Tag: Conflict Management

The Monroe Doctrine

You guys know if there is a teachable moment the Old Professor will jump on it with both feet.

I recently wrote a post about the possibility of a mash-up between Venezuela and Guyana in South America over a oil rich region….in case the post was missed….

 

I said then that the US, if it gets involved, would probably invoke a 200 year old edit issued by Pres. Monroe…..

The Monroe Doctrine, first outlined in a speech to Congress in 1823, had President James Monroe warning European powers to not attempt further colonization, military intervention or other interference in the Western Hemisphere, stating that the United States would view any such interference as a potentially hostile act. Over the centuries, the Monroe Doctrine policy has become a cornerstone of U.S. diplomatic and military policies.

By the early 1820s, many Latin American countries had won their independence from Spain or Portugal, with the U.S. government recognizing the new republics of Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia and Mexico in 1822.

Though Monroe had initially supported the idea of a joint U.S.-British resolution against future colonization in Latin America, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams argued that joining forces with the British could limit future U.S. opportunities for expansion, and that Britain might well have imperialist ambitions of its own.

Adams convinced Monroe to make a unilateral statement of U.S. policy that would set an independent course for the young nation and claim a new role as protector of the Western Hemisphere.

https://www.history.com/topics/19th-century/monroe-doctrine

What you probably learned in high school, that is if you stayed awake long enough to learn, is probably not the ‘rest of the story….

If you’re American, the high school textbook that you once read probably presented James Monroe’s 1823 message as a foreign policy equivalent of the U.S. Constitution. It allegedly outlined basic rules, headlined by a prohibition on further European colonization in the Western Hemisphere, that structured U.S. foreign policy thereafter. But this clean and tidy view of the doctrine always has been more myth than reality.

For starters, the nonsequential foreign policy paragraphs of James Monroe’s 1823 annual message were not intended to be a timeless set of policy prescriptions. Rather, Monroe and his team muddled through a complex situation, dodging critical questions and controversies as they responded to events beyond their control. When Monroe audaciously proclaimed an end to European intervention in the Western Hemisphere at a critical moment in the Spanish-American revolutions, he failed to mention how it would be enforced (fortuitously, by the time Monroe delivered his message, the British had already cut a secret deal with France that resolved the diplomatic crisis). The ambiguous text of the 1823 message to Congress also sidestepped the critical matter of future U.S. imperial expansion.

Monroe fudged the key issues. He kicked the can of an alliance offer from Britain down the road, while offering only lip-service support to the revolutions in Latin America and Greece. Most of all, his message stopped short of committing the United States to any action. The evidence is clear: The 1823 message was never intended to become a binding foreign policy “doctrine.” Monroe’s message was a nothingburger.

But the subsequent “Monroe Doctrine,” a phrase that first appeared in the decades before the Civil War, had very little to do with the original text. Rather, it was an adaptable symbol of U.S. foreign policy that ricocheted back and forth across the American political spectrum, sometimes even bouncing across borders when appropriated by foreign officials. The best definition of the Monroe Doctrine might be as follows: a contested political symbol into which varying actors have loaded their agendas.

The Many Faces of the Monroe Doctrine

There was so much more to this statement than we know…..

Today marks the 200th anniversary of the Monroe Doctrine, celebrated in history books for extending U.S. influence throughout the hemisphere. But few Americans are aware of its lesser-known predecessor – “The Jefferson-Monroe Penal Doctrine” – which first proposed using slavery and involuntary servitude as punishment for crime to establish a national penal colony.  At a time of continued reckoning over slavery in the United States, it is also a fitting moment to consider the roots of prison expansion in empire.  

At the dawn of the nineteenth century, Gabriel Prosser and hundreds of enslaved people in Virginia planned a revolt. Enslavers and local militia discovered and thwarted the rebellion amid a suffocating climate of white hysteria over the revolution taking place on the former French colony of Saint-Domingue, where enslaved people were engaged in a struggle against slavery that would establish the first Black republic in the Western Hemisphere. 

https://www.salon.com/2023/12/02/the-lesser-known-history-of-the-monroe-doctrine/

I just wanted my reader to be aware of all aspects of the Monroe Doctrine in case the idiots in DC use it to instigate yet another war.

