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Diplomacy

Diplomacy

:This page is about negotiations; for the board game, see Diplomacy (game). Diplomacy (game), is the largest international diplomatic organization.]] Diplomacy is the art and practice of conducting negotiations between accredited persons (the diploma of the diplomat) representing groups or nations. It usually refers to international diplomacy, the conduct of international relations through the intercession of professional diplomats with regard to issues of peace-making, culture, economics, trade and war. International treaties are usually negotiated by diplomats prior to endorsement by national politicians. In an informal or social sense, diplomacy is the employment of tact to gain strategic advantage, one set of tools being the phrasing of statements in a non-confrontational, or social manner.

Overview

There are two major forms of diplomacy. The simplest and the oldest is bilateral diplomacy between two states. Bilateral diplomacy is still common with many treaties between two states (e.g. the Canadian-American Free Trade Agreement), and it is the main concern of embassies and state visits. The other form of diploma]] involving many states. Formal multilateral diplomacy is normally dated to the Congress of Vienna in the nineteenth century. Since then, multilateralism has grown in importance. Today most trade treaties, such as the WTO and FTAA, arms control agreements, such as the Partial Test Ban Treaty and Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and environmental agreements, such as the Kyoto Accord, are multilateral. The United Nations is the most important institution of multilateral diplomacy. There is a third form of diplomacy, a variant of multilateral diplomacy called regional diplomacy; that is, multilateral diplomacy that is practiced within a closed circle of geographic neighbors. We might call it 'multilateral diplomacy among intimates'. Since neighborhood is a fact of life, regional diplomacy involves a close blend of the bilateral and the limited group multilateral methods in pursuit of mutual interests.

Diplomats and diplomatic missions

A diplomat is someone involved in diplomacy; the collective term for a group of diplomats from a single country is a diplomatic mission. An ambassador is the most senior diplomatic rank; a diplomatic mission headed by an ambassador is known as an embassy. The collective body of all diplomats resident in a particular country is called a diplomatic corps. (See also diplomatic rank.) There is also the unrecognised, but often used rank of Diplobrat for the children of Diplomats.

History

The ability to practice diplomacy is one of the defining elements of a state, and diplomacy has been practiced since the first city-states were formed millennia ago. For the majority of human history diplomats were sent only for specific negotiations, and would return immediately after their mission concluded. Diplomats were usually relatives of the ruling family or of very high rank in order to give them legitimacy when they sought to negotiate with the other state. One notable exception involved the relationship between the Pope and the Byzantine Emperor; papal agents, called apocrisiarii, were permanently resident in Constantinople. After the 8th century, however, conflicts between the Pope and Emperor (such as the Iconoclastic controversy) led to the breaking of close ties. Modern diplomacy's origins are often traced to the states of Northern Italy in the early Renaissance, with the first embassies being established in the thirteenth century. Milan played a leading role, especially under Francesco Sforza who established permanent embassies to the other cities states of Northern Italy. It was in Italy that many of the traditions of modern diplomacy began, such as the presentation of an ambassadors credentials to the head of state. From Italy the practice was spread to the other European powers. Milan was the first to send a representative to the court of France in 1455. However, Milan refused to host French representatives fearing espionage and that the French representative would intervene in its internal affairs. As foreign powers such as France and Spain became increasingly involved in Italian politics the need to accept emissaries was recognized. Soon the major European power were exchanging representatives. Spain was the first to send a permanent representative; it appointed an ambassador to the Court of England in 1487. By the late 16th century, permanent missions became customary. The Holy Roman Emperor, however, did not regularly send permanent legates, as they could not represent the interests of all the German princes (who were in theory subordinate to the Emperor, but in practice independent). During that period the rules of modern diplomacy were further developed. The top rank of representatives was an ambassador. At that time an ambassador was a nobleman, the rank of the noble assigned varying with the prestige of the country he was delegated to. Strict standards developed for ambassadors, requiring they have large residences, host lavish parties, and play an important role in the court life of their host nation. In Rome, the most prized posting for a Catholic ambassador, the French and Spanish representatives would have a retinue of up to a hundred. Even in smaller posting ambassadors were very expensive. Smaller states would send and receive envoys, who were a rung below ambassador. Somewhere between the two was the position of minister plenipotentiary. Diplomacy was a complex affair, even more so than now. The ambassadors from each state were ranked by complex levels of precedence that were much disputed. States were normally ranked by the title of the sovereign; for Catholic nations the emissary from the Vatican was paramount, then those from the kingdoms, then those from duchies and principalities. Representatives from republics were considered the lowest of the low. Determining precedence between two kingdoms depended on a number of factors that often fluctuated, leading to near constant squabbling. republic is considered one of the most skilled diplomats of all time]] Ambassadors, nobles with little foreign experience and no expectation of a career in diplomacy, needed to be supported by large embassy staff. These professionals would be sent on longer assignments and would be far more knowledgeable than the higher-ranking officials about the host country. Embassy staff would include a wide range of employees, including some dedicated to espionage. The need for skilled individuals to staff embassies was met by the graduates of universities, and this led to a great increase in the study of international law, modern languages, and history at universities throughout Europe. At the same time, permanent foreign ministries began to be established in almost all European states to coordinate embassies and their staffs. These ministries were still far from their modern form, and many of them had extraneous internal responsibilities. Britain had two departments with frequently overlapping powers until 1782. They were also far smaller; France, which boasted the largest foreign affairs department, had only some 70 full-time employees in the 1780s. The elements of modern diplomacy slowly spread to Eastern Europe and Russia, arriving by the early eighteenth century. The entire edifice would be greatly disrupted by the French Revolution and the subsequent years of warfare. The revolution would see commoners take over the diplomacy of the French state, and of those conquered by revolutionary armies. Ranks of precedence were abolished. Napoleon also refused to acknowledge diplomatic immunity, imprisoning several British diplomats accused of scheming against France. He had no time for the often slow moving process of formal diplomacy. After the fall of Napoleon, the Congress of Vienna of 1815 established an international system of diplomatic rank. Disputes on precedence among nations (and therefore the appropriate diplomatic ranks used) persisted for over a century until after World War II, when the rank of ambassador became the norm. Diplomatic traditions outside of Europe were very different. A feature necessary for diplomacy is the existence of a number of states of somewhat equal power, as existed in Italy during the Renaissance, and in Europe for much of the modern period. By contrast in Asia and the Middle East, China and the Ottoman Empire were reluctant to practice bilateral diplomacy as they viewed themselves to be unquestionably superior to all their neighbours. The Ottomans, for instance, would not send missions to other states, expecting representatives to come to Constantinople. It would not be until the nineteenth century that the Empire established permanent embassies in other capitals. As European power spread around the world in the eighteenth and nineteenth century so too did its diplomatic system.

Diplomatic immunity

The sanctity of diplomats has long been observed. This sanctity has come to be known as diplomatic immunity. While there have been a number of cases where diplomats have been killed, this is normally viewed as a great breach of honour. Genghis Khan and the Mongols were well known for strongly insisting on the rights of diplomats, and they would often wreak horrific vengeance against any state that violated these rights. Diplomatic rights were established in the mid-seventeenth century in Europe and have spread throughout the world. These rights were formalized by the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which protects diplomats from being persecuted or prosecuted while on a diplomatic mission. If a diplomat does commit a serious crime while in a host country s/he may be expelled. Such diplomats are then often tried for the crime in their homeland. Diplomatic communications are also viewed as sacrosanct, and diplomats have long been allowed to carry documents across borders without being searched. The mechanism for this is the so-called "diplomatic bag" (or, in some countries, the "diplomatic pouch"). In recent years, however, signals intelligence has led to this use of diplomatic bags being largely discarded. In times of hostility, diplomats are often withdrawn for reasons of personal safety, and in some cases when the host country is friendly but there is a perceived threat from internal dissidents. Ambassadors and other diplomats are also sometimes recalled by their home countries as a way to express displeasure with the host country. In both cases, lower-level employees remain to actually do the business of diplomacy.

