Conflict

Abstract

A well-known study of the causes of conflict and war focuses on three levels: the individual, the state and the international system [Waltz, 1959].

The twentieth century ended with the herding and murdering of nations in south-central-eastern Europe, where, in the early stages of the Balkan conflict, Bosnian Muslims - the Jews of the late twentieth century - were shot at, herded at gun-point from their burning houses or marched into columns to railway sidings, past rotting corpses, to be trucked off to concentration camps where they were raped or castrated and then made to wait, with bulging eyes and lanternous faces, for the arrival of their own death.

J. Keane, Reflections on Violence, 1996.