Paradoxes Of Peace

This book is a collection of chapters on the topic of Nonviolence, written by college students at the University of Texas in 2014. Topics include sports, Vietnam war, Civil Rights, comics, the justice system, bullying, music, farming, psychology, religion, culture, self-improvement, and video games. Profits from the sale of this book will go to benefit SafePlace, an Austin non-profit that helps victims of domestic violence and sexual assault.

'Peace' is often simplistically assumed to be war's opposite, and as such is not examined closely or critically idealized in the literature of peace studies, its crucial role in the justification of war is often overlooked. Starting from a critical view that the value of 'restoring peace' or 'keeping peace' is, and has been, regularly used as a pretext for military intervention, this book traces the conceptual history of peace in nineteenth century legal and political practice. It explores the role of the value of peace in shaping the public rhetoric and legitimizing action in general international relations, international law, international trade, colonialism, and armed conflict. Departing from the assumption that there is no peace as such, nor can there be, it examines the contradictory visions of peace that arise from conflict. These conflicting and antagonistic visions of peace are each linked to a set of motivations and interests as well as to a certain vision of legitimacy within the international realm. Each of them inevitably conveys the image of a specific enemy that has to be crushed in order to peace being installed. This book highlights the contradictions and paradoxes in nineteenth century discourses and practices of peace, particularly in Europe.

Is sustainable peace an illusion in a world where foreign military interventions are replacing peace negotiations as starting points for postwar reconstruction? What would it take to achieve durable peace? This book presents six provocative case studies authored by respected peacebuilding practitioners in their own societies. The studies address two cases of relative success (Guatemala and Mozambique), three cases of renewed but deeply fraught efforts (Afghanistan, Haiti, and the Palestinian Territories), and the case of Sri Lanka, where peacebuilding was aborted but where the outlines of a new peace process can be discerned.

Thoughtfully examines the paradox of peace activism in postwar Germany

Why do reasonable people lead their nations into the tremendously destructive traps of international conflict? Why do nations then deepen their involvement and make it harder to escape from these traps? In Paradoxes of War, originally published in 1990, Zeev Maoz addresses these and other paradoxical questions about the war process. Using a unique approach to the study of war, he demonstrates that wars may often break out because states wish to prevent them, and continue despite the desperate efforts of the combatants to end them. Paradoxes of War is organized around the various stages of war. The first part discusses the causes of war, the second the management of war, and the third the short- and long-term implications of war. In each chapter Maoz explores a different paradox as a contradiction between reasonable expectations and the outcomes of motivated behaviour based on those expectations. He documents these paradoxes in twentieth century wars, including the Korean War, the Six Day War, and the Vietnam War. Maoz then invokes cognitive and rational choice theories to explain why these paradoxes arise. Paradoxes of War is essential reading for students and scholars of international politics, war and peace studies, international relations theory, and political science in general.

Paradoxes of Peace continues the meditation of Mosley's Time at War, at the end of which he wrote that humans find themselves at home in war because they feel they know what they have to do, whereas in peace they have to discover this. But what should inform them--custom? need? duty? ambition? desire? Forces pull in different directions--fidelity versus adventurousness, probity versus fun. During the war, Mosley found himself having to combine fondness for his father, Oswald Mosley, with the need to speak out against his post-war politics. In times of peace, his love for his wife and children, too, seemed riddled with paradoxes. He sought answers in Christianity, but came to see organized religion as primarily a social institution. How does caring not become a trap?