Crisis and conflict

Introduction

With simplest and shortest, the crises and conflicts are close. The ordinary common language, contrasts about it with the languages erudite and technical, and theoretical constructions confuse them and amalgamate them. The problem or the question is:

Pourquoi certain crises give place to conflict deflagrations? Which are the differences and the similarities between the crisis and the conflict?

There are crises apparently alleviating or ridiculous which evolve/move in heavy conflict, while others, with the considerable stake, remain with the state of crisis without conflict exit. In any case, it is a reflection which any person can make who observes and wonders about the international and social family relations.

In any case, it is an observation and a reflection which any person can make who meditates on the contingency of the historical facts, social and of the family and familiar events, which the most serious crises are far from being those which cause the most serious conflicts. Low registers or alleviating, the crises are evaluated a posteriori on the gravity of the conflict, often in the ignorance of the relation between the crisis and the conflict. When violences of the conflict manage to destroy the configurations physics and social, then, it is the relation between Crise and catastrophe.

Crises and two world wars

There was during the score of years which preceded the First World War by many assassinations of important politicians, but only the assassination of the heir to the throne of Habsbourg in Sarajevo precipitated the World in the deflagration. Neither the entry of the German troops in the demilitarized zone in 1936, nor the occupation of Austria and Czechoslovakia led to the war, but the short crisis which preceded the German attack on Poland. One sequesters, one and one assassinates the ambassadors nowadays, for thus with impunity, whereas at last century, the only fact of insulting a representative of the diplomatic corps was enough to start a conflict.

How to explain these differences in the behavior during the development of the crisis?

Apart from the concept of crisis, one would explain by the dichotomy between fundamental cause and surface pretext, i.e. a justification, in the deferred action, of an intention not only hostile, but quarrelsome. It is a justification which with the advantage of being simple, banal, but not very satisfactory and of low utility. From the point of view of the crisis, the aspect of the hostility will be retained.

WILL Of HOSTILITY. The ones think that it is not the nature of the crisis which imports, but the will of the antagonistic parts. Any disturbance, even reduced, can be used as occasion with an enemy decided of in découdre. Others insist on the difference between the specific sensitivities and mentalities to each time when some are chatouilleuses or more nervous than others and transform into situation " belligène" actions that in other times that one considers with more patience, of phlegm and distance. " If screw pacem, leave in Berlin" , the crises of Berlin, since 1945, started any armed conflict, at most some skirmishes, without the thunders of heavy artillery, the blockade of 1947 with the wall of 1961, the calm one is despairing in Berlin, whereas the Incidents of the Gulf of Tonkin, with beginning of the year 60, made leave as much chemical explosive than during all the Second world war, with the Résolution of the gulf of Tonkin which made it possible to extend the Guerre of Vietnam.

Thus, a time dominated by a national fever would be more laid out that another to convert the least crisis into conflict avenger. The assumption of the sensitivities and specific mentalities to each time proves to be insufficient, because Berlin and the intensification of the military interventions étatsuniennes in Vietnam was under the presidency of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Others, still, estimate that an hegemonic power or imperialist could maintain his supremacy only in the condition of intervening quickly, in a conflict way which is likely to question its prestige, like, perhaps the Guerre in Afghanistan and the Guerre in Iraq carried out by the United States at dawn of XXIe century.

Others, finally, notice that the multiplication of the crises in a company slows down the conflict capacities. In fact companies in repetitive crisis have devices necessary to block quarrelsome inclinations, while where the crises are rare, each one becomes almost immediately source of a possible conflict.

These interpretations, certainly, are not to draw aside, although they have only one significance and a relevance histories and circumstantial to be of general interest. In 1914, for example, no country wanted, frankly, the war and, however, they all are precipitated there with the flower with rifle and the song with the mouth. One could not, either, place under the same heading the " policy of the canonnières" and that exerted by old the Soviet Union and the the constrained United States, sometimes, to accept true affronts without reacting. One could multiply other examples in international relations, labor relations, marital and family relations which confirm the limited validity of these interpretations.

Admittedly, any crisis, in general, is carrying conflicts, but a as major and fundamental crisis of the spirits as that caused by science, following Copernic and of Galileo, was followed directly of no conflict. If we want to give a brief reply to the starting question (why certain crises give place to conflict deflagrations?), it seems necessary to seek a more total interpretation of a ecosystemic Approche, while proceeding by comparison, in order to determine, by an in-depth design, D `possible constants which characterize almost totality. Passages of a crisis to the conflict. In other words, by the divergent production (scanning) and the convergent production (digging), of the interfaces between the crisis and the conflict can appear.

This work of the productions can be made profitable in the family systemic Thérapies in the resolution of the crises and conflicts.

