Historians debate: how do intractable conflicts come to an end?

This territorial dispute between the two Asian giants has never actually been resolved because of an issue of geography: there is an area of the Himalayas which is essentially most of the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, but which China argues should be Chinese territory. The two sides have never managed to resolve that dispute.

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That’s in contrast with another example in which a seemingly endless conflict did come to an end: China’s war with Vietnam. In February 1979, China and Vietnam went into a short but very bloody war in which tens of thousands were killed on both sides. Across the following decade there were continuing border battles. Eventually, in 1990, a secret conference held in the Chinese city of Chengdu brought a resolution and in 1991, China and Vietnam signed a lasting border agreement. It’s an example of the way in which a resolution can sometimes be found to seemingly intractable conflict.

Hannah Skoda: I focus on the Middle Ages, and obviously the conflicts of that era had a different nature, so it’s important to be careful with comparisons. I was thinking, however, about the Hundred Years’ War, fought between England and France from 1337 to 1453.

The problem is that, as soon as we say ‘between England and France’, we’ve already hit a problem, because it’s too simplistic to say it was fought by those entities. The conflict was produced by a really complex set of circumstances, rather than a sense of ‘Englishness’ versus ‘Frenchness’. But, across the course of the conflict, we can see a hardening of those identities and a much stronger sense emerging of what it meant to be ‘English’ and ‘French’. Indeed, the whole notion of an ancient enemy arose out of a conflict that began thanks to a very specific set of causes.

What history allows us to do is to look at the longer perspective and understand that sometimes conflicts that have gone on for years or even decades can eventually be resolved, and that sometimes it’s external factors and sometimes it’s internal factors that enable that to happen

Another intractable conflict medieval historians are fascinated by is the crusades. Again, I don’t want to draw direct comparisons, but we can also see there a conflict sparked by a complex set of circumstances which gradually led to a hardening of identities and attitudes. Over the course of centuries, it really did begin to look like an intractable conflict between two sides.

Rana Mitter: Identity is so often an ideological factor that sparks conflict. Thinking about my example of the Chinese and the Vietnamese, however, one of the things that ultimately brought that conflict to a close was the end of the Cold War. Vietnam had been an ally of the Soviet Union, and once the Soviet Union disappeared, part of China’s reason for wanting to oppose them ideologically also disappeared.

Tom, you have great expertise in the 18th and 19th centuries: does the idea of war as ideological and intractable apply to that era, or was it more about realpolitik and people seeking to maximise their power?

Thomas Otte: I think ideology did play a role, but the question speaks to a much bigger issue, which is that every war is different. There’s no iron law of wars, what causes them, how they’re conducted, and how they’re brought to an end. Eras have different, very specific, types of wars, and historians should be careful about formulating any grand insights that could be applied to contemporary conflicts.

Of course, any kind of decision making in war is about the people who made those decisions, so we can look at how individuals perceive a given problem, how they rationalise it, and the factors that lead them to a particular decision. That perhaps opens our minds to some of the vagaries of the political process by which decisions are arrived at.

One factor we should talk about is religion. Hannah, presumably it was central to conflict in Europe in the medieval era?

Hannah Skoda: I think it always underpinned the way people thought about things. The Hundred Years’ War was not about religion in any clear way, but a key part of it was a sense that everybody should be ‘going off on crusade’ – and that they couldn’t do that until they had set their house in order in Europe. So there was always a sense that religion was an underlying motivating factor.

Thinking about religion in Europe in the Middle Ages brings to mind the fact that the pope was often called upon to mediate between warring sides – more or less successfully. Rana and Thomas, how did external actors play a mediating role in conflicts in eras you focus on?

Thomas Otte: As the centuries went on, external factors increasingly came into play in long-running conflicts in the sense that there was perhaps a greater understanding of the existence of a kind of system: that there were certain norms international actors had to abide by, and certain conditions under which they could go to war. That led to a highly developed sense of what did and didn’t qualify as a ‘just’ war.