Watch South America!

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I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Return To Political Warfare

First of all we need to explain what “political warfare” entails……

Political warfare is the use of non-military means to manipulate and undermine the political system of a competitor. Political warfare with Russian and Chinese characteristics involves the use of myriad tactics—cyberattacks, disinformation, electoral meddling and others—to disrupt and destabilize the political systems of America and its allies, thereby rendering these countries less geopolitically effective. Authoritarian powers are “using information tools in an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of democracies,” warns the 2017 National Security Strategy, to “shake our shared commitment to our values, undermine our system of government, [and] divide our Nation.” As the turmoil sowed by Vladimir Putin’s intervention in the U.S. presidential election of 2016 shows, these campaigns are having an impact.

We now know what is meant by the term…..we know about Russia and the others that are trying this back door approach but what about the attempts by the US?

Expanding on weekend reports that the US had been carrying out cyberattacks against Russia’s electricity grid and other infrastructure, Russian news agencies are quoting unnamed security sources who say that the US attacks were thwarted.

Kremlin officials said they consider the reports “worrying,” and that a major cyber war was possible. Security officials said that so far they remain able to neutralize all of the US attempts to infiltrate and plant malware in the systems.

Maybe there is a new way to approach this technique……

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/how-wage-political-warfare-38802

The Rand think tank has issued a new white paper on political warfare…..

he United States faces a number of actors who use a wide range of political, informational, military, and economic measures to influence, coerce, intimidate, or undermine its interests or those of its friends and allies. This brief summarizes a study that provided a clearer view of these adversarial measures short of conventional warfare and derived implications and recommendations for the U.S. government and military. To this end, at the request of the sponsor, RAND Corporation researchers examined the historical and current practices that fall into this realm of conflict short of conventional war. The starting point was the term political warfare, as defined in 1948 at the outset of the Cold War by U.S. diplomat George Kennan: “Political warfare is the logical application of Clausewitz’s doctrine in time of peace. In broadest definition, political warfare is the employment of all the means at a nation’s command, short of war, to achieve its national objectives. Such operations are both overt and covert. They range from such overt actions as political alliances, economic measures (as . . . the Marshall Plan), and ‘white’ propaganda to such covert operations as clandestine support of ‘friendly’ foreign elements, ‘black’ psychological warfare and even encouragement of underground resistance in hostile states.”[1]

https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB10071.html

This is the battleground of the future between “major powers”….the days of massive armies attacking each other is all but dead.

Learn the fight or be conquered.

China Versus Taiwan

Let me say from the onset that I am by no means an expert in Chinese affairs…..but this is something that has been boiling for 5 decades or longer.

For over 50 years there have been two Chinas…Mainland and the island of Taiwan….and in all that time they have been at the others throat.

But why have they been hating each other all that time?

Let me make this situation as simple as possible.

Now that you know why the hatred is there and simmering just below the surface of geopolitics….

In the first week of 2019, as China grabbed headlines for landing a spacecraft on the far side of the moon, a New Year’s Day editorial in the nation’s official military newspaper told its readers that “war preparations” should be a top priority for the year. The following day, President Xi Jinping offered a forceful reminder of what Beijing considers its most likely focus of conflict to be: Taiwan.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apps-taiwan-commentary/commentary-will-china-go-to-war-over-taiwan-idUSKCN1P11IT

And to help with the understanding of this situation….a short video may help…..

Taiwan is an ally of the US and if push came to shove with China I think the US would side with Taiwan and act accordingly….even if it meant going to war.

