STABLE PEACE

2010-11-10T09:39:00.001-08:00

When we talk about resolving intractable conflict, we are talking about establishing peace. But what do we mean by peace? The word is used in a variety of ways, from a respite in hostilities to God's peace, "the peace that passeth all understanding."
In 1978, Kenneth Boulding introduced the term "stable peace." It can serve to clarify the peace we are seeking in intractable conflict. He defines stable peace as "a situation in which the probability of war is so small that it does not really enter into the calculations of any of the people involved."[1]
While most of Boulding's short treatise focuses on relations between and among nations, he includes in the definition all levels of social groups -- families, businesses, churches, and nations. He points out that while there are examples of what might be called "war" among all types of social groups -- the feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys being an example of interfamilial war -- "war is much commoner between political organizations [bands, tribes, city-states, nations, and empires] than between any other kind of social organization."[2]
Boulding identifies several factors as important in developing stable peace:

Habit: "The longer peace persists the better chance it has of persisting"[3]
Professional specializations which include mediators, conciliators, marriage counselors, and diplomats, including a web of "integrative relationships" among leaders;
Rise of travel and communication within the system;
Web of economic interdependence;
Mutually compatible self-images which do not include the use of force against one another; and
Taboos against the use of violence within the stable peace system.

On an international level, Alexander George offers a slightly more specific definition: "Stable peace is a relationship between two states in which neither side considers employing force or even making a threat of force, in any dispute between them. Deterrence and compellence backed by threats of military force are simply excluded as instruments of policy."[4] George contrasts stable peace with his two other categories of peace. "Precarious peace" is a state of acute conflict which means "little more than a temporary absence of armed conflict."[5] "Conditional peace" is a relationship in which general deterrence plays a key role, although the possibility of stronger threats or even actual violence is maintained for crisis situations.
To be more concrete, the ongoing Middle East conflict tends to waiver between precarious and conditional peace, still falling, every so often, into war. The Cold War is a good example of conditional peac

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STABLE PEACE