Concepts and Terms Unit 4

Question 1

Amensty

Answer 1

An official pardon for people who have been convicted of a criminal offense.

Question 2

Appeasement

Answer 2

A foreign policy strategy of making concessions to an aggressor in the hope of modifying its political objectives and, specifically, avoiding war.

Question 3

Brinkmanship

Answer 3

A strategy of escalating confrontation even to the point of risking war (going to the brink), aimed at persuading an opponent to back down.

Question 4

Chapter 7 of the UN Charter

Answer 4

Sets out the UN Security Council’s powers to maintain peace. It allows the Council to “determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression” and to take military and nonmilitary action to “restore international peace and security”.

Question 5

Civil War

Answer 5

An armed conflict between politically organized groups within a state, usually fought either for control of the state or to establish a new state.

Question 6

Conflict

Answer 6

Disagreement and competition over power, ideas, identity, resources or territory.

Question 7

Conventional Warfare

Answer 7

A form of warfare that is conducted by regular, uniformed and national military units and uses conventional (not nuclear) military weapons and battlefield tactics.

Question 8

Cultural Violence

Answer 8

Aspects of a culture that can be used to justify or legitimize direct or structural violence, and may be exemplified by religion and ideology, language and art, empirical science and formal science. Cultural violence makes direct and structural violence look or feel “right”, or at least not wrong, according to Johan Galtung.

Question 9

Deterrence

Answer 9

A tactic or strategy designed to prevent aggression by emphasizing the scale of the likely military response (the cost of an attack would be greater than any benefit it may bring).

Question 10

Direct Violence

Answer 10

Physical or mental harm brought upon an individual; forms of direct violence include assault, rape, murder, war, and genocide. It is sometimes called personal violence because the perpetrators are human beings.

Question 11

Disarmament

Answer 11

The reduction of fighting capacity, either through scaling-down or eliminating arms or, more likely, categories of weapons. This is usually aimed towards nuclear weapons with the term of nuclear disarmament

Question 12

Equality

Answer 12

Treating everyone the same. Equality aims to promote fairness, but it can only work if everyone starts from the same place and needs the same help.

Question 13

Equity

Answer 13

Giving everyone what they need to be successful; fairness.

Question 14

Escalation

Answer 14

An intensification of something, such as violence or tension.

Question 15

First Strike

Answer 15

A pre-emptive or surprise attack on an adversary; ‘getting one’s retaliation in first’.

In some contexts, “first strike, also known as preemptive nuclear strike, attack on an enemy’s nuclear arsenal that effectively prevents retaliation against the attacker.”

Question 16

Grievance

Answer 16

A real or imagined wrong or other cause for complaint or protest, especially unfair treatment.

OR

a complaint or a strong feeling that you have been treated unfairly:

Question 17

Guerrilla War

Answer 17

Literally, ‘little war’; an insurgency or people’s war, fought by irregular troops using tactics that are suited to the terrain and emphasize mobility and surprise rather than superior firepower.

Question 18

Hegemonic War

Answer 18

War that is fought to establish dominance of the entire world order by restructuring the global balance of power.

Question 19

Insurgency

Answer 19

An armed uprising, involving irregular soldiers, which aims to overthrow the established regime.

Question 20

Interstate War

Answer 20

A war between two or more states.

Question 21

Intervention

Answer 21

Forcible action taken by one state against another state, without the latter’s consent.

Question 22

Intrastate War

Answer 22

A war within a state; can be used synonymously with the term civil war.

Question 23

Mediation

Answer 23

A way of resolving disputes between two or more parties with concrete effects. Typically, a third party, the mediator, assists the parties to negotiate a settlement.

Question 24

Militarism

Answer 24

A cultural or ideological phenomenon in which military priorities, ideas and values come to pervade the larger society. The opinions or actions of people who believe that a country should use military methods, forces, etc., to gain power and to achieve its goals

Question 25

Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD)

Answer 25

A condition in which a nuclear attack by either state would only ensure its own destruction, as both possess an invulnerable second-strike capacity.

Question 26

Nation-Building

Answer 26

The constructing or structuring of a national identity using the power of the state.

Question 27

Negative Peace

Answer 27

Peace defined as the absence of violence, although the forces that give rise to conflict remain in place.

Question 28

Non-Intervention

Answer 28

The principle that states should not interfere in the internal affairs of other states.

Question 29

Non-violence

Answer 29

The use of peaceful means, not force, to bring about political or social change.

Question 30

Nuclear Proliferation

Answer 30

The spread of nuclear weapons, either by their acquisition by more states or other actors (horizontal proliferation), or their accumulation by established nuclear states (vertical proliferation).