The crisis

The concept of crisis is related on deteriorations and the ruptures which the change can cause. It is thus also related to the development even of the life, as well under the biological aspect as under its aspects psychological and sociological, as insofar as its conservation depends on a perpetual creation of which the effects can be continuous or discontinuous. It is necessary, however, to avoid to develop from the start change, that it is of way positive to regard it as being always salutary (within the meaning of the philosophical evolutionism or of the Theory of the Progress) or of way negative, while regarding it as disastrous (with the direction where any crisis would be a pathological demonstration). Any change is not source of crisis, for example when it develops in a regular and almost unperceivable way, like the cellular renewal of the human body, in illustrative example. There is, in general, crisis following the appearance of a sudden and unexpected modification which disturbs ordinary unfolding, generally causing a state of imbalance, uncertainty and concern.

Crisogene deterioration can be only of two kinds: or it is the result of the intervention of an external factor and " allogène" in the development even, under the effect of accumulation " endogène" who, once exceeded a certain threshold, creates a state of rupture. The " Revolution française" who was a great crisis, could have been avoided by reforms progressive and appropriate to time. This accumulation can be that of wears and deferred failures or, on the contrary, profusions and prodigalities. It also happens that the crisis expresses the shift between the acceleration of certain aspects of the development and the delay of others. There is caesura in the rate/rhythm of the change. These elements " objectifs" be generally accompanied by another obstacle which particularly contributes to increase the crisis. It is about the " difficulty; subjective" to distinguish moments (heard at the same time like moments and power struggles) critical, therefore, to make the suitable choice and to make the adequate decision.

Considered from the sociological point of view, the crisis is a collective situation characterized by contradictions and ruptures, a large situation of tensions and dissensions which return the hesitant individuals and groups on the policy to be followed, because the ordinary rules and institutions remain in withdrawal or are even, sometimes, out of phase compared to the new possibilities that the interests and the ideas offer which emerge on the accuracy and the effectiveness of the new ways. It is the crisis of May 1968 in France and in the western world. The crisis is a situation of Anomie where the individual and the community cannot with which codes of conduct refer any more

This design calls for four observations

- The extent of a crisis is variable, according to whether it affects directly only one given activity or all the activities at the same time.

- What causes the caesura crisogene in the change is the putting out of order and destabilizing innovation. If the innovation is only one renewal which refreshes and revivifies usual behaviors, it seldom gives place to a crisis. The transistor which replaced the miniature light did not give place to a crisis. On the other hand, microprocessing and telematics gave universalization or globalisation in the intensification and the diversification of the exchanges of all kinds.

- Even sudden, the innovation is not prolonged in crisis, if it is immediately useful from the point of view of the conveniences of the users. Not more than the appearance of the steam engine has to involve crisis directly, the plane and the motor vehicle either and did not cause any. Only the accelerated accumulation of technical innovations of all kinds, as it modifies the lifestyle and deteriorates the values recognized hitherto, shakes with long the spirits.

- With the bottom, a crisis is born primarily from the difficulties of forecast. The agrarian companies were relatively saved by the crises mainly of external origin of the natural disasters. Indeed, the peasant and the craftsman were able to envisage with confidence the course of their life, like that their children and grandchildren, since the conditions of existence retaient practically the same ones, from where stability and safety.

This observation applies to the other aspects of the life, and not only for the profession which is used as illustrative example of a more general phenomenon

The conflict

One understands by conflict, with the deep sense or authentic of the term, the confrontation of two or several individual or collective wills which express the ones with regard to the others a hostile intention and a will of aggression, because of a right to find or to maintain. These wills try to break the resistance of the other, possibly by the recourse to violence. This design does not hold, obviously, account of the illustrated or metaphorical direction of the term, for example, like that of conflict of devoirs" , " conflict of horaires" and " conflicts of intérêts" , etc It does not take account also of vague competitions, the competitions, the dissensions and antagonisms which does not give place to a clash.

The conflict thus means the clash between wills. In the beginning, this term meant, therefore, confrontation of two forces which are tested. One will not by the way speak about conflict in connection with the clash of a stone, but only, in the event of the presence of two wills animated by a hostile intention, at least, on behalf of the one of it. Any conflict thus tends to reduce all the relationship to those between friend and enemy. However the simple aggressive provision is not, in itself, a conflict. It can have Agressivité without conflict, for example, during an sporting event. It is only when aggressiveness becomes malevolent that it can degenerate into conflict. It is to be underlined the difference between " dynamisme" and " agressivité" on the basis of hostile intention.

The object of the conflict is, in general, a right questioned, for example, during a crisis, either that it is injured, ignored or ridiculed " The conflict caused by a purely free violence is rare. Most of the time, the protagonists defend a right on space (piece of field in the peasants, territory to be organized politically, in the case of a war of independence, free access, etc), a right to better living conditions and for righter reports/ratios, etc With physical space and the right, it is necessary to underline the value symbolic system given by the system of representation of use. It is what was named previously of " sensibilités" and " mentalités" clean at each time.