In his opening speech of 2019, and his first ever on the subject of Taiwan, the Chinese president Xi Jinping was characteristically uncompromising. Forty years after Beijing agreed to stop its daily shelling of the Taiwanese islands of Quemoy and Matsu, and launched a policy of commercial seduction, relations have coarsened. Addressing an audience of military and party officials and his country’s wider public on 2 January, China’s nationalist president-for-life signalled his impatience with the status quo, refused to rule out the use of military force and warned “foreign powers” against intervening in what Beijing regards as a domestic matter. For any Taiwanese viewer, it was a chilling moment.

https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/observations/2019/01/china-and-taiwan-s-dangerous-face

With that said there has been a study that does not think the US could win a state vs state war with China……

One of the first things one learns as an infantry platoon leader is that he who tries to secure everything with his soldiers on the battlefield usually ends up securing nothing. Unfortunately for U.S. national security, this old maxim appears to have been forgotten at the strategic and political level by some of America’s brightest minds in the defense community as evidenced in a recent report.

The November 2018 study Providing for the Common Defense, issued by the National Defense Strategy Commission, a congressionally-mandated blue-ribbon panel led by former U.S. Undersecretary of Defense Eric Edelman and retired U.S. Navy Admiral Gary Roughead, recommends that the United States should spend more on its armed forces and reinforce its global military presence lest Washington be confronted by a national security emergency at a period when the nation is at a “greater risk than at any time in decades.”

https://thediplomat.com/2018/12/would-the-us-really-lose-a-war-with-china-and-russia/

I know that everyone thinks the US is the bees knees but is it possible that we could not win a state vs state war with China?

All The News Of North Korea

Since my Asian Desk is pretty sparse…I need to do lots of research to get up to speed ……maybe it will help my reader as well…..

The words of war are flying around the airways…..there are those that would like an attack on NK as a “must”…..but those mental midgets do not think beyond their own bravado….

As the rhetoric continues to pick up around North Korea, the talk of military options, or worse the “military solution” increasingly appears to center around the conceit that there is some possibility for a limited war, or some other way that the US could make a quick attack on North Korea and fix everything militarily.

Experts, however, broadly agree that’s simply not the case. North Korea has spent the last 60+ years worrying about a US attack, and preparing to retaliate with everything that they have. This retaliation, even before factoring in North Korea’s nuclear program would destroy much of South Korea, and likely kill upwards of a million people.

That threat of massively destructive retaliation was always the ace up North Korea’s sleeve that kept them from getting attacked in the first place, sort of a mutually-assured destruction build around conventional arms and the fact that the huge, and economically important, city of Seoul is so close by.

The theory that the US could precisely take out North Korea’s small nuclear arsenal and resolve the situation, then, is clearly preposterous on its face, as North Korea’s retaliatory capabilities are substantial and were built long before the nuclear program.

While pretty much any preemptive attack necessarily will provoke retaliation, a US strike on North Korea’s nuclear sites would certainly provoke an even bigger one, as the North Korean government could only interpret it as the start of an American war of regime change.

(antiwar.com)

The NK situation is far more complex than the simpletons in the Trump admin would have you believe.

There needs to be a place where the news of NK can come together and readers can have it all in one place and NO need for the Google button.

Maybe I can help……

Not all reporting follows the paradigm that the Pentagon, Trump and the MSM wants to get out to the public.

Further reading for those that have an inquiring mind….lots to read but it will,give the reader a better picture of the situation than by listening to the MSM and the alt-Right…..enjoy

Source: North Korea, Nukes and Negotiations – Geopolitics | Geopolitical Futures

Source: North Korea Leaves Us With Only One Good Option | World Affairs Journal

Source: Only Morons Believe What the US Government Says About North Korea

Source: Newsweek Exclusive: North Korean Missile Claims Are ‘a Hoax’

Source: Why a war with North Korea is unlikely | North Korea | Al Jazeera

All aspects of this volatile situation need to be presented so that NO wrong thinking can be invaded into to the process.

2017 CrisisWatch #1

There are blogs here on the internet that give breakdowns….on markets, business, politics, etc……but there are very few that watch armed conflicts.

As a person who has studied conflict management and resolution I am always reading reports and papers on the different international conflicts.

I thought IST might be a good place for me to give a crisis report every month….

The International Crisis Group is an independent, non-profit, non-governmental organisation committed to preventing and resolving deadly conflict and they publish a watch list for people that need more info about conflicts.