Diplomats as a guarantee

The Middle East and other parts of the world had a very different tradition. In the Ottoman Empire, Persia and other states diplomats were seen as a guarantee of good behaviour. If a nation broke a treaty or if their nationals misbehaved the diplomats would be punished. Diplomats were thus used as an enforcement mechanism on treaties and international law. To ensure that punishing a diplomat mattered rulers insisted on high-ranking figures. This tradition is seen by many as the basis of the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis . In imitation of previous practices supporters of the Iranian Revolution attempted to punish the United States for its misdeeds by holding their diplomats hostage. Diplomats as a guarantee were also employed sometimes in pre-modern Europe and other parts of Asia.

Diplomacy and espionage

Diplomacy is closely linked to espionage. Embassies are bases for both diplomats and spies, and some diplomats are essentially openly-acknowledged spies. For instance, the job of military attachés includes learning as much as possible about the military of the nation to which they are assigned. They do not try to hide this role and, as such, are only invited to events allowed by their hosts, such as military parades or air shows. There are also deep-cover spies operating in many embassies. These individuals are given fake positions at the embassy, but their main task is to illegally gather intelligence, usually by coordinating spy-rings of locals or other spies. For the most part, spies operating out of embassies gather little intelligence themselves and their identities tend to be known by the opposition. If discovered, these diplomats can be expelled from an embassy, but for the most part counter-intelligence agencies prefer to keep these agents in situ and under close monitoring. The information gathered by spies plays an increasingly important role in diplomacy. Arms-control treaties would be impossible without the power of reconnaissance satellites and agents to monitor compliance. Information gleaned from espionage is useful in almost all forms of diplomacy, everything from trade agreements to border disputes.

Diplomatic recognition

Diplomatic recognition is an important factor in determining whether a nation is an independent state. Receiving recognition is often difficult, even for countries which are fully sovereign. For many decades after becoming independent, even many of the closest allies of the Republic of the Netherlands refused to grant it full recognition. Today there are a number of independent entities without widespread diplomatic recognition, most notably the Republic of China on Taiwan. Since the 1970's, most nations have stopped officially recognizing the ROC's existence on Taiwan, at the insistence of the People's Republic of China. Currently, the United States and other nations maintain informal relations through de facto embassies, with names such as the American Institute in Taiwan. Similarly, Taiwan's de facto embassies abroad are known by names such as the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office. This was not always the case, with the US maintaining official diplomatic ties with Taiwan until 1979, when these relations were broken off as a condition for establishing official relations with China. Other unrecognized countries include Abkhazia, Transnistria, Somaliland, Nagorno Karabakh, and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. Lacking the economic and political importance of Taiwan, these nations tend to be much more diplomatically isolated. Though used as a factor in judging sovereignty, Article 3 of the Montevideo Convention states, "The political existence of the state is independent of recognition by other states."

Informal diplomacy

Informal diplomacy (sometimes called Track II diplomacy) has been used for centuries to communicate between powers. Most diplomats work to recruit figures in other nations who might be able to give informal access to a county's leadership. In some situations, such as between the United States and the People's Republic of China a large amount of diplomacy is done through semi-formal channels using interlocutors such as academic members of thinktanks. This occurs in situations where governments wish to express intentions or to suggest methods of resolving a diplomatic situation, but do not wish to express a formal position. Track II diplomacy is a specific kind of informal diplomacy, in which non-officials (academic scholars, retired civil and military officials, public figures, social activists) engage in dialogue, with the aim of conflict resolution, or confidence-building. Sometimes governments may fund such Track II exchanges. Sometimes the exchanges may have no connection at all with governments, or may even act in defiance of governments; such exchanges are called Track III.

References

- A Guide to Diplomatic Practice by Sir Ernest Satow, Longmans, Green & Co. London & New York, 1917. A standard reference work used in many embassies across the world (though not British ones). Now in its fifth edition (1998) ISBN 0582501091
- Diplomacy: Theory & Practice, 3rd edition, by GR Berridge, Palgrave, Basingstoke, 2005, ISBN 1-4039-9311-4
- Journey to Become a Diplomat: With a Guide to Careers in World Affairs by George Cunningham, FPA Global Vision Books 2005, ISBN 0871242125
- Inside a U.S. Embassy: How the Foreign Service Works for America by Shawn Dorman (Editor), American Foreign Service Association, Second edition February 2003, ISBN 0964948826

External links

- [http://www.ediplomat.com/ eDiplomat.com - Global Portal for Diplomats]
- [http://foia.state.gov/masterdocs/05fah01/CH0610.pdf U.S. Dept. of State Foreign Affairs Handbook: Using Diplomatic Notes]
- [http://www.un.org/english/ The United Nations]
- [http://fletcher.tufts.edu/ Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy]
- [http://www.georgetown.edu/sfs/ Georgetown University School of Foreign Service]
- [http://www.gwu.edu/~elliott/ The George Washington University Elliott School of International Affairs] category:Diplomacy ja:外交

Diplomacy game

Diplomacy is a board game, war game, and strategy game set in Europe in the era before the beginning of World War I. From two to seven may play, but the game dynamics are best with seven. Each player controls the armed forces of one of the pre-WWI European powers: England, France, Germany, Italy, Austria-Hungary, Russia, and Turkey. Players move armies and fleets across the board, forging and breaking alliances along the way. The game ends by agreement among all surviving players, or when one player wins by gaining control of more than half of the continent. Diplomacy is a registered trademark of Avalon Hill. Avalon Hill

Equipment

Each player begins the game with three units (armies and fleets) of their own color, except Russia, which has four units, two armies and two fleets. The board is a map of Europe showing political boundaries as they existed at the beginning of the 20th century, divided into fifty-six land regions and nineteen sea regions. Only one unit at a time may occupy a region. Thirty-four of the land regions contain supply centers, that is, major centers of industry or commerce. Victory is achieved by controlling eighteen of the thirty-four supply centers. For each supply center a player controls, he or she may build and maintain one unit on the board. (If a player is entitled to build a unit for which there is no available game piece, any marker may substitute.)

The play

The game mechanics are relatively simple. Unlike in similar games, players do not individually take turns. Instead, before each move, there is a negotiation period in which the players entice, wheedle, bluff, cajole, and threaten each other in an attempt to form favorable partnerships. Secret negotiations and secret agreements are explicitly allowed, but no agreements of any kind are enforceable. After the negotiation period is over, players secretly write orders for each unit and these orders are revealed simultaneously. All moves are then simultaneously executed and any conflicts are resolved as described below. On each turn, each unit may hold in place or move to an adjacent region, with the restriction that armies may only occupy land regions, and fleets may only occupy sea regions and land regions which border the sea. A unit which holds in place may additionally support an action in a region to which it could have moved. Finally, a fleet which holds in place may (in lieu of supporting an action) convoy an army across a sea region from one land region to another. When two units attempt to occupy the same region, the one with more support wins. There are no dice involved. The greatest concentration of force is always victorious; if the forces are equal a standoff results and the units remain in their original positions. If a supporting unit is attacked (except by the unit against which the support is directed), the support is nullified, which allows units to affect the outcome of conflicts in regions not directly adjacent. Occasionally these conceptually simple rules result in situations which are difficult to adjudicate, or even paradoxical. Therefore the official rules contain comprehensive details and examples. Also, one person may be designated as Game Master to execute moves and adjudicate disputes, although this is rarely necessary, either in friendly games or in tournaments. The turns are designated alternately as Spring and Fall moves, by convention beginning in the year 1901. (The beginning boundaries of the great powers on the Diplomacy map are from 1914, not 1901, but numbering the years that way makes it easier to count the turns.) Supply centers do not change hands in the Spring. After each Fall move, occupied supply centers become owned by the occupying player. At that point players with fewer supply centers than units on the board must disband units, while players with more supply centers than units on the board are entitled to build units.

