On Peaceful Settlement Of Internal Armed Conflict After The Cold War Factors

Conflicts and wars among different actors pose the biggest threat to international relations in human society. How to settle conflicts and build peace thus remains a core issue for researchers in international relations studies ever since it became a discipline. While a Third War is unlikely to take place, internal armed conflicts take the center stage, which endanger the security of the region as well as that of the world as a whole. Against that backdrop, researchers have focused on ways to settle such conflicts. There are two kinds of means to make armed conflicts resolved, that is, military victory and peaceful settlement. And peaceful settlement contributes to durable peace, which is worth doing more research. To do that, factors that have impact on the ultimate settlement of conflicts have to be determined. The author attempts to do just that in this dissertation.For the elaboration of the issue, the author discusses not only the influencing factors (both internal and external) but also how the factors work. To facilitate research, the concepts of internal armed conflicts and peaceful settlement of conflicts are explained in the first place, then the author proposes the possibility of the peaceful settlement of conflicts. Meanwhile 35 major conflicts terminated after the Cold War are selected to test and verify the author's viewpoint.Based on the earlier studies, the author points out six internal factors for the peaceful settlement of conflicts --- casualties, size of government troops, the stakes of the conflict, nature of regime of the countries involved, duration of the conflict, and the portfolio for signed agreements.For the first two variables, qualitative analysis is made and for the remaining four factors, quantitative analysis is applied. The author believes that casualties has positive correlation with peaceful settlement. The variable of size of government troops are expanded to size of government troops vs. size of rebel troops, which, in the author's opinion, is negatively correlated to peaceful settlement. In terms of the stakes of the conflict, the author classifies them based on the types and natures of conflicts. It is found that conflicts for territory are more difficult to settle peacefully than conflicts for state, while conflicts with identity factors are more difficult than the otherwise. Nature of the countries in conflicts has been studied from the perspective of the relationship between regime and peaceful settlement of conflicts. The author, however, takes a step further to include the development situation of the state and finds out no correlation with peaceful settlement. The author supports the proposition that duration of conflicts is positively correlated to peaceful settlement. Based on the current focus on the relationship between terms of the agreement with peaceful settlement as to the portfolio for the signed agreements, the dissertation adds a new element --- reble in conflicts, the size and quality of which is found to have correlation with peaceful settlement. Agreements with terms regarding military settlement and power sharing are easier to be signed and stay effective for long. Military settlement refers to the integration of the army or disarmament of the parties in conflicts. Power sharing means territorial autonomy in conflicts for territory and general election and electoral reform in conflicts for state.Intervention of the third party is considered as an external factor for the peaceful settlement of conflicts. It is found that coercive intervention such as government-enforced economic sanction and/or arms embargo can effectively deter conflicts and facilitate peace talks. It is thus concluded that the oversight and guarantee of the third party is crucial for the signing and implementation of peace agreements.Much research has been done in the influencing factors for the peaceful settlement of conflicts, but the author believes that settlement of conflicts is a process of system effects, which involves the vertical impact of the factors on the settlement as well as the horizontal impact among factors.Still, there are many uncertainties in the peaceful settlement of conflicts. On the one hand, research in this regard may not be inclusive; on the other, same factors can lead to different results. With that in mind, the author does not venture to propose one model for peaceful settlement of conflicts; instead the author intends to analyze the major influencing factors for the peaceful settlement of conflicts both in theory and in practice so as to be of some help for the settlement of future conflicts.