Amid global geopolitical uncertainties, fighting intensified in Libya over oil installations and in the capital Tripoli, where clashes could flare up in April, while in Yemen an assault on Hodeida city by the Saudi-led coalition and allied Yemeni forces looks imminent. In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), violence spiked in Kasai Central province and uncertainty grew over talks to establish interim governing arrangements. Ethnic fighting worsened in Kenya driven partly by drought. Macedonia and Paraguay witnessed heightened political tensions, while Venezuela’s political standoff took another dangerous turn.

Source: CrisisWatch | Crisis Group

As an analyst and teacher I am always looking for reference materials…I hope others who are interested in the world’s conflict they to will find this a good source of information.

The Multi-Domain Battle

Unless you spend time on sites that deal with war and responses you probably have not heard the term multi-domain used much…but the term is quite popular with war gamers, analysts and defense contractors…….

Most people are knowledgeable about conventional warfare……good guys here, bad guys there….bang bang….one side overpowers the other and declares victory.

The there is asymmetrical warfare…..good guys here, bad guys everywhere else…bang bang and years of bang bang and no one wins….just keep fighting…..

Then we talk about a two prong domain battle plan….air to land…boom then sea to land another boom….but as this world progresses a multi-domain battle comes to light…..

The Army is looking beyond ground warfare as it prepares to fight on an increasingly complex and unpredictable battlefield, the senior commander of Training and Doctrine Command said.

“The world I grew up in, during the Cold War, you would have ground forces fighting ground forces, air forces fighting air forces. Cyber didn’t even exist when I was a lieutenant,” said Gen. David Perkins. “What’s happening now is those lines are blurring between those domains.”

Whether it’s the current threat from the Islamic State terror group or Russia’s actions in Ukraine, the Army, along with the other services, must prepare to fight in all domains, Perkins said.

Source: The Multi-Domain Battle

History has taught us that one dimensional thinking is okay but nothing in today’s world is one dimensional with the exception of some of our citizens thought processes.

The US military is trying to develop a way to handle a multi-Domain strategy…..but can they succeed?

Just after dawn on September 4, 1943, Australian soldiers of the 9th Division came ashore near Lae, Papua in the Australian Army’s first major amphibious operation since Gallipoli. Supporting them were U.S. naval forces from VII Amphibious Force. The next day, the 503rd U.S. Parachute Regiment seized the airfield at Nadzab to the West of Lae, which allowed the follow-on landing of the 7th Australian Division.  The Japanese defenders offered some resistance on the land, token resistance in the air, and no resistance at sea. Terrain was the main obstacle to Lae’s capture.

From the beginning, the allied plan for Lae was a joint one. The allies were able to get their forces across the approaches to the enemy’s position, establish secure points of entry, build up strength, and defeat the enemy because they dominated the three domains of war relevant at the time — land, sea, and air.

Unfortunately, today’s commanders cannot have the same degree of confidence in the joint fight that their predecessors had at Lae. Changes in the character of war threaten to undermine the ability of commanders to wage a joint fight effectively, if at all. The development of anti-access and area-denial (A2/AD) weapons and systems means that the joint force may struggle to close with and defeat some adversaries.

Source: Multi-Domain Battle: A New Concept for Land Forces

I fear that our military commanders may have a grasp but the commander in chief may have NO idea what to do or how to handle all the situations coming his way.

This is ma concern that more people need to be aware of for the coming events will test this country….maybe to its limits…..and if our “leaders” are clueless we could be in for some pretty dark days.

Ominous sounding?  Yes it is and just as damn serious as I can be.

Further reading:

Source: Some New, Some Old, All Necessary: The Multi-Domain Imperative

Source: Army Leaders Search for Answers to Multi-Domain Battle | Military.com

Fighting The Good War

I have been teaching a class on terrorism…so I watch the studies and papers done on the subject….especially the ISIS entity…..