Strategy

Because numerical superiority is crucial to success, alliances are vital in Diplomacy. Each country is initially roughly equal in strength, so it is very difficult to gain territory except by attacking with the support of a neighbor. The excitement of the game is less in the tactics than in negotiation, coalition-building, and intrigue. Each player's social and interpersonal skills are at least as important to the game as the player's strategic abilities. Diplomacy commands a respect among aficionados of multiplayer games similar to the respect accorded to chess among two-player games. Most multi-player games can't help but involve coalition-building to some degree, but only in Diplomacy is the negotiation so critical and so multi-faceted. The game can't be won by going it alone, except in a last mad dash of aggression from a strong position. In the mean time one makes compromises and promises to one's allies while spreading fear and misinformation among one's enemies. And the attacking of one's allies (or the "stab") has a central role in the culture of Diplomacy. A stab can be crucial to victory, but may have negative repercussions in interpersonal relations. All of the countries on the map have a real chance for success if played properly. Each power requires a different style of play. Italy and Austria-Hungary are often thought to be the weakest as they have many neighbors and can be eliminated early, but if they survive the starting phase of the game, their central position can be a great advantage. England and Turkey are generally reckoned to be the easiest to defend. Under Calhamer scoring (where an outright victory is worth one point and participants in a draw split the point equally) Russia and France typically score the most points, Italy and Austria-Hungary the fewest. There is a natural buffer of spaces without supply centers between the western and eastern halves of the board. Therefore the first few turns of a game usually break down into fighting amongst the western powers (England, France, Germany) and eastern powers (Russia, Austria-Hungary, Turkey) for dominance in their areas followed by a break out based on the results. Italy is a wild card with a relatively weak position, though if it commits to an alliance in either of the two threesomes, the alliance can be pivotal. One fascinating aspect of Diplomacy is that in many circles cheating is not only allowed, but also actively encouraged. Players are allowed and expected to move pieces between turns, add extra armies, listen in to private conversations, change other players' written move orders and just about anything else they can get away with. In tournament play, however, these forms of cheating are generally prohibited, leaving only the lying and backstabbing which is prevalent wherever Diplomacy is played.

Variants

Fans of the game have created a myriad of variants, using altered rules on the standard map, standard rules on a different map, or both. An index of over a thousand variants is available at the Diplomacy Variant Bank web site (see External links, below).

Where to play

Unfortunately, it is difficult to organize a full face-to-face game. There must be exactly seven players, and with six or fewer the game may become stagnant and predictable. Also, there is no set time for the game to finish. Tournament games among experts have lasted twelve hours, but even typical games will last four hours or more. To overcome the difficulty of assembling enough players for a sufficiently large block of time, a vibrant play-by-mail game community has developed, using either humans to adjudicate the turns e.g. [http://www.redscape.com Redscape] or automatic adjudicators e.g. njudge. A great way to get into a game is via the queues available via the [http://www.diplom.org/Online Diplomacy Online Resources] page or the [http://www.redscape.com/forum/index.php New Game Openings]via the [http://www.redscape.com/forum/index.php Redscape Forum]. A web interface is in development, but there are already many excellent tools to help assist play, such as [http://www.floc.net floc.net] game pages and DipTool. A popular web based game place is the [http://www.diplom.org/dpjudge DpJudge] which hosts several Diplomacy games, and sports a slick web front-end for both players and game masters in play by email games on a number of servers. The easy to use web interface will let you list available games, login as a power in a game, enter move orders, view map status and send more or less diplomatic messages to the other players in a game. njudge and DpJudge game results are used to create JDPR, the Judge Diplomacy Player Ranking system. This is maintained by Doug Massey, one of the true celebrities of the hobby. [http://www.dipbounced.com/ BOUNCED] provides a noticeably slicker, entirely web-based approach, with a similar interface. [http://www.diplomacy.ca Diplomacy.ca] has been running online Diplomacy via a BBS since 1985 and as a web site since 1999. Despite the length of games, there are those that organize ad-hoc games, and there are also various clubs that have annual tournaments, as well as the World Diplomacy Championship (WDC), played once a year in different places in the world, at which the Diplomacy World Champion is crowned. Diplomacy is sometimes played in high school history classes because of its realistic emulation of events and diplomacy between nations. It helps students better understand the politics involved in World War I and World War II.

Comparison with other war games

Diplomacy differs from the majority of war games in several ways:
- Unit movement is simultaneous, not turn-based - all players secretly write down their moves during a negotiation period, and then all moves are revealed and put into effect simultaneously.
- Social interaction and interpersonal skills make up an essential part of the game play.
- The rules that simulate combat are strategic, abstract, and simple, not tactical, realistic, or complex.
- Combat resolution contains no element of randomness -- no dice are rolled and no cards are shuffled. (Individual players may attempt to incorporate randomness into their choice of moves, as a strategy to prevent their opponents from outguessing them, a strategy suggested by game theory.)

History

Diplomacy was created by Allan B. Calhamer in 1954 and first released commercially in 1959. It has been published since then by Games Research, Avalon Hill, and Hasbro. Since the 1960s, Diplomacy has been played by mail through fanzines. The play-by-mail hobby started in 1963 at virtually the same time by John Boardman in New York and Conrad von Metzke in San Diego independently without either one knowing what the other was doing at the time. Because of this it is truly impossible to know for certain which one came up with the idea first although Boardman is often given credit as the founder of the play-by-mail hobby. More recently, it has become popularly played through e-mail, adjudicated by computer. Also many a game is played online with a human game master. Diplomacy was John F. Kennedy's and, supposedly, Henry Kissinger's favorite game.

Adaptation

Hasbro released a computer game version of Diplomacy in 1999, without much critical or commercial success. Paradox Interactive released a new computer version in 2005. 2005

External links

- Allan B. Calhamer's [http://www.diplomacy-archive.com/resources/calhamer/invention.htm essay on inventing Diplomacy]
- [http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=ah/prod/diplomacy Diplomacy] - page on the Avalon Hill website
- [http://www.diplom.org/ The Diplomatic Pouch] - site with tournament results, player rankings, archive of resources, and webzine with articles
- [http://www.diplomacy.ca Diplomacy.ca] - games, tournaments, player rankings, forums, Standard & Gunboat, online results, automated processing.
- [http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/phpdiplomacy phpDiplomacy] - Internet based implementation of Diplomacy, written in PHP.
- [http://www.redscape.com Redscape] - games, tournaments, player rankings, extensive player forum for maps, variants, strategies and general discussions.
- [http://diplomaticcorps.org Diplomatic Corps] - connecting groups and hobby services from many nations
- [http://www.diplomacyworld.org/ Diplomacy World] - hobby-wide webzine with articles
- [http://www.variantbank.org/ Diplomacy Variant Bank] - listing more than 1,000 variants, many with rules
- [http://diplomiscellany.tripod.com/ Diplomiscellany] - site containing the Model House Rules, articles on gaming philosophy, homepages of several variants, and more
- [http://www.daide.org.uk/index.xml Diplomacy AI Centre] - for automated play using the Diplomacy AI Development Environment (DAIDE)
- [http://www.dipbounced.com/ BOUNCED] - site featuring automated judging and mapmaking for several variants
- [http://www.njudge.org/ Njudge] - an automatic email Diplomacy adjudicator program
- [http://www.diplomatie-online.net Diplomatie Online] - French site, playable online and accepting alls variants. tournaments, player rankings, archives.
- [http://ludomaniac.de Ludomaniac] - German pbem and Hobby site, one of the largest communities in the world
- [http://diplomacy.ogar.org YuDip Hall of Fame] - Serbian pbem and Hobby site, Hall of Fame for Serbia and Montenegro players
- [http://18centres.com 18 Centres] - French pbem and Hobby site with a FTF result database
- [http://www.floc.net floc.net]- a site devoted to presenting the map layouts of 48 different diplomacy servers.
- [http://www.diplodocus.cjb.net/ Diplodocus] - Brazilian site hosting online games and more
- [http://www.moret.pro.br/diplomacia/ Primavera de 1901] - Brazilian site with help for starters on online playing and helpful links
- [http://www.redscape.com Redscape] - another online game site
- [http://ry4an.org/diptutor/ Diplomacy Tutorial] - a beginner focused game rules tutorial
- [http://diplomacy.no/ Norwegian Diplomacy Association]
- [http://diplomacy-bund.de German Diplomacy Association] with a FTF database
- [http://www.casusfoederis.org Casus Foederis] - site offering multilanguage Diplomacy play
- [http://www.lepanto.de Lepanto] - mostly German Diplomacy Games
- [http://www.diplored.org Diplored] - Spanish language Diplomacy community
- [http://asmunder.net/diplomacy/helsinki.php Finnish Diplomacy community]
- [http://www.trygames.com/game.php?aff=searcham&title=Diplomacy Diplomacy Online Game]
- [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38110-2004Nov9.html "World Domination: the Game"] - article in the Washington Post, Nov. 14, 2004
- [http://www.crockford.com/wrrrld/diplomacy.html Conference Map]
- [http://users.ox.ac.uk/~diplo/ Oxford University Diplomacy Society] - site about the organisers of the annual Diplomacy Tournament at OxCon Category:Board games