Of course, governments lie and manipulate and pretend to act for reasons of justice when they really have much baser motivations, so there were always exceptions. But the sense that they couldn’t just go to war entirely of their own volition gradually became stronger and more institutionalised through the 19th and 20th century.

Rana Mitter: You’ve both flagged up something important, which is the move in Europe from a religious-based system of arbitration to a post-Enlightenment process of secularisation in which institutions such as the League of Nations and the UN emerge.

The element I’d add, however, is that in the 20th century, a large part of the world outside western Europe began to enter the system and often felt very mistrustful of the external authorities that were put forward. They saw them as agencies of empires: the League of Nations, for instance, was also a league of empires, including the French empire and the Japanese empire. That made nations such as China, which found themselves on the sharp end of the other stick, so to speak, rather nervous about entrusting their fate to such agencies.

That means that today’s era of a rule based international order is in many cases fraying at the edges. We can just about still say that today, in 2023, we’re 78 years without a great-power-on-great-power conflict. We do have conflict again in Europe, and, of course, in the Middle East, but we’re still a little way from a great power fighting another great power. Yet there is a feeling that the assumptions behind who actually gets to define the rules, norms and methods are no longer simply being accepted by many of the world’s powerful players.

We need to think about whether we should see our current order as just another historically defined era which has lasted a long time, but may well have its own end point – just as the era of the papacy did, and just as the long era of relative peace in Europe between 1856 and 1914 did. Maybe we’ll talk about the United Nations era that began to fade out at some point in the mid-21st century. I hope not, but it’s certainly possible.

That means that today’s era of a rule based international order is in many cases fraying at the edges. We can just about still say that today, in 2023, we’re 78 years without a great-power-on-great-power conflict.

Thomas Otte: I agree that institutions do have a certain lifespan. They need to justify their continued existence, and the perception of justice with which they discharge their functions is clearly part of that process. We’re currently going through a process in which economic power is shifting, and military power to some extent is beginning to shift as well.

When you look at GDP outputs, the Nato nations account for just under 50 per cent of global GDP. That figure was much higher as recently as the 1980s and 90s. That shift will eventually be reflected in structures of international governance.

How the process is going to play out, I don’t know – I’m a historian, not a prophet – but these changes usually come after great, sometimes even seismic, shocks. I’m rather hoping that we will be able to manage this process of transition to a new structure without having to go through those profound shocks.

We should end by talking about how historians should engage with present-day conflicts. What do you need to bear in mind when thinking about such situations?

Thomas Otte: History is not a cookbook. It doesn’t offer recipes we can simply apply to contemporary problems. But I do think our expertise gives us a degree of responsibility. I’m reminded of something [historian] Geoffrey Elton said in the 1960s: historians should be like a good glove turned inside out. By that he meant we should be humble on the outside and proud on the inside. We bring to the debate a certain sense of scepticism and we can point out parallels – and that is vital in terms of informing the public and in the process of political decision-making.

Hannah Skoda: As a historian, the idea of thinking about the past and juxtaposing it with the present makes me extremely nervous, because we are never comparing like with like and there is such a danger of oversimplifying things. Nevertheless, I think it’s a very important thing to do for two reasons.

Firstly, we so often see the weaponisation of particular versions of history, particularly in intractable conflicts, and even in the medieval conflicts I was talking about earlier. And secondly, I think history offers us the possibility of bringing critical doubt to lots of the assumptions we may all carry, and we should apply some of that doubt to the idea that things are inevitable. They never are.

Listen to the full conversation in the second episode of our new monthly podcast series Behind the Headlines, in which Hannah Skoda, Rana Mitter and an array of expert guests discuss the history behind the news. Listen at historyextra.com/ headlines-pod

Rana Mitter is professor of the history and politics of modern China at the University of Oxford

Thomas Otte is professor of diplomatic, international and military history at the University of East Anglia

Hannah Skoda is associate professor of medieval history at the University of Oxford

This article was first published in the Christmas 2023 issue of BBC History Magazine