State Interactions in International Relations: Broader & Narrower Definitions of Key Concepts
In our troubled times, many concepts in international relations are used daily in the media and academia.
It is useful, rather very necessary, to know the broader and narrower connotations of these concepts and the relation between them.
[The accompanying diagram illustrates this clearly]
The most important concept in our world riddled with myriad problems is that of COOPERATION. Cooperation means working together towards the same end.
It can take many forms in world politics and have different intensities.
It can be bilateral [as between Nepal and China] or multilateral [as in the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation/SAARC]. It can take a uni- or multi-dimensional form, comprising only one or many of the following aspects:
- Economic, as in development cooperation military Political Military, as in a alliance. An ALLIANCE is, of course, an advanced stage of cooperation, and a military alliance such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) can be existential for a state [ thus without membership in NATO, the Baltic states would be at the mercy of Russia in the current state of intense tensions between Europe and Russia]. CONFRONTATION
This describes a situation where states meet face to face in hostility or defiance.
Such a situation can arise between two states or two alliances.
Just a thin line separates ‘confrontation’ from ‘conflict’.
Currently, the Sino-American relationship has mostly left the realm of cooperation and moved to confrontation. Thankfully, it has not progressed to open ‘conflict’.
The present state of Sino-Indian relations is also that of ‘confrontation’. CONFLICT
When confrontation degenerates/increases/ spirals into conflict, we are indeed in very dangerous waters.
There are now very serious disagreements or arguments between or among states.
Conflict describes a social condition [at any level] that arises when two or more actors pursue mutually exclusive or mutually incompatible goals.
There may also be sporadic and/or territorially restricted armed struggle, but the threshold to actual ‘war’ has not been crossed.
This is the situation currently prevailing between India and Pakistan – with both parties at daggers drawn! This has led to the complete dormant state of SAARC. Nepal holds the chair, but its poor diplomacy means that there is no movement. The whole sub-continent of South Asia is suffering because of a lack of cooperation between the two major regional powers and also among the members.
It is indeed disgraceful that SAARC remained silent with regard to developments in Myanmar and Afghanistan.
Confrontation and conflict taken together describes the condition of ‘neither war, nor peace’ CRISIS
A conflict situation could very well turn into
- a time of intense difficulty or danger,
- be a turning point, flashpoint,
- point of crucial decision-making, all describing a crisis situation or perceived turning point in relationships between actors or between actors and their environment. This pertinently describes ‘a make or break situation’ or in Nepali: ‘ki wari, ki pari’ [=either this side or the other side of the river]. The attempt by the Soviet Union in the midst of the Cold War to secretly install missiles in Cuba led to the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. Recently, there was a new crisis in the Taiwan Strait after US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi chose to defy the odds and visited the self-governing territory of Taiwan, provoking hefty military reaction from the mainland. The situation could very well spiraled out of control. China’s critical domestic situation – the economic downturn, the still raging pandemic lockdowns in some cities, the drought in some areas and the forthcoming CCP meeting in autumn – prevented the Beijing leadership from taking more robust actions.
The crisis situations described here – if not controlled, either through overcoming/ surmounting differences or through de-escalation – could have led to armed conflict or war.
After a crisis situation is overcome, it can lead to the old or a new status quo and then to the condition of cooperation. Or de-escalation leads either to a situation of conflict or confrontation – or with time again to cooperation.
Right from the time of their independence from the British Raj, the troubled Indo-Pakistani relationship has been one of either confrontation or conflict leading to crisis and war and back to conflict or confrontation rarely to cooperation. WAR
In the escalation of non-peaceful state relationships, war is the final stage.
It is not mere ‘conflict’, but a state of ‘armed conflict’ between nations or armed groups.
-Wars occur when states in a situation of social conflict and opposition find that the pursuit of incompatible or exclusive goals cannot be confined to non-violent modes. However, war as a means of solving states’ differences or grievances has been expressly forbidden by the UN Charta.
They must first take recourse to peaceful means: negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, or resort to regional agencies or arrangements (Art.33).
The United Nations Charta has shown the way for sorting out states’ differences according to peaceful means. Moreover, the UN Security Council – and especially the five permanent members – have been tasked with the primary responsibility of maintaining international peace and security.
The Security Council failed abjectly to determine the existence of the Russian threat to the peace and to the breach of the peace, and the act of aggression (Art. 39 of the UN Charter). It also failed to take any action to maintain or restore international peace and security (Art. 42).
Putin’s war against UN-member Ukraine is a blatant violation of the UN Charter and International Law in general. By calling the war “a special military operation” does not absolve him and the broader civilian and military leadership of maintaining basic human rights. Even during times of ‘armed conflict’, international law does not cease to function.