Negotiation

Negotiation is the process whereby interested parties resolve disputes, agree upon courses of action, bargain for individual or collective advantage, and/or attempt to craft outcomes which serve their mutual interests. It is usually regarded as a form of alternative dispute resolution. Given this definition, one can see negotiation occurring in almost all walks of life, from parenting to the courtroom. In the advocacy approach, a skilled negotiator usually serves as advocate for one party to the negotiation and attempts to obtain the most favorable outcomes possible for that party. In this process the negotiator attempts to determine the minimum outcome(s) the other party is (or parties are) willing to accept, then adjusts her demands accordingly. A "successful" negotiation in the advocacy approach is when the negotiator is able to obtain all or most of the outcomes his party desires, but without driving the other party to permanently break off negotiations. Traditional negotiating is sometimes called win-lose because of the hard-ball style of the negotiators whose motive is to get as much as they can for their side. During the 1960s, Gerard I. Nierenberg, a successful lawyer, was the first to realize the role negotiation plays in resolving disputes in personal, business and international relations. He published a best selling book called "The Art of Negotiation," a classic, which has become the staple and foundation of all future negotiation publications and seminars. He believes that the philosophies of the negotiators determine the direction a negotiation takes. His “Everybody Wins®” philosophy assures that all parties benefit from the negotiation process which also yields more successful outcomes than the adversarial “winner takes all” approach. He also founded [http://www.negotiation.com/ The Negotiation Institute], the world's authority negotiation organization. In the Seventies, practitioners and researchers began to develop win-win approaches to negotiation. Perhaps the best known was articulated in the book Getting to YES by Harvard's Roger Fisher and Bill Ury. This approach, referred to as Principled Negotiation, is also sometimes called mutual gains bargaining. The mutual gains approach has been effectively applied in environmental situations (see Lawrence Susskind) as well as labor relations where the parties (e.g. management and a labor union) frame the negotiation as "problem solving".

3 Phases in Negotiation

A negotiation process can be divided into six steps in three phases:
- Phase 1: Before the Negotiation
- Step 1: Preparing and Planning: In this step, one should gather facts about the other party, learn about the other party’s negotiating style and anticipate other sides position and prioritize issues. To ensure smooth negotiation, one should also prepare alternatives proposals and establish BATNA (the Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement). The most ideal case is to come out with a win-win plan to both parties.
- Phase 2: During the Negotiation
- Step 2: Setting the Tone: In this step, one should firmly state his position and explain his interest on need base.
- Step 3: Exploring Underlying Needs: It is also important to actively listen for facts and reasons behind other party’s position and explore underlying needs of the other party. If conflict exists, try to develop creative alternatives without losing the win-win focus. Neutralize tactic if necessary.
- Step 4: Selecting, Refining, and Crafting an Agreement: It is a step in which both parties present the starting proposal. They should listen for new ideas, think creatively to handle conflict and gain power and create cooperative environment.
- Step 5: Reviewing and Recapping the Agreement: This is the step in which both parties formalize agreement in a written contract or letter of intent.
- Phase 3: After the Negotiation
- Step 6: Reviewing the Negotiation: Reviewing the negotiation helps one to learn the lessons on how to achieve a better outcome. Therefore, one should take the time to review each element and ask oneself, "what went well?" and "what could be improved next time?"

Tactics

There are many tactics used by skilled negotiators, including:
- presenting demands
- deadlines
- good guy/bad guy
- limited authority
- caucusing
- walking out
- concession patterns
- high-ball/low-ball
- intimidation
- getting it in your hands
- fait accompli (what's done is done)
- take it or leave it

Negotiation as a Wikipedia technique of dispute resolution

Wikipedia:Dispute resolution contemplates users negotiating with one another on article talk pages and on user talk pages and as a part of mediation, see Wikipedia:Negotiation

References and further reading

- William Ury, Roger Fisher and Bruce Patton, Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving in, Revised 2nd edition, Penguin USA, 1991, trade paperback, ISBN 0140157352; Houghton Mifflin, April, 1992, hardcover, 200 pages, ISBN 0395631246. The first edition, unrevised, Houghton Mifflin, 1981, hardcover, ISBN 0395317576
- William Ury, Getting Past No: Negotiating Your Way from Confrontation to Cooperation, revised second edition, Bantam, January 1, 1993, trade paperback, ISBN 0553371312; 1st edition under the title, Getting Past No: Negotiating with Difficult People, Bantam, September, 1991, hardcover, 161 pages, ISBN 0553072749
- Gerard I. Nierenberg, The Art of Negotiating: Psychological Strategies for Gaining Advantageous Bargains, Barnes and Noble, (1995), hardcover, 195 pages, ISBN 156619816X
- Leigh L. Thompson, The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator, Prentice Hall 0ct.2000, ISBN 0130179647

External links

- Harvard Program on Negotiation (PON): http://www.pon.harvard.edu/main/home/index.php3
- Negotiation Institute : http://www.negotiation.com
- Interneg e-Negotiation Research Group : http://www.interneg.org
- Negotiation Terms : http://www.how-to-negotiate.com Category:Dispute resolution category:Personal selling Category:Marketing

Diploma

A diploma (from Greek diploma) is a certificate or deed issued by an educational institution, such as a university, that testifies that the recipient has successfully completed a particular course of study, or confers an academic degree. In some countries, such as the United Kingdom and Australia, such a document is called a testamur or testimonium, whilst in Ireland it is generally called a parchment.

As an academic award

In some countries, such as Australia, a diploma is a specific academic award of lower rank than an academic degree. In Ireland a National Diploma is below the standard of the honours bachelor degree, whilst the Higher Diploma is taken after the bachelor degree. In Germany the diploma (in German Diplom) is the standard academic degree, comparable with the Master's degree. In Hong Kong, higher diploma and associate degree are below the standard of the honours bachelor degree. Certificate (not to be confused with postgraduate certificate) and diploma are below the standard of higher diploma and associate degree. Postgraduate Certificates and Postgraduate Diplomas are taken after the bachelor degree, and are more vocational oriented than a master's degree.

Culture

:For other uses of Culture or Cultures, see Culture (disambiguation) The word culture, from the Latin root colere (to inhabit, to cultivate, or to honor), generally refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give such activity significance. Different definitions of "culture" reflect different theoretical orientations for understanding, or criteria for valuing, human activity. Anthropologists most commonly use the term "culture" to refer to the universal human capacity to classify, codify and communicate their experiences symbolically. This capacity is a defining feature of the genus Homo.

Defining culture

Different definitions of culture reflect different theories for understanding - or criteria for valuing - human activity. Sir Edward B. Tylor wrote in 1871 that "culture or civilization, taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society", while a 2002 document from the United Nations agency UNESCO states that culture is the "set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features of society or a social group, and that it encompasses, in addition to art and literature, lifestyles, ways of living together, value systems, traditions and beliefs". http://www.unesco.org/education/imld_2002/unversal_decla.shtml UNESCO, 2002 While these two definitions range widely, they do not exhaust the many uses of this concept - in 1952 Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of more than 200 different definitions of culture in their book, Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions [Kroeber and Kluckhohn, 1952].

