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Peace and conflict studies can be defined as the inter-disciplinary inquiry into war as human condition and peace as human potential, as an alternative to the traditional Polemology (War Studies) and the strategies taught at Military academies. Important aims are: Prevention, deescalation, and solution of international conflicts; Prevention of war.Disciplines involved may include Political Sciences, Sociology, Psychology, History, Anthropology, Religious Studies, Women's Studies, and Indigenous Studies, as well as a variety of others. The emergence of Peace Studies as an academic discipline The First World War was a turning point in Western attitudes to war. The expression "the war to end all wars" reflected the traumatic events and subsequent flu epidemic. US President Woodrow Wilson had been responsible for taking the USA into the war and this coincided with the emergence of the USA as a major world power. At the 1919 Peace of Paris where the leaders of France, Britain and the USA (Clemenceau, Lloyd George and Wilson) met to decide the future of Europe, Woodrow Wilson proposed Fourteen Points. These included breaking up European empires into nation states and the establishment of the League of Nations. These moves, intended to ensure a peaceful future, were the background to a number of developments in the emergence of Peace Studies as an academic discipline. The Department of International Politics was established in the University of Aberystwyth in 1919. David Davis was the first "Woodrow Wilson Chair". The first blow to Wilson's peaceful vision was the rejection of US membership of the League of Nations by Congress. The 1920s and 1930s saw the rise of fascism and military dictatorships. Mussolini, Hitler, Franco and Stalin all came to power and militarism was on the rise in Japan. International Relations became increasingly dominated by the realists and dealt mainly with the international politics of power between states. Examples of peaceful figures were seen as unrealistic in the face of aggressive dictators. British Prime Minister Chamberlain followed a policy of appeasement in an attempt to temper the aggressive ambitions of Hitler. A strong opposing view was that the West should confront Hitler and build up forces to match German rearmament. After the nuclear bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of the Second World War the United States was in a unique position of being the only nuclear power. The gap was soon closed when the USSR acquired nuclear weapons in 1949. At the emergence of the Cold War, Peace and Conflict Studies was be the normative academic subject no longer represented by the broadly realist International Relations. Peace Studies: The subject defined Peace Studies can be classified as such: Direct, Structural and Cultural Violence Johan Galtung's conflict triangle works on the assumption that the best way to define peace is to define violence, its antithesis. It reflects the normative aim of preventing, managing, limiting and overcoming violence. Negative and Positive Peace Negative peace refers to the absence of direct violence. This aim raises the problem of the tyrant, who oversees a non-violent empire but does not foster a sense of peace. Parallels of this problem are to be found in literature such as 1984 by George Orwell. Positive peace refers to the additional absence of structural and cultural violence. This aim raises the problem of the "happy slave", who when told he is free, retorts that he "does not want to be free". Three normative aims of Peace Studies are peacekeeping, peace building (e.g. tackling disparaties in the distribution of world wealth) and peacemaking (e.g. eduation). Peacekeeping falls under the aegis of negative peace, whereas efforts toward positive peace involve elements of peace building and peacemaking. Quotes related to Peace Studies See also | |||||||
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