Question 31

Pacifism

Answer 31

A commitment to peace and a rejection of war or violence in any circumstances.

Question 32

Peace

Answer 32

Freedom from conflict; the presence of tranquility and harmony. Peace can be defined in many ways, but one of the most common is to categorize peace as either positive or negative.

Question 33

Peacebuilding

Answer 33

A process that facilitates the establishment of durable peace and tries to prevent the recurrence of violence by addressing root causes and effects of conflict through reconciliation, institution building, and political as well as economic transformation.

Question 34

Peacekeeping

Answer 34

A technique designed to preserve the peace when fighting has been halted, and to assist in implementing agreements achieved by the peacemakers.

Question 35

Peacemaking

Answer 35

Conflict transformation focused upon establishing equitable power relationships robust enough to forestall future conflict, often including the establishment of means of agreeing on ethical decisions within a community, or among parties, that had previously engaged in inappropriate (i.e. violent) responses to conflict. Peacemaking seeks to achieve full reconciliation among adversaries and new mutual understanding among parties and stakeholders.

Question 36

Positive Peace

Answer 36

Peace defined in terms of harmony and wholeness; the absence not just of violence but of the causes of violence.

Question 37

Proxy War

Answer 37

A war instigated by a major power that does not itself become involved.

Question 38

Refugee

Answer 38

A person compelled to leave his or her country because their life, security or freedoms have been threatened.

Question 39

Restorative Justice

Answer 39

An approach to justice that personalizes the crime by having the victims and the offenders mediate a restitution agreement to the satisfaction of each, as well as involving the community. This contrasts to more punitive approaches such as retributive justice.

A restitution order requires the offender to pay the victim for financial losses the victim suffered because of the offender’s crime.

Question 40

Resource War

Answer 40

A war that is fought to gain or retain control of resources which are important to economic development or political power.

Question 41

Retributive Justice

Answer 41

A system of criminal justice based on the punishment of offenders rather than on rehabilitation.

Question 42

Security Dilemma

Answer 42

A situation in the anarchic area of international relations in which, actions by a state intended to heighten its security, such as increasing its military strength, committing to use weapons or making alliances, can lead other states to respond with similar measures, producing increased tensions that create conflict, even when no side really desires it.

Question 43

State Terrorism

Answer 43

Terrorism carried out by government bodies such as the police, military or intelligence agencies.

Question 44

Structural Violence

Answer 44

A form of violence that stems from social structures that perpetuate domination, oppression or exploitation, as opposed to ‘direct violence’ which stems (supposedly) from individual or group motivations.

Structural violence refers to a form of violence wherein social structures or social institutions harm people by preventing them from meeting their basic needs.

Question 45

Total War

Answer 45

A war involving all aspects of society, including large-scale conscription, the gearing of the economy to military ends, and the aim of achieving unconditional surrender through the mass destruction of enemy targets, civilian and military.

Question 46

Transformative Justice

Answer 46

A strategy for responding to conflicts which takes the principles and practices of restorative justice beyond the criminal justice system and tries to treat an offense as a transformative relational and educational opportunity for victims, offenders and all other members of the affected community.

Question 47

Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Answer 47

A body tasked with discovering and revealing past wrongdoing by a government (or, depending on the circumstances, non-state actors also), in the hope of resolving conflict left over from the past.

Question 48

Violence

Answer 48

Physical or psychological harm which can be caused either by physical force or by structures within society or government.

Question 49

Global Peace Index (GPI)

Answer 49

Produced by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), the Global Peace Index (GPI) is the world’s leading measure of global peacefulness. This report presents the most comprehensive data-driven analysis to-date on trends in peace, its economic value, and how to develop peaceful societies. The Global Peace Index covers 99.7% of the world’s population, and is calculated using 23 qualitative and quantitative indicators from highly respected sources, and measures the state of peace across three domains:

– the level of Societal Safety and Security,

– the extent of Ongoing Domestic and International Conflict,

– and the degree of Militarisation.

Question 50

Galtung’s Conflict Triangle

Answer 50

Johan Galtung’s Conflict Triangle looks at the relationship between the Behavior, Attitude and Contradictions. All these three aspects, he argues, encourage violence.

The triangle shows that a relation between the three concepts and how those concepts can influence violence. There are two levels specified: Manifest and Latent Level.

Manifest Level: It tells that a certain bias of characteristics towards how people act starts conflict with immediate evidence.

Latent Level: It tells that a certain bias of characteristics towards how people think starts conflict with deeper and more discrete consequences.