Culture as civilization

Many people today use a conception of "culture" that developed in Europe during the 18th and early 19th centuries. This idea of culture then reflected inequalities within European societies, and between European powers and their colonies around the world. It identifies "culture" with "civilization" and contrasts the combined concept with "nature". According to this thinking, one can classify some countries as more civilized than others, and some people as more cultured than others. Thus some cultural theorists have actually tried to eliminate popular or mass culture from the definition of culture. Theorists like Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) or the Leavises regard culture as simply the result of "the best that has been thought and said in the world” (Arnold, 1960: 6), thus labeling anything that doesn't fit into this category as chaos or anarchy. On this account, culture links closely with social cultivation: the progressive refinement of human behavior. Arnold consistently uses the word this way: "...culture being a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world". http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/nonfiction_u/arnoldm_ca/ca_all.html Arnold, 1882 In practice, culture referred to élite goods and activities such as haute cuisine, high fashion or haute couture, museum-caliber art and classical music, and the word cultured described people who knew about, and took part in, these activities. For example, someone who used 'culture' in the sense of 'cultivation' might argue that classical music "is" more refined than music produced by working-class people such as punk rock or than the indigenous music traditions of aboriginal peoples of Australia. People who use "culture" in this way tend not to use it in the plural as "cultures". They do not believe that distinct cultures exist, each with their own internal logic and values; but rather that only a single standard of refinement suffices, against which one can measure all groups. Thus, according to this worldview, people with different customs from those who regard themselves as cultured do not usually count as "having a different culture"; but class as "uncultured". People lacking "culture" often seemed more "natural", and observers often defended (or criticized) elements of high culture for repressing "human nature". From the 18th century onwards, some social critics have accepted this contrast between cultured and uncultured, but have stressed the interpretation of refinement and of sophistication as corrupting and unnatural developments which obscure and distort people's essential nature. On this account, folk music (as produced by working-class people) honestly expresses a natural way of life, and classical music seems superficial and decadent. Equally, this view often portrays non-Western people as 'noble savages' living authentic unblemished lives, uncomplicated and uncorrupted by the highly-stratified capitalist systems of the West. Today most social scientists reject the monadic conception of culture, and the opposition of culture to nature. They recognize non-élites as just as cultured as élites (and non-Westerners as just as civilized) - simply regarding them as just cultured in a different way. Thus social observers contrast the "high" culture of élites to "popular" or pop culture, meaning goods and activities produced for, and consumed by, non-élite people or the masses. (Note that some classifications relegate both high and low cultures to the status of subcultures.)

Culture as worldview

During the Romantic era, scholars in Germany, especially those concerned with nationalist movements - such as the nationalist struggle to create a "Germany" out of diverse principalities, and the nationalist struggles by ethnic minorities against the Austro-Hungarian Empire - developed a more inclusive notion of culture as "worldview". In this mode of thought, a distinct and incommensurable world view characterizes each ethnic group. Although more inclusive than earlier views, this approach to culture still allowed for distinctions between "civilized" and "primitive" or "tribal" cultures. By the late 19th century, anthropologists had adopted and adapted the term culture to a broader definition that they could apply to a wider variety of societies. Attentive to the theory of evolution, they assumed that all human beings evolved equally, and that the fact that all humans have cultures must in some way result from human evolution. They also showed some reluctance to use biological evolution to explain differences between specific cultures - an approach that either exemplified a form of, or legitimized forms of, racism. They believed that biological evolution would produce a most inclusive notion of culture, a concept that anthropologists could apply equally to non-literate and to literate societies, or to nomadic and to sedentary societies. They argued that through the course of their evolution, human beings evolved a universal human capacity to classify experiences, and to encode and communicate them symbolically. Since human individuals learned and taught these symbolic systems, the systems began to develop independently of biological evolution (in other words, one human being can learn a belief, value, or way of doing something from another, even if the two humans do not share a biological relationship). That this capacity for symbolic thinking and social learning stems from human evolution confounds older arguments about nature versus nurture. Thus Clifford Geertz (1973: 33 ff.) has argued that human physiology and neurology developed in conjunction with the first cultural activities, and Middleton (1990: 17 n.27) concluded that human "'instincts' were culturally formed". People living apart from one another develop unique cultures, but elements of different cultures can easily spread from one group of people to another. Culture changes dynamically and people can (must?) teach and learn culture, making it a potentially rapid form of adaptation to change in physical conditions. Anthropologists view culture as not only as a product of biological evolution but as a supplement to it, as the main means of human adaptation to the world. This view of culture as a symbolic system with adaptive functions, and one which varies from place to place, led anthropologists to conceive of different cultures as defined by distinct patterns (or structures) of enduring, arbitrary, conventional sets of meaning, which took concrete form in a variety of artifacts such as myths and rituals, tools, the design of housing, and the planning of villages. Anthropologists thus distinguish between material culture and symbolic culture, not only because each reflects different kinds of human activity, but also because they constitute different kinds of data that require different methodologies. This view of culture, which came to dominate between World War I and World War II, implied that each culture had bounds and demanded interpretation as a whole, on its own terms. There resulted a belief in cultural relativism; the belief that one had to understand an individual's actions in terms of his or her culture; that one had to understand a specific cultural artifact (a ritual, for example) in terms of the larger symbolic system of which it forms a part. Nevertheless, the belief that culture comprises symbolical codes and can thus pass via teaching from one person to another meant that cultures, although bounded, would change. Cultural change could result from invention and innovation, but it could also result from contact between two cultures. Under peaceful conditions, contact between two cultures can lead to people "borrowing" (really, learning) from one another (diffusion or transculturation). Under conditions of violence or political inequality, however, people of one society can "steal" cultural artifacts from another, or impose cultural artifacts on another (acculturation). Diffusion of innovations theory presents a research-based model for how, when and why people adopt new ideas. All human societies have participated in these processes of diffusion, transculturation, and acculturation, and few anthropologists today see cultures as bounded. Modern anthropologists argue that instead of understanding a cultural artifact in terms of its own culture, one needs to understand it in terms of a broader history involving contact and relations with other cultures. In addition to the aforementioned processes, migration on a major scale has characterized the world, particularly since the days of Columbus. Phenomena such as colonial expansion and forced migration through slavery became prominent. As a result, many societies have become culturally heterogeneous. Some anthropologists have argued nevertheless that some unifying cultural system bound heterogeneous societies, and that it offers advantages to understand heterogenous elements as subcultures. Others have argued that no unifying or coordinating cultural system exists, and that one must understand heterogeneous elements together as forming a multicultural society. The spread of the doctrine of multiculturalism has coincided with a resurgence of identity politics, which involve demands for the recognition of social subgroups' cultural uniqueness. Sociobiologists argue that observers can best understand many aspects of culture in the light of the concept of the meme, first introduced by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. Dawkins suggests the existence of units of culture - memes - roughly analogous to genes in evolutionary biology. Although this view has gained some popular currency, anthropologists generally reject it.

Culture as values, norms, and artifacts

Another common way of understanding culture sees it as consisting of three elements: # values # norms # artifacts. (See Dictionary of Modern Sociology, 1969, 93, cited at [http://www.info.gov.hk/coy/eng/report/doc/Youth_Statistical/2002/app/Chp6_Cultural_Capital.pdf]) Values comprise ideas about what in life seems important. They guide the rest of the culture. Norms consist of expectations of how people will behave in different situations. Each culture has different methods, called sanctions, of enforcing its norms. Sanctions vary with the importance of the norm; norms that a society enforces formally have the status of laws. Artifacts — things, or material culture — derive from the culture's values and norms. Julian Huxley gives a slightly different division, into inter-related "mentifacts", "socifacts" and "artifacts", for ideological, sociological, and technological subsystems respectively. Socialization, in Huxley's view, depends on the belief subsystem. The sociological subsystem governs interaction between people. Material objects and their use make up the technological subsystem. [http://fog.ccsf.cc.ca.us/~aforsber/ccsf/culture_defined.html] As a rule, archeologists focus on material culture whereas cultural anthropologists focus on symbolic culture, although ultimately both groups maintain interests in the relationships between these two dimensions. Moreover, anthropologists understand "culture" to refer not only to consumption goods, but to the general processes which produce such goods and give them meaning, and to the social relationships and practices in which such objects and processes become embedded.

Culture as patterns of products and activities

In the early 20th century, anthropologists understood culture to refer not to a set of discrete products or activities (whether material or symbolic) but rather to underlying patterns of products and activities. Moreover, they assumed that such patterns had clear bounds (thus, some people confuse "culture" with the society that has a particular culture). In the case of smaller societies, in which people merely fell into categories of age, gender, household and descent group, anthropologists believed that people more-or-less shared the same set of values and conventions. In the case of larger societies, in which people undergo further categorization by region, race, ethnicity, and class, anthropologists came to believe that members of the same society often had highly contrasting values and conventions. They thus used the term subculture to identify the cultures of parts of larger societies. Since subcultures reflect the position of a segment of society vis a vis other segments and the society as a whole, they often reveal processes of domination and resistance. The 20th century also saw the popularization of the idea of corporate culture - distinct and malleable within the context of an employing organization or of a workplace.

