Peace describes a condition where conflict is managed without violence, allowing people to live within relationships and institutions that protect their security and dignity. The term remains contested: ending armed violence does not necessarily remove the conditions that caused it.

Negative and positive peace

Negative peace means the absence of direct or organized violence. A ceasefire can create negative peace even if hostility, exclusion and fear continue.

Positive peace exists once the relationships and structures that generate violence have been transformed. Order alone isn't enough. Political participation, justice, rights and fair access to resources must also be addressed.

Positive peace connects peace and conflict with the thematic studies of rights and justice and development and sustainability. Fighting may end while discrimination, poverty and unequal political power remain, leaving peace insecure.

Peace as a balance of power

From a realist perspective, peace rests on a stable balance of power where no actor expects to benefit from attacking another. Deterrence may preserve negative peace, though it relies on credible capabilities and can encourage arms races.

Liberals have greater confidence in institutions, negotiation and interdependence. Constructivists argue that peace becomes more durable when former opponents no longer define each other as enemies, instead developing shared rules and identities.

Political, religious and feminist understandings

Political traditions identify different sources of peace. Realists focus on security and order, while liberals stress cooperation and law. Socialist and postcolonial approaches question whether an apparently peaceful order depends on economic exploitation or inherited domination.

Religious approaches vary too. Christian pacifist traditions may focus on forgiveness and reconciliation. Islamic ideas of peace can link justice to negotiated settlement, while Buddhist approaches may emphasize compassion and restraint. No religion has a single political interpretation, and adherents may disagree over whether force can ever be justified.

A feminist peace perspective considers how militarism and gendered power persist through war and formal peace. Feminist analysts argue that a settlement cannot be fully peaceful while women remain excluded from decision-making, or while domestic and sexual violence continue beneath the level recognized by conventional security policy.

Contemporary examples

The 2016 Colombian peace agreement between the government and the FARC ended much of a long-running armed confrontation and created substantial negative peace. Provisions concerning rural reform, political participation and victims also aimed at positive peace. However, uneven implementation and continued violence by other armed groups show that signing an agreement is not enough.

The 2020 Abraham Accords normalized relations between Israel and several Arab states, including the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. Supporters described the agreements as cooperation backed by changing regional power calculations. Critics argued that interstate normalization neither resolved Palestinian dispossession nor prevented the renewed Israel–Hamas war beginning in 2023, exposing the gap between diplomatic peace and positive peace.

Conflict describes a relationship in which actors see their goals, interests, identities or values as incompatible. It doesn’t automatically involve violence; actors may negotiate, institutionalize or transform it.

Latent and overt conflict

Latent conflict occurs when incompatible interests or grievances exist without developing into open confrontation. Fear, political exclusion or an unequal distribution of power may keep it hidden.

Overt conflict appears openly through visible political confrontation, protest, coercion or armed action. It can remain non-violent, so overt conflict is not simply another name for war.

An event may turn latent conflict into overt conflict by changing actors’ expectations or creating an opportunity to mobilize. An agreement can also suppress open confrontation while leaving the underlying latent dispute unresolved.

Why interpretations differ

Realists often explain conflict as competition for power and security. When one actor tries to become safer, another may feel less secure. This can create a security dilemma even if neither actor originally intended war.

Liberals emphasize weak institutions, limited communication and failed cooperation. In their view, legitimate procedures can direct incompatible claims into elections, courts and negotiations instead of violence.

Constructivists look at how political language and collective identities shape ideas about friends, enemies and acceptable action. Feminist and postcolonial perspectives question whose grievances are recognized as conflict. Tensions affecting marginalized communities may stay politically invisible until they disrupt an established order.

Contemporary examples

In Ethiopia, tensions between the federal government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front intensified in 2020 amid disputes over federal authority, elections and regional autonomy. The latent conflict became overt armed conflict in November 2020. The 2022 Pretoria agreement stopped much of the fighting, though disputes over accountability, territory and reconstruction remained.

In the South China Sea, especially around the Philippines and China from 2023 onward, overlapping maritime claims have led to repeated confrontations involving coastguard vessels, water cannon and disputed access to reefs. Visible coercion makes the conflict overt, but it remains below full-scale war because the actors combine pressure with diplomacy and alliance signalling.

Both cases show how sovereignty and interdependence shape conflict. Governments defend their authority and territory, while the effects cross borders through alliances, trade, displacement and humanitarian need.

Violence refers to harm inflicted on people or communities through physical acts, political and social structures, or ideas that make the harm seem legitimate. This broad definition remains contested. Some actors recognize only deliberate physical attacks as violence.

