Preview
Justifications of Violence in Conflict
IB DP Global Politics — Thematic study: Peace and conflict | SL | Debates on peace and conflict
📋 What You Will Learn
- Define violence and distinguish between different types (direct, structural, cultural) in the context of conflict
- Explain the major frameworks used to justify violence, including cultural, legal and religious justifications
- Analyse the concept of "just war" and its criteria, and evaluate how it is applied and contested
- Compare how different theoretical perspectives (realism, liberalism, critical theories) interpret the legitimacy of violence
- Examine how justifications of violence relate to the key concepts of power, legitimacy, and sovereignty
- Evaluate whether any justification of violence in conflict can be considered truly legitimate
🔍 Guiding Question Can violence in conflict ever be genuinely justified — or are all justifications ultimately instruments of power, used by the strong to legitimise harm against the weak?
🌍 Why This Matters When Israel launched military operations in Gaza following the Hamas attacks of 7 October 2023, both sides invoked powerful justifications: Israel cited the right of self-defence under international law; Hamas framed its actions as resistance against occupation. Simultaneously, states, legal scholars, religious leaders and civil society organisations across the world disputed whether either set of actions could be justified — and by whose standards. The episode illustrates that violence in conflict is never simply a military fact; it is always a political and moral claim that demands scrutiny.
🔑 Key Concept Link This topic is most directly about legitimacy — the question of whether violence is morally or legally acceptable, and who has the authority to decide. But it is inseparable from power (those with power shape which justifications are accepted), sovereignty (states claim a monopoly on legitimate force within their territory and the right to self-defence beyond it), and interdependence (international law and global norms constrain — or fail to constrain — how violence is justified). Return to these links throughout your analysis.
Understanding Violence in Conflict
Before examining justifications, it is essential to understand what "violence" means in global politics. The term is broader than physical harm, and how it is defined shapes which acts require justification at all.
📖 Definition — Violence In global politics, violence refers to acts that cause physical, psychological or structural harm to individuals or groups. Johan Galtung's influential framework distinguishes direct violence (deliberate physical harm, e.g. killing, torture), structural violence (harm embedded in social and political structures, e.g. poverty, discrimination), and cultural violence (beliefs, norms and symbols that legitimise direct or structural violence). Justifications of violence in conflict primarily concern direct violence, but are often enabled by cultural and structural forms.
Galtung's Violence Triangle
- Direct violence (visible apex): physical acts — warfare, assassination, terrorism, torture.
- Structural violence (base left): harm built into systems — colonial exploitation, economic sanctions, apartheid.
- Cultural violence (base right): ideas, ideologies, religion, art, language that make direct or structural violence seem natural or acceptable — e.g. dehumanising propaganda, religious doctrines of holy war, nationalist narratives of racial superiority.
- The triangle shows that cultural justifications do not merely follow violence — they enable and sustain it. This is why studying justifications is politically significant, not merely philosophical.
📖 Definition — Conflict Conflict in global politics refers to a contested incompatibility of goals, values or interests between actors. It ranges from non-violent political disagreement to armed warfare. Not all conflict involves violence; the question of when and why actors turn to violence — and how they