Culture as Symbols

The symbolic view of culture, the legacy of Clifford Geertz (1973) and Victor Turner (1967), holds symbols to be both the practices of social actors and the context that gives such practices meaning. Anthony P. Cohen (1985) writes of the "symbolic gloss" which allows social actors to use common symbols to communicate and understand each other while still imbuing these symbols with personal significance and meanings. Symbols provide the limits of cultured thought. Members of a culture rely on these symbols to frame their thoughts and expressions in intelligible terms. In short, symbols make culture possible, reproducible and readable. They are the "webs of significance" in Weber's sense that, to quote Pierre Bourdieu (1977), "give regularity, unity and systematicity to the practices of a group...".

Culture as stabilizing mechanism

Modern cultural theory also considers the possibility that (a) culture itself is a product of stabilization tendencies inherent in evolutionary pressures toward self-similarity and self-cognition of societies as wholes, or tribalisms. See Steven Wolfram "A new kind of science" on iterated simple algorithms from genetic unfolding, from which the concept of culture as an operating mechanism can be developed, and Richard Dawkins "The extended phenotype" for discussion of genetic and memetic stability over time, through negative feedback mechanisms, such as Wikipedia.

Cultural change

Cultures, by predisposition, both embrace and resist change dependence of culture traits. For example, men and women have complementary roles in many cultures. One sex might desire changes that affect the other, as happened in the second half of the 20th century in western cultures. Cultural change can come about due to the environment, to inventions (and other internal influences), and to contact with other cultures. For example, the end of the last ice age helped lead to the invention of agriculture, which in its turn brought about many cultural innovations. In diffusion, the form of something moves from one culture to another, but not its meaning. For example, hamburgers, mundane in the United States, seemed exotic when introduced into China. "Stimulus diffusion" refers to an element of one culture leading to an invention in another. Diffusions of innovations theory presents a research-based model for why and when individuals and cultures adopt new ideas, practices, and products. "Acculturation" has different meanings, but in this context refers to replacement of the traits of one culture with those of another, such as happened to certain Native American tribes and to many indigenous peoples across the globe during the process of colonization. Related processes on an individual level include assimilation (adoption of a different culture by an individual) and transculturation.

Propagating culture

Insofar as culture grows and changes naturally within human society, it requires little or no formal propagation. Families or age-based peer-groups will instinctively foster (and develop) their own cultural norms. But few cultures act in such a laissez faire manner. Most societies develop some sort of religion or similar basis for inculcating and preserving established or "correct" cultural behavior. And many societies take the task of education out of the hands of priests and shamans and place it on a wider footing, so that the young (at least) gain a practical and emotional identification with a standardised version of their nurturing culture. Groups of immigrants, exiles, or minorities often form cultural associations or clubs to preserve their own cultural roots in the face of a surrounding (generally more locally-dominant) culture. Thus the world has acquired many Garibaldi Clubs, Pushkin Societies, and underground schools. On a broader scale, many countries market their cultural heritage internationally. This occurs not only in the promotion of tourism (importing money), but also in cultural development abroad (exporting ideas). Note the roles of cultural attachés in embassies and the function of specific organizations devoted to propagating the mother-culture, its language and its ideologies abroad, for example the work of:
- the Alliance française
- the British Council
- the Fulbright Program
- the Goethe-Institut
- the Instituto Cervantes

Cultural studies

Cultural studies developed in the late 20th century, in part through the re-introduction of Marxist thought into sociology, and in part through the articulation of sociology and other academic disciplines such as literary criticism. This movement aimed to focus on the analysis of subcultures in capitalist societies. Following the non-anthropological tradition, cultural studies generally focus on the study of consumption goods (such as fashion, art, and literature). Because the 18th- and 19th-century distinction between "high" and "low" culture seems inappropriate to apply to the mass-produced and mass-marketed consumption goods which cultural studies analyses, these scholars refer instead to "popular culture". Today, some anthropologists have joined the project of cultural studies. Most, however, reject the identification of culture with consumption goods. Furthermore, many now reject the notion of culture as bounded, and consequently reject the notion of subculture. Instead, they see culture as a complex web of shifting patterns that link people in different locales and that link social formations of different scales. According to this view, any group can construct its own cultural identity.

Sample list of cultures

Cultures of contemporary countries and regions

Main article: List of national culture articles.

- Albania
- Angola
- Australia
- Belgium
- Bhutan
- Brazil
- Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Canada
- Quebec
- Political culture of Canada
- Chile
- China
- Hong Kong
- Denmark
- Egypt
- Finland

- France
- Georgia
- Gibraltar
- Greece
- Hungary
- India
- Indonesia
- Ireland
- Israel
- Italy
- Japan
- Jersey
- Korea
- North Korea
- South Korea
- Kuwait
- Lithuania
- Macedonia
- Mexico

- Netherlands
- New Zealand
- Maori culture
- Pakistan
- Peru
- Portugal
- Russia
- South Africa
- Spain
- Sweden
- Switzerland
- Turkey
- United Kingdom
- England
- Northern Ireland
- Scotland
- Wales
- United States

Contemporary local cultures

- Culture of New York City
- Culture of Stockholm
- Culture of Sydney

Other contemporary cultures

- Cassette culture
- Deaf culture
- Drug culture
- Esperanto culture
- Hacker culture
- Queer culture
- Underground culture
- Working-class culture
- Youth culture

Historic cultures

- Assyro-Babylonian culture
- Clovis culture — pre-historic in North America and Central America from about 13,500 years ago
- Indus Valley Culture
- Cemetery H culture
- La Tene culture — from the Iron Age in parts of Europe
- Natufian culture — in the Mediterranean more than 10,000 years ago
- Paideia — Classical Greek culture
- Romanitas — Roman Imperial culture
- Weimar culture
- Western culture

References

- Arnold, Matthew, Culture and Anarchy, 1882. Macmillan and Co., New York. Online at [http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/nonfiction_u/arnoldm_ca/ca_titlepage.html].
- Bourdieu, Pierre. Outline of a Theory of Practice. 1977.
- Cohen, Anthony P. The Symbolic Construction of Community. Routledge: New York, 1995 (1985).
- Geertz, Clifford. (1973). The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York. ISBN 0465097197.
- Hoult, Thomas Ford, ed. (1969). Dictionary of Modern Sociology. Totowa, New Jersey, United States: Littlefield, Adams & Co.
- Kroeber, A. L. and C. Kluckhohn, 1952. Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions. Peabody Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States.
- Middleton, Richard (1990/2002). Studying Popular Music. Philadelphia: Open University Press. ISBN 0335152759.
- [http://anthro.palomar.edu/tutorials/cultural.htm Cultural Anthropology Tutorials], Behavioral Sciences Department, Palomar College, San Marco, California, United States, as of December 12, 2004.
- UNESCO, "[http://www.unesco.org/education/imld_2002/unversal_decla.shtml UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity]", issued on International Mother Language Day, February 21, 2002.

External links

- [http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/cgi-local/DHI/dhi.cgi?id=dv1-72 Dictionary of the History of Ideas:] "Cultural Development" in Antiquity
- [http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/cgi-local/DHI/dhi.cgi?id=dv1-73 Dictionary of the History of Ideas:] "Culture" and "Civilization" in Modern Times
- [http://samvak.tripod.com/class.html Classificatory system for cultures and civilizations], by Dr. Sam Vaknin zh-min-nan:Bûn-hoà ja:文化 simple:Culture

War

A common perception of war is a series of military campaigns between at least two opposing sides involving a dispute over sovereignty, territory, resources, religion or a host of other issues. A war to liberate an occupied country is sometimes characterised as a "war of liberation", while a war between internal elements of the same state may constitute a civil war.

History of war

:Main article: History of warfare War seems as old as human society, and certainly features prominently in the recorded histories of state-cultures. But it is a complex issue. Some hunter-gatherer societies engaged in skirmishes over territory and resources, although many did not. The earliest city states and empire in Mesopotamia became the first to employ standing armies. Organization and structure has since been central to warfare, as illustrated by the success of highly disciplined troops of the Roman Empire. As well as organizational change, technology has played a central role in the evolution of warfare. Inventions created for warfare have also played an important role in other fields. The continued advance of technology has led to an increase in the destructiveness and cost of warfare throughout human history. The study of warfare is known as military history.

