Ending Wars (PDF)

Many books have been written about war, but few have focused on how
wars can be brought to an end. Wars are rarely inevitable however
and this book is aimed at understanding how violent conflicts can
be brought to a close through intervention, mediation and political
negotiation.

The simple premise underlying the book is that wars between
states and wars within states are generally fought by rational
people for particular political goals or perceived interests. War
is better understood as a methodology rather than an ideology. When
the context, issues and actors in these armed conflicts change then
it is often possible to control, or even transform such
violence.

By bringing together a number of existing debates from peace and
conflict research as well as scholars of international relations,
the book examines the dynamic forces that lie behind the ending of
wars and how these have changed over time. Examples are drawn from
a wide range of armed conflicts to analyse the efforts that have
been made to move from War-War to Jaw-Jaw, or more typically
Jaw-War. Efforts at third-party intervention, mediation and
political negotiation across a range of conflict zones from Europe
to Sub-Saharan Africa are discussed in full. Neither idealistic nor
fatalistic, this book is a must-read for all students of
international politics and security studies.