It is precisely because the right is in the middle of the conflict which it can also provide the solution, if not this one would remain precarious, like plated outside, This solution is, either to concede the claimed right, or to modify the importance which is granted to him by training and refitting of the context or " recadrage" in which the same situation appears with new significances and new values under this new lighting. It is one of the techniques used also in the family systemic Thérapies.

The situation develops if the other solutions appear inoperative or do not respect some limiting tolerable, that it is of arbitration, mediation, of the negotiation, etc D'ailleurs, as long as the conflict lasts, adversaries cease taking advantage of their rights, while re-sifting the wrongs of the other. A conflict is completed or by the triumph of the one of the parts which imposes its rights to the other, or by the mutual recognition of the respective rights, either by following a legal decision, or under the terms of a mutual agreement with the exhaustion of the protagonists.

To arrive to his ends, the man of the conflict brings into play man power, material and psychological that it has at his disposal and that it controls. What means that it can carry out the fight until the destruction of the other. Also, could not one confuse conflict with ludic competition. The play is defined by rules imposed in advance, because they institute it. Thus, can one repeat a play as much once than it is wished. Moreover, the play activity proceeds in a closed field, its duration is fixed as well as the number of participants, the criteria which after certain given designates the winner. All is regulated. It was the " war in dentelles".

To channel the overflows of violence of the conflict, the war is a rule of law where the force of the right has precedence the right of the force of the conflict at the pure state which is of another nature, although it can comprise ludic elements. Its duration depends on the capacity of resistance of the combatants. It unceasingly creates its own standards during the climbing to the extreme, indefinite, which exhausts the resources of the adversary, so that the triumph of is in the exhaustion of the other. For the rigor, any means can be used, provided that it is effective in the cost ratio/performance. The conflict is a test of violences which tries to dismantle a given power struggle, as well as the right devotes it, in order to found another report/ratio which the triumph will sanctify juridically. It is the war designed with the manner of Clausewitz, like the unlimited use of the rough force.

In the light of these considerations which show that the concept of conflict does not belong, conceptually, with that of the crisis which is a sign of disorder, disorder and not of a hostility. Thus considered, a crisis can develop without never giving place to a conflict, because what characterizes, conceptually, a crisis is the competition between the people, neither even a competition in connection with objects, nor, in general, the fight, but the distress of the spirits, a Anomie psychological and social, diverted by options contradictory, in the Paradoxes and double constraint, subjected to divergent requirements and constrained to decide in the hesitation and the inconsistency.

The crisis, finally, translated and expresses a deficiency of the authority, which it is about the authority of the values, of that of an economic system, religious doctrines or a political regime. In other words, any crisis is a crisis of authority, if it is true that the presence of a hierarchy, of a differentiation, is making safe. The mimetic Désir of Rene Girard starts the crisis by lack of differentiation in imitations, crisis solved by the sacrifice of the emissary Victime to bring back social peace, in violence and crowned.

The bipolarisation and the conflict

As the crisis does not evolve of itself to the conflict, it is with the intervention of the deliberate intention or not agents of the crisis which it is necessary to charge the passage at the conflict state. The cardinal moment relates to the appearance or the premeditated introduction of the hostile intention which causes of bipolariser the relations by the opposition between friend and enemy. The conflict appears, under these conditions, as a solution of the crisis, by differentiation, or at least, like a means to put an end to it, because one fixing on an enemy, it reintroduces a certainty, an insurance, that of an idea and men to be fought whom it makes responsible for the situation ambiguity. Then, the sacrifice of the emissary Victime makes the economy of the surge of violences of a conflict.

As soon as the bipolarisation by division of the groups as friends and enemies intervenes, the crisis completely changes aspect, it almost ceases being still a crisis, since with the enemy nomination, uncertainties and the instability which characterize it disappear. This disappearance can also be done by the imaginary culprit nomination most obvious by their weakest statute and appearance and, preferably, to avoid a bloody conflict with enemies coriaces.

Us able to answer the initial question here " Why certain crises give place to conflict deflagrations? Which are the differences and the similarities between the crisis and the conflict? " So certain crises give place to conflicts and not of others, it is because in the first case appeared the hostile intention which introduces the bipolarisation as an enemy friend/, essential to any will to fight.

The bipolarisation can be deliberated on behalf of the groups which, by tactic, artificially cause a crisis which they make evolve to a conflict, in order to draw some from the advantages. One can find many examples under the German year 20-30, Weimar Republic, resistible rise of the Hitler Chancellor.

The third included

One can make the counter-proof of the preceding designs. If the third Mediator, observer and witness manages to maintain his rights or to express its force, the crisis cannot evolve to the conflict. The presence of the third, making obstacle or failure with the possible bipolarisation. Let us ask the modern history the illustrations Game theory of John von Neumann.

