What is a conflict?
A situation of rivalry concerning a territory.
What forms can a conflict take?
Political, cultural, or other forms.
What is war?
A violent confrontation in which at least two actors seek to settle a dispute through military force.
What is an interstate war?
A military confrontation between different states.
What characterizes a classical interstate war?
It is regular, conventional, and symmetrical.
What three features characterize classical interstate warfare?
It occurs over a defined period, follows rules, and pits states of comparable strength against each other.
What defines asymmetric war?
A conflict between unequally strong forces using different tactics, often a state actor and a non-state actor.
How does guerrilla warfare differ from terrorism?
Guerrilla warfare uses clandestine skirmishes and harassment against an army.
How does terrorism typically create fear?
It targets civilians through attacks, assassinations, or hostage-taking.
What does negative peace mean?
The absence of war despite persistent tensions and conflict.
What does positive peace seek to establish and address?
Durable institutionalized cooperation among state actors and the origins of war.
How does a negotiated peace differ from a classical peace treaty?
An external organization helps arrange it.
What does hybrid war combine?
Conventional operations, asymmetric warfare, cyberwarfare, and tools such as disinformation.
Which work and year present war as politics continued by other means?
Clausewitz, *De la guerre*, 1832.
How does Clausewitz define war as an amplified duel?
Two hostile wills use physical violence to compel the adversary to obey their will.
Which three dimensions of war does Clausewitz distinguish?
The political, strategic, and social dimensions.
What is the difference between Clausewitzian tactics and strategy?
Tactics aim to win a battle; strategy aims to win the war as a whole.
What determines war’s outbreak, conduct, and political outcome for Clausewitz?
Political purposes determine them.
What distinguishes Clausewitz’s absolute war from real war?
Absolute war escalates toward military annihilation; real war is limited by politics, strategy, and friction, or the fog of war.
What military transformation occurred during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars?
Aristocratic warfare was replaced by mass armies and population mobilization.
How is war characterized in its scale and organization?
Direct, massive, and institutionalized.
What limits war in time and space?
War is limited in time and space.
When did human societies begin settling, and when did warfare become systematic?
Human societies began settling in the Neolithic, around 10,000 BC; warfare became systematic as they sought to protect or gain territory.
Which actors can participate in modern conflicts?
Dissident political groups, proxy groups, and private military companies.
What is terrorism?
Violence used for political purposes outside the laws of war to create fear in a country.
What can sustain negative peace besides a balance of power?
The hegemony of one power.
What example of a balance of power sustaining negative peace is given?
The 1815 Treaty of Vienna.
What does collective security seek to establish among actors?
Solidarity that helps ensure lasting peace.
What is common security?
The capacity of actors to cooperate in meeting fundamental human needs.
Who describes positive peace as generalized social appeasement requiring a humanized approach?
Bertrand Badie.
How many armed conflicts did the Oslo peace-research institute cite in 2020?
65 armed conflicts.
How many conflicts did the UN cite in 2025?
130 conflicts.
Which regions form the “Arc of Crises”?
The Middle East and Asia.
How have conflicts in the “Arc of Crises” changed?
They have expanded, become more complex, and become interconnected.
Which continent contains the largest number of armed conflicts?
Africa.
How have interstate wars changed since 1980?
They have declined but have not disappeared.
How have intrastate wars changed since 1990?
They have increased and are especially deadly.
Which author, work, and year describe states as gladiators amid continual suspicion?
Thomas Hobbes, *Léviathan*, 1651.
How should Clausewitz’s account of real war end?
In negotiated peace rather than one side’s absolute victory.
When did the Seven Years’ War take place?
From 1756 to 1763.
What did the French levée en masse require in 1793?
All men of fighting age were sent to defend France’s borders.
What population figures illustrate the growth of military forces from the Seven Years’ War to 1813?
Approximately 50,000 in the Seven Years’ War compared with 200,000 in 1813.
What resources does total war use to achieve victory?
All of a country’s social and military resources.
How many European coalitions did France fight from 1792 to 1815?
Six coalitions.
Why did European powers oppose revolutionary France?
They sought to preserve the balance of power and prevent revolutionary contagion.
Which author argues that terrorist actors shift warfare toward irregular war?
Martin Van Creveld.
How does the course characterize the fronts and borders of irregular wars?
They have no fronts or borders.
What ideology does the course give as an example of an irregular war’s cause?
Islamism.
Who founded Al-Qaeda, and in what year was it founded?
Osama bin Laden founded it in 1988.
In what year was the Peace of Amiens signed between France, England, Spain, and the Batavian Republic?
1802.
Answer 20 questions on HGGSP.
1. A rivalry over a territory is political in one case and cultural in another. What term describes this situation?
2. Two groups dispute control of a region, but neither uses military force. Does this situation meet the definition of war?
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