supply lines in war, deterring piracy are primary
areas of use for naval ships. Aircraft carries are of utmost
importance since they are capable of attacking any territory in
the world.
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Military Force-Conventional Forces
Air forces;
Strategic bombing of land or sea targets; “close air
support” (battlefield bombing); interception of other
aircraft; reconnaissance; and airlift of supplies, weapons,
and troops are main areas of use of that forces.
Logistics and Intelligence;
Supports armies in terms of logistics(flow of supplies,
extraction of wounded from battle fields etc.) and in
terms of flow of information.

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Military Force-Technology
Advances in technology made wars between great
powers impossible because of the risk of inevitable
destruction .
Gathering correct information as fast as possible
gained more importance in the battlefields because of
advancements in technology especially after 2000s.

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Military Force-Weapons of Mass
Destruction
Nuclear Weapons
The most important thing about nuclear weapons is
their destructive power. A bomb in a size of a car can
destroy a city.
The effects of nuclear weapons include not only the
blast of the explosion, but also heat and radiation
(effects of radiation continues for hundreds of years
after the explosion of the bomb)
There are two types of nuclear weapons
Atomic bombs (less powerful/easier to make) and
Hydrogen bombs (more powerful/harder to make)
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Military Force-Weapons of Mass
Destruction
Nuclear Weapons
Technology to develop nuclear weapons is not hard but
obtaining fissionable materials such as uranium is quite
hard because
 U-235 the fissionable form of uranium is available in
extremely limited amount in the nature
 Enriching uranium to make it fissionable requires high
tech and lots of investment
One of the most critical things about nuclear weapons is
their dependency on ballistic missiles and other
delivery systems such as submarines and aircraft carriers.
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Military Force-Weapons of Mass
Destruction
Chemical and Biological Weapons
These weapons either release chemicals (such as sarin gas)
or viruses and deadly microorganisms to kill people .
Protective clothing and gas masks are two most known
ways to protect soldiers from the effects of those weapons
however making all those equipment for a whole army as
well as civilians is quite hard.
Biological weapons can also be used to contaminate water
supplies.
Usage of both type of weapons is hard because their effects
can not be controlled.
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Military Force-Weapons of Mass
Destruction
Proliferation: is the spread of weapons of mass destruction
—nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, and chemical or
biological weapons—into the hands of more actors.
Buying, stealing and developing those weapons can lead to
proliferation.
Especially crisis in states that have those weapons might
create great risk, since nonstate actors and terrorist might get
a chance to acquire those weapons
Various arms control treaties are signed in order to prevent
proliferation of WMAs such as SALT I and SALTII, CTBT,
ABM

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Terrorism
Terrorism refers to political violence that targets
civilians deliberately and indiscriminately.
Terrorism is a shadowy world of faceless enemies and
irregular tactics marked by extreme brutality.
Main aim of terrorism is to create panic and fear on the
society in order to reach particular aims.
Terrorism is not new, however the methods that
terrorists use have changed over time. e.g. suicide
bombings
There is a change from creating panic to kill as many
people as they can kill.
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Terrorism
Counterterrorism
As methods that terrorists use changed over time, methods
that are applied to deal with terrorists also diversified.
Military means
Policing activities(targetted attacks, capturing heads of
terrorist organizations, blocking financial support)
Economic development(in very poor states, people will be
especially vulnerable to recruitment by terrorist
organizations, so improving economic conditions in those
states would keep people away from joining terrorist
organizations)
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