How do wars end? A multidisciplinary enquiry

Abstract

The cessation of military confrontations rarely coincides with the end of war. Legal and political matters continue after the last shot has been fired, civilians driven from their homes try to rebuild their houses and their lives, veterans need to adapt to their new role in civil society, and the struggle to define the history and the significance of past events only begins. In recent years, in particular, the changes in the character of contemporary warfare have created uncertainties across different disciplines about how to identify and conceptualise the end of war. It is therefore an opportune moment to examine how wars end from a multidisciplinary perspective that combines enquiries into the politics of war, the laws of war and the military and intellectual history of war. This approach enables both an understanding of how 'the end' as a concept informs the understanding of war in international relations, in international law and in history and a reconsideration of the nature of scientific method in the field of war studies as such.

Transforming Escalation to Negotiation: Rethinking Confidence-Building Measures (CBMs) in the Ongoing Russia-Ukraine War

“…An official declaration of war is not required for a war to begin; it can occur without one as well. Wars can also end in a variety of ways that evolve through time (De Franco et al 2019). To Rauf, it is not apparent if crisis management procedures would take precedence over conflict avoidance procedures or whether war termination should.…”

Turning towards practices: on the common ground of international relations and European studies

“…How IR and ES became separate disciplines is an object of contention (Rosamond, 2007), not only because of diverging readings of the relevant disciplinary histories but also because of limitations that are intrinsic to disciplinary history writing, which requires a difficult reconstruction of both ‘knowledge-practices’ and ‘knowledge-complexes’ and how they interact (Bell, 2009). Moreover, as disciplinary divides are produced and productive of academic knowledge institutionalization and socialization processes, they and their historiographies are all but stable (De Franco et al ., 2019). Therefore, in this section I attempt a reflective reconstruction of IR and ES’ common history and developments to show that a common ground exists and is fecund of interdisciplinary conversations that can advance understanding of the local–global nexus, more than to establish how those disciplinary divides came to exist in the first place.…”