Since the early days of ISIS every politician worth his/her salt has thumped their chest like some sex crazed primate and predicted the defeat of ISIS and a return to normalcy (I threw that part in to see if anyone is paying attention)……and then we elected a new president and now all the players are serious about the defeat of a inhumane foe.

First let me say…BUNK!  Terror is a tactic and not an entity…we may defeat a group but not the ideas.  It makes great slogans to predict the defeat but reality is more sober than some kneejerk slogan.

I have tried to let my readers know what will happen with the defeat of ISIS…..

Source: Defeating ISIS – In Saner Thought

Slowly but slowly after many long years ISIS is being decimated in Iraq ans Syria….it has taken lots of cash and lots of bombs but there seems to be a light at the end of this nightmare……but what are we really looking at these days?

Later this month, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson plans to host a 68-nation meeting in Washington to discuss the next moves by the coalition fighting the Islamic State, a senior Trump administration official said on Thursday.

This comes as the Islamic State, an actual state with territory and population, is on the verge of extinction, but remains a threat to the U.S. and many parts of the world. Since 2014, the group’s control over people has been cut by roughly 80 percent in Iraq and 56 percent in Syria, according to our estimates. The Islamic State is also slowly but steadily losing control of its largest remaining city, Mosul. Its capital, Raqqa, has been isolated and is awaiting assault. Foreign fighter flows to the region peaked in 2016 and have drastically shrunk. Thousands of Islamic State fighters in Iraq and Syria have been killed, captured, dispersed, or driven underground.

Source: Why a Dying Islamic State Could Be an Even Bigger Threat to America | World Affairs Journal

After two  months of leadership(?) Tillerson does not exhibit much leadership and yet he is going to let the world know…..exactly what?

But say we are successful and we hand ISIS their asses on a plate…..after ISIS just what will the strategy be for fighting terrorism?

The United States is approaching a strategic pivot in its struggle against jihadist terror groups. It appears increasingly likely that ISIS will be militarily defeated, even if the precise timing remains uncertain.[1] The core of ISIS’s self-declared caliphate in Iraq and Syria will be destroyed; the group will no longer exert control over significant territory or population in those countries. ISIS will go down fighting, of course, and do enormous amounts of harm in its death throes. Yet given the formidable international forces—anchored by the U.S. military—arrayed against it, and the organization’s increasingly desperate military situation, it seems highly probable that ISIS’s days are numbered.

Source: After ISIS: U.S. Political-Military Strategy in the Global War on Terror | RealClearDefense

We, the American people, have heard it all…..the rhetoric is as thick as maple syrup in winter….so far I have not heard anything that would fill me with optimism for the future of our war on terror.

We and our allies, whoever they are, may well kick the screaming crap out of ISIS….but that will not win the war….a successful battle does not win the war.  As of yet I have not heard anything that resembles a good battle plan for the future.

War: Could The “Golden Arches” Be The Answer?

There are times when I need a few moments of insanity and when that occurs I turn to the tellie to ease my troubled brain…..I was watching an ad for the new movie about the founder of the world famous McDonald’s franchise…..when something snapped in the deep recesses of my mind…..”Golden Arches”……”Golden Arches”?

I intend to pass on some of the theories I studied in school and believe me there are a wealth of them.

I recall when studying conflict management and resolution in college there was a theory that involved the “Golden Arches”…(thinking….thinking…..thinking)…..finally as I sat at my desk thinking it came to me….BAM!…… in a flash of inspiration….The “Golden Arches” Theory of Conflict Prevention….

Anyway while we were studying conflicts this came up as one of those WTF? theories…..after all there are as many theories here as hairs on your butt……

Let’s get to it….shall we?

The Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention was proposed by economist Thomas Friedman as a way of explaining how globalization affects foreign policy and conflict. Essentially, the Theory points out that no two countries that both have McDonalds franchises have ever gone to war. The reasoning behind this correlation, Friedman says, is that once economies become sufficiently integrated, both the cost of going to war and the amount of contact between two countries will increase. Both these factors lead to more effective conflict resolution, as states will attempt to pursue the more economically beneficial option. Friedman’s argument echoes the main suppositions of the democratic peace theory, which states that democracies never go to war. Friedman’s analysis simply takes this argument further in his economic emphasis, although he places a similar amount of emphasis on the role of domestic society in influencing a government’s willingness to go to war.

