030581 KU Law & Politics of International Conflict Management (2019S)

Conflict is a normal part of human life, so its presence at the international level should not surprise us. Still, human beings are social animals and require security to sustain communal life, usually provided by states. The current international security architecture is built on particular axiomatic conceptions of how states operate, many of which have become increasingly tenuous. This course presents the genesis of this architecture in the two world wars and ensuing Cold War, and its drastic transformation since 1989.

Since then, the landscape of conflict has dramatically changed, arms control has become eclipsed by proliferation concerns, and inter-state warfare by asymmetric, often criminal violence. As states have become weaker or collapsed outright, fighting has become more asymmetric, and far better communication channels have given remote local struggles global bearing. Consequently, international efforts to address violent conflict have multiplied, for instance through peace-keeping, peace-making, territorial administration, sanctions, mediation, etc. But the intransigence of many such conflicts has likewise exposed the limitations of the existing institutional, legal and conceptional tool-box.

This course presents the changing character of violence and international efforts to deal with it. The focus lies on the practical challenges of normative ambiguity, strategic competition, resource constraints and operational decision-making. The normative clarity of international law is contrasted with the existence of competing interests between states and non-state actors, in other words: politics, and the inherent limitations of collective redress.