Morality of war

military history Throughout history war has been the source of serious moral questions. Although many ancient nations and some more modern ones viewed war as noble, over the sweep of history concerns about the morality of war have gradually increased. Today war is almost unanimously seen as undesirable and morally problematic. Many now believe that wars should only be fought as a last resort. Some, known as pacifists, believe that war is inherently immoral and no war should ever be fought. This position was passionately defended by the Indian leader Mohandas K. Gandhi (called "Mahatma" or "Great Soul"). The negative view of war has not always been held as widely as it is today. Many thinkers, such as Heinrich von Treitschke saw war as humanity's highest activity where courage, honour, and ability were more necessary than in any other endeavour. At the outbreak of World War I the writer Thomas Mann wrote, "Is not peace an element of civil corruption and war a purification, a liberation, an enormous hope?" This attitude was embraced by many societies from Sparta in Ancient Greece and the Ancient Romans to the fascist states of the 1930s. The defeat and repudiation of the fascist states and their militarism in the Second World War, combined with the unquestioned horror of nuclear war have contributed to the current negative view of war. Today, some see only Just Wars as legitimate, and it is the goal of organizations such as the United Nations to unite the world against wars of unjust aggression.

Limitations on war

At times throughout history, societies have attempted to limit the cost of war by formalizing it in some way. Limitations on the targeting of civilians, what type of weapons can be used, and when combat is allowed have all fallen under these rules in different conflicts. Total war is the modern term for the targeting of civilians and the mobilization of an entire society. While culture, law, and religion have all been factors in causing wars, they have also acted as restraints at times. In some cultures, for example, conflicts have been highly ritualized to limit actual loss of life. In modern times, increasing international attention has been paid to peacefully resolving conflicts which lead to war. The United Nations is the latest and most comprehensive attempt to, as stated in the preamble of the [http://www.un.org/aboutun/charter U.N. Charter], "save succeeding generations from the scourge of war." A number of treaties regulate warfare, collectively referred to as the laws of war. The most pervasive of those are the Geneva Conventions, the earliest of which began to take effect in the mid 1800s. Treaty signing has since been a part of international diplomacy, and too many treaties to mention in this scant article have been signed. A couple of examples are: Resolutions of the Geneva International Conference, Geneva, 26 October-29 October 1863 and Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, 75 U.N.T.S. 135, entered into force 21 October 1950. It must be noted that in war such treaties are generally thrown to one side if they interfere with the vital interests of either side; some have criticised such conventions as simply providing a fig leaf for the inhuman practice of war. By only illegalising "war against the rules", it is alleged, such treaties and conventions, in effect, sanction certain types of war.

Redefining "war" for legal reasons

Sometimes the term "war" is restricted by legal definition to those conflicts where one or both belligerents have formally declared war. This has resulted in wars (in the sense defined in the introduction to this article) without formal declaration and combatants who officially choose terms other than "war," such as:
- "armed conflict";
- "state aggression by armed force";
- "police action";
- "crime against international peace". For example, the United States Government referred to the Korean War as a "police action", and the British Government was very careful to use the term "armed conflict" instead of "war" during the Falklands War in 1982 to comply with the letter of international law. Sometimes the term "war" will not be used in order to circumvent national constitutions which restrict the power of the executive to wage war without the agreement of other branches of government.

Causes of war

There is great debate over why wars happen, even when most people do not want them to. Representatives of many different academic disciplines have attempted to explain war.

Historical theories

Historians tend to be reluctant to look for sweeping explanations for all wars. A. J. P. Taylor famously described wars as being like traffic accidents. There are some conditions and situations that make them more likely but there can be no system for predicting where and when each one will occur. Social scientists criticize this approach arguing that at the beginning of every war some leader makes a conscious decision and that they cannot be seen as purely accidental.

Psychological theories

Psychologists such as E.F.M. Durban and John Bowlby have argued that human beings, especially men, are inherently violent. While this violence is repressed in normal society it needs the occasional outlet provided by war. This combines with other notions, such as displacement where a person transfers their grievances into bias and hatred against other ethnic groups, nations, or ideologies. While these theories can explain why wars occur, they do not explain when or how they occur. In addition, they raise the question why there are sometimes long periods of peace and other eras of unending war. If the innate psychology of the human mind is unchanging, these variations are inconsistent. A solution adopted to this problem by militarists such as Franz Alexander is that peace does not really exist. Periods that are seen as peaceful are actually periods of preparation for a later war or when war is suppressed by a state of great power, such as the Pax Britannica. If war is innate to human nature, as is presupposed by many psychological theories, then there is little hope of ever escaping it. One alternative is to argue that war is only, or almost only, a male activity and if human leadership was in female hands wars would not occur. This theory has played an important role in modern feminism. Critics, of course, point to various examples of female political leaders who had no qualms about using military force, such as Margaret Thatcher or Indira Gandhi. Other psychologists have argued that while human temperament allows wars to occur, they only do so when mentally unbalanced men are in control of a nation. This extreme school of thought argues leaders that seek war such as Napoleon, Hitler, and Stalin were mentally abnormal. A distinct branch of the psychological theories of war are the arguments based on evolutionary psychology. This school tends to see war as an extension of animal behaviour, such as territoriality and competition. However, while war has a natural cause, the development of technology has accelerated human destructiveness to a level that is irrational and damaging to the species. We have the same instincts of a chimpanzee but overwhelmingly more power. The earliest advocate of this theory was Konrad Lorenz. These theories have been criticized by scholars such as John G. Kennedy, who argue that the organized, sustained war of humans differs more than just technologically from the territorial fights between animals. In his fictional book Nineteen-Eighty-Four, George Orwell talks about war being used as one of many ways to distract people. War inspires fear and hate among the people of a nation, and gives them a 'legitimate' enemy upon whom they can focus this fear and hate. Thus the people are prevented from seeing that their true enemy is in fact their own repressive government. By this theory, war is another 'opiate of the masses' by which a totalitarian state controls its people and prevents revolution.

Anthropological theories

Several anthropologists take a very different view of war. They see it as fundamentally cultural, learned by nurture rather than nature. Thus if human societies could be reformed, war would disappear. To this school the acceptance of war is inculcated into each of us by the religious, ideological, and nationalistic surroundings in which we live. Many anthropologists also see no links between various forms of violence. They see the fighting of animals, the skirmishes of hunter-gatherer tribes, and the organized warfare of modern societies as distinct phenomena each with their own causes. Theorists such as Ashley Montagu emphasize the top down nature of war, that almost all wars are begun not by popular pressure but by the whims of leaders and that these leaders also work to maintain a system of ideological justifications for war.

Sociological theories

Sociology has long been very concerned with the origins of war, and many thousands of theories have been advanced, many of them contradictory. Some use detailed formulas taking into account hundreds of demographic and economic values to predict when and where wars will break out. The statistical analysis of war was pioneered by Lewis Fry Richardson following World War I. More recent databases of wars and armed conflict have been assembled by the Correlates of War Project, Peter Brecke and the Uppsala Department of Peace and Conflict Research. So far none of these formulas have successfully predicted the outbreak of future conflicts. A detailed study by Michael Haas found that no single variable has a strong correlation to the occurrence of wars. One correlation that has found much support is that states that are democracies do not go to war with each other, an idea known as the democratic peace theory. Many sociologists have attempted to divide wars into types to get better correlations, but this has also produced mixed results. Data looked at by R.J. Rummel has found that civil wars and foreign wars are very different in origin, but Jonathan Wilkenfield using different data found just the opposite. Sociology has thus divided into a number of schools. One based on the works of Eckart Kehr and Hans-Ulrich Wehler sees war as the product of domestic conditions, with only the target of aggression being determined by international realities. Thus World War I was not a product of international disputes, secret treaties, or the balance of power but a product of the economic, social, and political situation within each of the states involved. This differs from the traditional approach of Carl von Clausewitz and Leopold von Ranke that argue it is the decisions of statesmen and the geopolitical situation that leads to war.

