Peace in the Age of Forever Wars

The relationship between war and peace is complex and uneasy. Sometimes, war and peace are understood as opposites – war is bad and peace is good, war is destructive and peace is constructive. Sometimes, the relationship between the two is seen as much more sympathetic, such as when we justify going to war so that we might have peace. War is seen, then, not the opposite of peace, but a means of producing peace. The relationship between war and peace has become even more fraught, in the age of forever wars, and stands in even greater need of examination and theorization.

We invite submissions for an interdisciplinary symposium, which will bring together academics from the humanities and social sciences to present new scholarship on how to achieve and maintain peace in the age of forever wars. The hope is to reexamine old frameworks and to bring to light new ones, to understand more deeply the core questions of peace and conflict in historical and transnational context. The symposium is organized under the auspices of Temple’s Center for the Study of Force and Diplomacy (CENFAD). We will cover the cost of travel and accommodations for all participants.

Questions of interest may include:

-       What is the aim of forever wars? Can forever wars aim at or produce peace?

-       Does understanding peace require a separate and distinct framework from war?

-       Can war still be defended as a means for promoting a stable international order? For example, as the EU pledges to increase its military spending, should we predict a corresponding increase in stability?

-       How does the examination of historical precedents of peace processes (both failures and successes) help us to understand what a viable peace process might look like in Israel/Gaza and in Russia/Ukraine?

-       What are the conditions, if any, under which victory in war can produce peace? What are the conditions, if any, under which losing a war can produce peace?

-       Why has peace acquired a bad reputation – as a weak position, as akin to appeasement, as utopian?

-       What kinds of mechanisms can international law and global human rights organizations develop to promote peaceful cooperation among states?