Peace and Planning

The first full book (okay, I skimmed some chapters but at a whopping 458 pages I think it still counts!) I read as a PhD student was Daniel Bar-Tal’s Intractable Conflicts: Socio-Psychological Foundations and Dynamics. If you have in mind a book that’s dense, meandering at times, and jam packed with references, you’re on target. Stereotypes aside, it was also a helpful first book for me, someone who is relatively new to the field, to get a primer on the discipline. In this post, I’ll share a bit about what I learned as well as what I saw as incomplete in his analysis…and I hope you’ll pardon this fledgling academic for using her fair share of citations, too!

In the book, Bar-Tal presents a comprehensive account of the characteristics of intractable conflicts, including what causes them to erupt, escalate, persist, and end. Notably, he focuses on the socio-psychological mechanisms that influence intractable conflicts, such as collective memory, the ethos of conflict, and collective emotional orientations. He relies on a wide range of sources to illustrate the many theories that have contributed to understanding intractable conflicts and explores several case studies to demonstrate how the theories of intractable conflicts reveal themselves in real-world situations.

To begin, he uses case studies like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina to describe the eight qualities that make these conflicts intractable, all of which have a socio-psychological dimension. For example, in discussing the characteristic of intractable conflicts as violent – perhaps one of the most defining features of intractable conflict – he first makes the distinction that the violence can be physical or psychological and goes on to explain how either the act of carrying out the violence or being a victim of violence contributes to the societal psychological repertoire of conflicts.

According to Bar-Tal, collective memory is a key feature of the socio-psychological aspects of conflict, as it provides a standard narrative that can be used to evoke emotions. In his description of this connection, a collective memory – presumably shaped by violence – “may raise fear because of past traumatic events, or anger because of a remembered unjust act carried out by another group, or pride because of the memorialized victory and heroic acts performed by group members” (Bar-Tal, 2013, p. 142). Indeed, the formation of collective memory has two unique themes that are specific to violence: “one referring to violent confrontations with the rival; and another that focuses on the fallen members of the ingroup, especially the fighters…these two themes are central components of the culture of conflict and evolve as the result of the violence that is a significant part of intractable conflicts” (Bar-Tal, 2013, pp. 149-150). In turn, a collective memory around acts of violence serves as a powerful force for mobilizing society members to support the conflict and contributes to the perception of the justness of the goals exhibited in the ethos of conflict, particularly when pursuing those goals requires significant sacrifices.

The emotions evoked by collective memory – like fear or anger, or secondary emotions like hatred and pride – are not only experienced by the ingroup as shared emotions but are also manifested through the concept of collective emotional orientation, which weaves the collective emotions into “various channels of communication, institutions, and products” (Bar-Tal, 2013, p. 223). Consequently, these socio-psychological mechanisms create a “dominant repertoire” that makes it challenging to envision – or even desire – a peaceful resolution of the conflict (Bar-Tal, 2013, p. 327).

While he presents a convincing analysis of the nature of violence in conflict, one aspect Bar-Tal does not adequately explore is structural violence as a distinct form of violence. Rather, the case studies he uses either pay sole attention to the physical violence perpetrated or include a passing reference to the conditions of structural violence that existed within an otherwise bloody conflict. His narrow treatment of the topic is best evidenced when he states, “additional acts of violence can include different types of restricting and discriminating orders and the expropriation of land – acts intended to harm the rival group” (Bar-Tal, 2013, p. 41). However, Galtung’s assessment reminds us that “there is no reason to assume that structural violence amounts to less suffering than personal violence” (Galtung, 1969, p. 173).

A more consequential limitation of Bar-Tal’s framework is that it does not adequately describe all conflicts. For example, at first glance, it certainly seems like the U.S. is mired in conflict and displaying many of the themes that Bar-Tal uses to characterize intractable conflict. Many politicians are locked into polarized parties operating with a zero-sum mentality – parties elected through a campaign process that involves massive financial investment and that view a wide array of policy issues as paramount to the group’s existence and therefore ‘total’ in their degree of contradiction. Most of the public sees the debate about mask mandates and vaccine requirements as a highly salient and central feature of their lives and, for some, one that poses an existential threat that limits their sacred right to personal freedom. Meanwhile, white supremacists have continued a long history of using violence against those they see as inferior, ranging from plowing cars into peaceful Black Lives Matter protests to murdering Black churchgoers. No objective observer would argue that these matters are of “low importance that are perceived as peripheral to group interests,” that there are functioning “institutionalized mechanisms that enable dealing with the contentions of the conflict and then negotiating within this framework a fair solution that will satisfy both parties,” or that these conflicts do not “involve development of a socio-psychological repertoire or an infrastructure that feeds them,” contrary to Bar-Tal’s depiction of tractable conflicts (Bar-Tal, 2013, p. 37).

That said, it is uncertain that these qualify as intractable, not because of their lack of intractability but because of their incongruence with Bar-Tal’s definition of conflict. He defines conflict as “a situation in which two or more parties perceive their goals, intentions, and actions as being mutually incompatible and act in accordance to this perception” (Bar-Tal, 2013, p. 5). Breaking down the definition into its component parts gives us a clearer sense of where the issue lies. In the U.S. case study illustrated above, there are parties that perceive their goals, intentions, and actions as mutually incompatible and act in accordance with this perception. Bar-Tal outlines what qualifies as a goal, and in the U.S., these goals are clear and communicated through various channels. However, he does not elaborate on what precisely constitutes a party. In the U.S., we find many parties in conflict – Democrats vs. Republicans, liberal “vaxxers” vs. conservative “anti-vaxxers,” Black Americans vs. white supremacists – but upon closer inspection, these categories are not discrete, mutually exclusive, or constant. Some Democrats and Republicans are willing to compromise on specific issues, some conservatives are vaccinated and wear masks voluntarily, and not all white people are white supremacists – nor are Black people the only group that is targeted by white supremacists, nor are white supremacists the only “group” that contributes to oppressive and violent conditions for communities of color and other minority or indigenous groups. Moreover, Bar-Tal does not thoroughly explore what it means to “act,” either offensively or defensively, beyond mere acts of personal violence. It is unclear what action looks like when considering the response, for instance, of the U.S. government to the January 6^th insurrection; does a federal investigation pursued by Congressional Democrats count as an action?

Thus, a degree of nuance is missing when trying to apply Bar-Tal’s framework to U.S.-based intractable conflicts. As an example, beyond the lack of discrete, mutually exclusive, or constant parties as alluded to above, my understanding of the collective memory of the Black American experience is that it is defined not only by acts of terror carried out by white supremacists but also by systemic state-sponsored violence such as police brutality, by more subtle forms of racism such as biased hiring practices, and by bureaucratic processes and structures that create and perpetuate inequities in a variety of societal outcomes. Indeed, these are precisely the types of structural violence to which Galtung calls attention. So then does this count as an intractable conflict? If not, is it because a discrete (and equally violent) “counter-party” has not materialized to pursue “action”? If not, why has one not formed, and what can that teach us? While Bar-Tal tackles complex conflicts, they exist in an even more complex conflict system that merits investigation.

References

Bar-Tal, D. (2013). Intractable conflicts: socio-psychological foundations and dynamics. Cambridge University Press.

Galtung, J. (1969). Violence, Peace, and Peace Research. Journal of Peace Research, 6(3), 167–191. https://doi.org/10.1177/002234336900600301