Information theories

A popular new approach is to look at the role of information in the outbreak of wars. This theory, advanced by scholars of international relations such as Geoffrey Blainey, argues that all wars are based on a lack of information. If both sides at the outset knew the result neither would fight, the loser would merely surrender and avoid the cost in lives and infrastructure that a war would cause. This is based on the notion that wars are reciprocal, that all wars require both a decision to attack and also a decision to resist attack. This notion is generally agreed to by almost all scholars of war since Clausewitz. This notion is made harder to accept because it is far more common to study the cause of wars rather than events that failed to cause wars, and wars are far more memorable. However, throughout history there are as many invasions and annexations that did not lead to a war, such as the U.S.-led invasion of Haiti in 1994, the Nazi invasions of Austria and Czechoslovakia preceding the Second World War, and the annexation of the Baltic states by the Soviet Union in 1940. On the other hand, Finland's decision to resist a similar Soviet aggression in 1939 led to the Winter War. The leaders of these nations chose not to resist as they saw the potential benefits being not worth the loss of life and destruction such resistance would cause. Lack of information may not only be to who wins in the immediate future. The Norwegian decision to resist the Nazi invasion was taken with the certain knowledge that Norway would fall. The Norwegians did not know whether the German domination would be permanent and also felt that noble resistance would win them favour with the Allies and a position at the peace settlement in the event of an Allied victory. If in 1940 it had been known with certainty the Germans would dominate central Europe for many decades, it is unlikely the Norwegians would have resisted. If it had been known for certainty that the Third Reich would collapse after only a few years of war, the Nazis would not have launched the invasion at all. This theory is predicated on the notion that the outcome of wars is not randomly determined, but fully determined on factors such as doctrine, economies, and power. While purely random events, such as storms or the right person dying at the right time, might have had some effect on history, these only influence a single battle or slightly alter the outcome of a war, but would not mean the difference between victory and defeat. There are two main objectives in the gathering of intelligence. The first is to find out the ability of an enemy, the second their intent. In theory to have enough information to prevent all wars both need to be fully known. The Argentinean dictatorship knew that the United Kingdom had the ability to defeat them, but their intelligence failed them on the question of whether the British would use their power to resist the annexation of the Falklands. The American decision to enter the Vietnam War was made with the full knowledge that the communist forces would resist them, but did not believe that the guerrillas had the capability to long oppose American forces. One major difficulty is that in a conflict of interests, some deception or at least not telling everything, is a standard tactical component on both sides. If you think that you can convince the opponent that you will fight, the opponent might desist. For example, Sweden made efforts to deceive Nazi Germany that it would resist an attack fiercely partly by playing on the myth of Aryan superiority, and by making sure that Hermann Göring only saw Elite troops in action, often dressed up as regular soldiers, when he came to visit.

Economic theories

Another school of thought argues that war can be seen as an outgrowth of economic competition in a chaotic and competitive international system. That wars begin as a pursuit of new markets, of natural resources, and of wealth. Unquestionably a cause of some wars, from the empire building of Britain to the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in pursuit of oil this theory has been applied to many other conflicts including the Iraq invasion of the United States. It is most often advocated by those to the left of the political spectrum who argue that such wars serve only the interests of the wealthy but are fought by the poor.

Marxist theories

The economic theories also form a part of the Marxist theory of war, which argues that all war grows out of the class war. It sees wars as imperial ventures to enhance the power of the ruling class and divide the proletariat of the world by pitting them against each other for contrived ideals such as nationalism or religion. Wars are a natural outgrowth of the free market and class system, and will not disappear until a world revolution occurs.

Types of war and warfare

Smaller armed conflicts are often called riots, rebellions, coups, etc. When one country sends armed forces to another, allegedly to restore order or prevent genocide or other crimes against humanity, or to support a legally recognized government against insurgency, that country sometimes refers to it as a police action. This usage is not always recognized as valid, however, particularly by those who do not accept the connotations of the term. "Conventional warfare" descibes either:
- A war between nation-states
- War where nuclear or biological weapons are not used. (Compare with unconventional warfare and nuclear warfare.) A war where the forces in conflict belong to the same country or empire or other political entity is known as a civil war. Asymmetrical warfare is a conflict between two populations of drastically different levels of military mechanization. This type of war often results in guerrilla tactics. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a common example of asymmetrical warfare.

Geographic warfare

The terrain over which a war is fought has a big impact on the type of combat which takes place. This in turn means that soldiers have to be trained to fight in a specific type of terrain. These include:
- Arctic warfare
- Ski warfare
- Desert warfare
- Jungle warfare
- Naval warfare or Aquatic warfare
- Sub-aquatic warfare
- Mountain warfare (sometimes called alpine warfare)
- Urban warfare
- Air warfare
- Space warfare

References

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External links

- [http://www.warcrimes.info/ Documents and Resources on War, War Crimes and Genocide]
- [http://www.umich.edu/~cowproj/ Correlates of War Project]
- [http://cow2.la.psu.edu/ Correlates of War 2]
- [http://www.inta.gatech.edu/peter/PSS99_paper.html Article by Peter Brecke]
- [http://www.d-n-i.net/fcs/4th_gen_war_gazette.htm The Changing Face of War: Into the Fourth Generation]
- [http://www.pcr.uu.se/ Uppsala Department of Peace and Conflict Research]
- [http://www.unesco.org/shs/human_rights/hrfv.htm 1986 Seville Statement on Violence]
- [http://www.culture-of-peace.info/ssov/title-page.html The Seville Statement on Violence: A Progress Report]
- [http://www.culture-of-peace.info/myth/title-page.html The Myth That War Is Intrinsic to Human Nature Discourages Action for Peace by Young People]
- [http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat1.htm Rough estimates of the number of deaths in various wars and conflicts]
- [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/war/ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry] War Violence ms:Peperangan ja:戦争 simple:War

Treaty

A treaty is a binding agreement under international law concluded by subjects of international law, namely states and international organizations. Treaties can be called by many names: treaties, international agreements, protocols, covenants, conventions, exchanges of letters, exchanges of notes, etc.; however all of these are equally treaties, and the rules are the same regardless of what the treaty is called. Treaties can be loosely compared to contracts: both are means of willing parties assuming obligations among themselves, and a party to either that fails to live up to their obligations can be held legally liable for that breach. The central principle of treaty law is expressed in the maxim pacta sunt servanda--"pacts must be respected."

Vienna Convention

The 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties is the authoritative treaty on the international law of treaties, establishing the procedures by which treaties are adopted, interpreted, and invalidated. It is considered mostly a codification of already existing and binding customary law on treaties, and so aside from some necessary gap-filling and clarification, it is not viewed as a change in existing international law. This means that unlike most treaties, the Vienna Convention could arguably be binding to even non-parties. There is a Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties between States, and on the Law of Treaties between States and International Organizations or between International Organizations. Most states have ratified these treaties. The Vienna Convention on Succession of States with Respect to Treaties has comparatively few parties. Many states reject its provisions as not adequately reflecting the customary international law on the subject.

Consequences of terminology

One significant part of treaty making is that signing a treaty implies recognition that the other side is a sovereign state and that the agreement being considered is enforceable under international law. Hence, nations can be very careful about terming an agreement to be a treaty. For example, within the United States agreements between states are compacts and agreements between states and the federal government or between agencies of the government are memoranda of understanding. Conversely, perhaps the most significant thing about the Anglo-Irish Treaty was that it was explicitly a treaty and hence implied British recognition of Irish sovereignty. Another situation can occur when one party wishes to create an obligation under international law, but the other party does not. Such as the case with the Sino-British Joint Declaration signed between the United Kingdom and the People's Republic of China in 1984. The wording for the document was very carefully designed to make it possible to interpret it either as a treaty or as a communique. Similar factors have been at work with respect to discussions between North Korea and the United States over security guarantees and nuclear proliferation. The terminology can also be confusing because a treaty may and usually is named something other than a treaty, such as a convention, protocol, or simply agreement. Conversely some legal documents such as the Treaty of Waitangi are internationally considered to be documents under domestic law.

Bilateral and multilateral treaties

A multilateral treaty has several parties, and establishes rights and obligations between each party and every other party. Multilateral treaties are often, but not always, open to any state; others are regional. Bilateral treaties by contrast are negotiated between a limited number of states, most commonly only two, est