Three forms of violence

Direct violence involves identifiable physical or psychological harm carried out by an actor against a target. Clear examples include killing, assault, torture and forced displacement.

Structural violence occurs when institutions and the organization of resources cause avoidable harm. There may be no visible attacker. Instead, unequal access to security, healthcare, education, food or political influence systematically limits the lives of some groups.

Cultural violence refers to beliefs, symbols and narratives that portray direct or structural violence as normal, deserved or unavoidable. Racist, misogynistic or dehumanizing claims can make people more willing to accept exclusion and coercion.

The three categories often overlap. Cultural narratives may justify unequal structures, and those structures leave particular groups more exposed to direct attacks.

Contested perspectives

A narrow security approach gives priority to direct violence because it is visible and can be linked to an actor. Realists may therefore focus on armed capabilities, deterrence and state survival.

Feminist analysis questions the division between violence on the battlefield and domestic abuse, sexual violence and gendered economic dependence. Postcolonial analysis asks a similar question: do global inequalities and inherited racial hierarchies expose some populations to harm while powerful actors describe the resulting order as peaceful?

A wider definition links peace and conflict with rights, equality, development and poverty. Critics warn, however, that calling every serious injustice violence may make the concept less precise. Analysis should identify the mechanism that produces the harm.

Contemporary examples

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 caused direct violence through missile attacks, combat, killings and forced displacement. Russian state narratives that question Ukraine’s separate political identity also show how cultural claims can legitimize coercion. Ukrainian and international actors contest these claims through sovereignty and self-determination.

In Afghanistan after the Taliban returned to power in 2021, restrictions progressively excluded women and girls from secondary and higher education and many areas of employment. The rules illustrate structural violence because institutions systematically restrict life opportunities. Claims that rigid gender roles are morally necessary can provide cultural legitimation, though Afghan women, religious scholars and communities contest that interpretation.

Violence concerns immediate security as well as the distribution of power. Ending direct attacks may establish negative peace. Positive peace also requires attention to the structures and beliefs that reproduce harm.

Non-violence is the deliberate pursuit of political goals without inflicting physical violence. It may be an ethical commitment, a strategic method or both.

How non-violent action works

Non-violence isn’t passive, nor does it mean conflict is absent. Instead, it brings conflict into the open through protest, strikes, boycotts, civil disobedience and non-cooperation, while ruling out armed attack.

As a strategy, non-violence aims to weaken the sources of an opponent’s power. Governments and other authorities rely on the cooperation of workers, officials, businesses, security forces and the public. When these groups withdraw their cooperation in a coordinated way, they can impose serious political costs.

Success depends on participation and organization, as well as discipline and the target’s vulnerability to public or economic pressure. Repression may frighten participants, break up leadership and restrict communication. Violent factions can also make it easier for authorities to present the whole movement as a security threat.

Non-violence and pacifism

Pacifism is the principled rejection of war or violence as a way to settle political disputes. Unlike the tactical use of non-violence in a particular campaign, it comes from a wider moral opposition to violent action.

A strategic activist might choose non-violence because it works more effectively, yet still accept military force in other circumstances. A pacifist rejects violence for ethical, political or religious reasons. However, pacifists disagree about whether all force, including self-defence, is forbidden.

Political and religious traditions defend these positions in different ways. Liberal arguments may emphasize lawful protest and public accountability. Feminist approaches can challenge militarized ideas of power, while religious pacifists may base restraint on the sanctity of life, compassion or reconciliation. Realists tend to be more sceptical: they argue that non-violence may fail against actors who feel neither legal restraint nor dependence on public consent.

Contemporary examples

During Sudan’s 2018–2019 uprising, professional associations, neighbourhood groups and large public demonstrations used strikes, sit-ins and civil disobedience against Omar al-Bashir’s government. The movement helped remove Bashir in April 2019. However, the military takeover in 2021 and the war beginning in 2023 showed that successful non-violent mobilization doesn’t, by itself, dismantle armed centres of power.

The Indian farmers’ protests of 2020–2021 relied on encampments, marches and sustained non-cooperation to oppose three agricultural laws. The government repealed the laws in 2021, showing how broad participation and economic pressure can change policy. At the same time, clashes and competing claims about disruption revealed that the legitimacy of non-violent action remains contested.

Non-violence changes how power is exercised rather than removing political struggle. It can challenge authority while protecting a movement’s legitimacy, but the outcome depends on whether immediate concessions produce deeper structural change and positive peace.