The occupation of the demilitarized zone by Hitler in 1936 was at the origin of a deep crisis in international relations. This crisis evolved to the conflict only under well defined conditions in 1939. Indeed, the crisis excluded the conflict as long as England remained decided to play the part of third, which on both sides, it was necessary to take into account (naval Agreement germano-British, mediation of Lord Runciman, voyages of Chamberlain in Germany, etc). The war bursts as soon as the English gave up playing the part of the third, by joining one of the two camps, virtually enemy. Consequently, one was in front of the situation traditional polemogene by bipolarisation. The war became of as much inevitable than one of the virtual enemies had succeeded in neutralizing the other possible third, the Soviet Union by signing with Stalin a " prétendu" non-aggression pact.

There would be to say much to say on the place of the third, to start with the fact that the sociological relation has as a numerical base the figure " 3". The third fills in the company of the various functions, as well pacificatory irenogenes as quarrelsome polemogenes. It can be the referee, the mediator, the intermediary, the judge, the condition of objectivity, the instigator of disorders the third small drainage canal, the divider, etc In general, the stable companies make a place essential with the third, for example the feudal system under cover of the three orders and the commercial system Chinese via the " Comprador ", which is the trans-actor of any trade, the sales representative. Lastly, there are the third of Montesquieu and the third state, the third of any democracy parliamentary of the legislative powers, executive and legal. The introduction of the Third state started the crisis of the French revolution of 1789 and destabilized the order of the Old Mode.

There is the third of Girard in the mimetic Désir, the third of Freud and Karl Marx in a mediating mésostructure of an infrastructure to a superstructure. The third is at the same time pacificatory irenogene and destabilizer.

When a crisis leads to a conflict which can lead to a " catastrophe" total destructuration. It is, then, the relation between Crise and catastrophe. One finds many examples on the plans biomedical and psychological and in international relations of this relation between crisis and conflict ert crisis and catastrophe.

Conclusion

In the social interactions, the inclusion of the third causes a crisis and its exclusion develops the crisis in conflict. This laconic proposal calls for some observations on the transition from the crisis to the conflict which combines, in general, the circumstances and the will of the actors. It is necessary however to insist on two points.

- First of all the transformation of a crisis into conflict operates a selection among the circumstances, the paradoxes and contradictions which nourish the crisis. In general, the conflict does not cover all the crisis, it integrates only certain elements and aspects of them by neglecting the others. It is not as a whole that a crisis becomes conflict, but partially. Consequently, crisis and conflict do not have same dimension. Because to give to the competition the intensity able to mobilize energies, the conflict selects the paradoxes and contradictions which are most easily let polarize in binary oppositions revealed in the Théorie of the contexts and it ignores the circumstances. This limitation makes it possible to better control the situation, essential condition of the effectiveness in the fight against the development of a crisis in conflict.

- A conflict almost always transforms a crisis into a political matter, esthetic crisis of the iconoclastie or Iconoclasme with the VII-IX century with Byzance, crisis religious of the Réforme Lutheran.

See too

The relationship between the concepts of Crisis and Conflict in the optics which is presented here, was stated initially in a study of the conceptual bases had in Jose Rodrigues back Santos, (Professor á Military academy of Lisbon and Université of Évora, Portugal), presented, under an identical title, at the School of Summer " Semantics One the Web" , Universitá degli Studi, San Marino, August 2000. It was integrated, in November 2001, in the final report of the research financed by the Head office Armament (DGA) of the Ministry for French Defense, entitled " Crisis, Conflict, transaction ". These documents, not published, are available at the DGA. This one also supported, thereafter, work of J. Marguin, mentioned here.

External bonds

systemic Approach of the crises and assistance to the strategic decision by Jean Marguin, Foundation for Strategic Research.

Bibliographical references

Thanh H. Vuong, “Theory of the contexts and international relations: departure of the first War of Indochine" , in International studies, vol. XVII, No 3, p, 571-597, September 1986

Thanh H. Vuong, " colonizations of Vietnam and colonialism vietnamien" , in International studies, vol. XVIII, No 3 pp. 546-571, September 1987.

Thanh H. Vuong, " Technical-commercial strategies asiatiques" , in International studies, vol. XXII, No.3, pp. 551-575, September 1991.

Thanh H. Vuong & Jorge Virchez, " Economic community of Pacific Asia. Economic test of anthropolgie and geography politique" , Presses Inter Academics, Cape Red, QC, 2004.

Anthony Wilden, " System and structure. Tests on the communication and the échange" , Boreal Express train, Montreal, 1983.

Anthony Wilden, “The Rules are No Range. The Strategy off Communication”, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London & New York, 1987.

Anthony Wilden, “Man and Woman, War and Peace. The Strategist' S Companion”, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London & New York, 1987

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