Resolution of Conflicts

Report Outline
Methods Employed to Settle Conflicts
Milestones in the Reduction of Strife
Conflict Areas in Need of Recurring Aid

Methods Employed to Settle Conflicts

The greatest honor history can bestow, President Nixon declared in his inaugural address, is “the title of peacemaker.” Aspiring to earn that title, the President announced the method he intended to use in aiming to make peace. “After a period of confrontation,” he said, “we are entering an era of negotiation.”

The type of confrontation to which the President referred was that among nations, as in the Viet Nam war, and the negotiation he envisaged likewise would involve the representatives of nations, as in the current Paris peace talks. Negotiation, however, represents only one of an array of techniques, old and new, for resolving a wide variety of conflicts. These techniques, skillfully applied, can have a beneficial effect not only on international differences, but also on racial and ethnic tensions, divisiveness in cities and universities, polarization of economic classes, and the contemporary challenge to authority.

Conflict Resolution: A New Social Science

The principles of conflict resolution are undergoing intensive analysis, study, and evaluation by behavioral experts in cooperation with administrators, mediators, counselors, psychiatrists, and diplomats. An article in Newsweek, Dec. 2, 1968, noted that “The task of conflict resolution has become a full-time occupation—and a major field of research.” Need for the ministrations of this fledgling member of the social sciences has mounted in today's world, in part because of the declining effectiveness of force as a response to disruptiveness.