International conflict

This article evaluates peacekeeping and peacemaking as two major third-party intervention strategies in international conflicts in the post Cold-War era. Peacekeeping is regarded as a needed strategy in situations of violent conflict, but its extensive use is criticized. The study suggests that peacekeeping should be complemented by peacemaking for effective international conflict resolution. By explaining the general characteristics of the two and the complementary relationship between them, a “contingency approach” is reached, stressing that in determining appropriate third-party intervention, different stages of an international conflict should be considered.

George W. Bush famously said that “We are in a conflict between good and evil, and America will call evil by its name”. Here I will briefly discuss the implications of simplifying the complex issues of international conflict and politics to such a level as well as the relevant moral and ethical issues surrounding this stance. The use of such sweeping terms such as ‘good’ and ‘evil’ as policy-defining pillars in a secular society such as the United States of America might seem difficult to justify and understand. I will argue, however, that the notion of absolute evil has always been present in the American psyche, barely covered by secular mentality and contemporary conventions, and that the attacks on America that happened in 2001 have served to revive in their society and politics the image of Satan. By ‘Satan’ I mean not so much the fallen angel of Christian mythology, but the personification of evil, whose most marked characteristic is precisely its changeable nature. In the next few paragraphs I will draw upon the work of Richard Kearney, Andrew Delbanco, Peter Singer, and Jean Baudrillard, amongst others, in order to analyse the ethical, practical and political reasons and consequences of the policies adopted after those fateful attacks. I will also attempt to shed some light onto why the policies adopted by the Bush White House –which have continued to prove extremely unpopular amongst the international community – have been accepted in a seemingly unquestioning manner by a large proportion of the American population.

In studying the global spread and implementation of liberal norms, scholars have moved from linear notions of norm diffusion and promotion to an emphasis on norm contestation. Contestation by the supposed beneficiaries and addressees has taken centre stage in both research on the norms that underpin global governance and in studies on democracy promotion and liberal peacebuilding. While the impetus of this scholarship is normative – to overcome the taken-for-granted nature of liberal norms – the concept of contestation itself is mainly used with an analytical interest. Yet, as we show in this article, contestation also comes with – oftentimes implicit – normative connotations. Focusing on the seminal work of Milja Kurki, Oliver Richmond, Antje Wiener, and Amitav Acharya, we reconstruct these normative connotations. It turns out that the normative take on contestation is fairly conventional in all four approaches. Contestation is largely seen as a means to enable dialogue, as illustr...