See….even international relations geeks have a sense of humor…..

A fascinating theory but a bit much….there are problems with this…….

The Golden Arches Theory has not held true in all cases, and explanations to explain these inconsistencies vary. In some cases, the increased contact between two countries due to integration may actually exacerbate points of contention between the two states, leading to more opportunities for conflict. Or, the difference may lie in the type of government in power: a democratic government may follow the Golden Arches Theory, but the Theory may break down when confronted with cases of nondemocratic or authoritarian regimes. The Golden Arches Theory assumes that governments respond to the desires of their constituents for economic stability and that the government knows it will be held accountable in the case that it does not provide for the economic well-being of its citizens. In the case of an authoritarian or nondemocratic state, leaders may not experience these dilemmas, causing them not to act in accordance with the Golden Arches Theory.

Now you know more than most about international relations and conflict resolution.

You’re welcome.

Closing Thought–12Dec16

There have some questions asked of the possibility of a conflict of interests with Pres. Trump and his many business ventures….could it be that his interests could outweigh the good of the country?

Could there be a problem with our foreign policy?

This is an op-ed that I wrote for my dear friends at Ace News Room…they are in the UK and wanted me to give some American impressions of this last election…….this is one of my efforts….

There is lots of back and forth from the pundits about the forthcoming Trump government…..I admit that I am concerned about his new foreign policy team, whoever they will be…..I am concerned because of his rhetoric during the campaign….although I did hear a bit of policy that I could get behind…..

But my biggest concern at least right now is his business concerns that he is involved in…..if he does not choose the right path then I can see where there will be problems with ethics……

Source: A Conflict Of Interests?

After I wrote this piece I read a good article in the Politico…that ask the questions do the American people care about some conflict of interests?

Republicans see the same ethically challenged complications lurking in Donald Trump’s business portfolio that Democrats are squawking about. They just think Americans don’t care about these entanglements anymore.

Indeed, the GOP is so easily dismissing Democratic threats of investigations and ethicists’ calls for divestment out of a belief that the political landscape has shifted. Voters rewarded Trump in part on the idea that success in business will equal success in government, and Republicans are therefore unwilling to encourage the president-elect to put distance between the Oval Office and Trump Tower, or between himself and the children who serve him as trusted advisers.

Source: GOP wagers Americans don’t care about Trump’s conflicts – POLITICO

Alexander Hamilton was pretty clear on this subject……

Obviously, I think there could be a problem with the conflict of interests….I really do not care about how much money he will make…..just what effect it would have on national security…..but what about you, my readers, do you see any problems?

One last thought:  If Trump does not divest himself from his holdings…will his billionaires in the cabinet follow suit?  Will these people continue to make money hand over fist will running the country?

That my friends is the VERY definition of….”Conflict of Interests”!

Why Washington Is Addicted to Perpetual War

I have over the years asked myself that same question….why is America addicted to perpetual war?

Make NO mistake it is an addiction…one that we cannot seem to shake…….it is a real shame that we cannot be addicted to education  with the same intensity….

Of course one argument is that war is extremely profitable….but with all the intellectuals there are in the field of conflict management there should be some sort of plan or policy that would prevent the US from jump from one war to another…..without end.

The last two administrations have followed a bipartisan policy of constant war. Unfortunately, the consequences have been ugly: every intervention has laid the groundwork for more conflict.

Yet the architects of this failure claim that all would be well if only Washington had acted more often and more decisively. In their view, the problem is not that America goes to war, but that it doesn’t go to war nearly enough.

This approach is based on the belief that Washington is capable of solving every international problem. If only unnamed bright people implemented theoretically brilliant strategies backed by unidentified resolute citizens, terrorism would be suppressed, ISIS would be defeated, Russia would be compliant, Iraq would be successful, Syria would be peaceful, Libya would be united and China would be respectful.

Source: Why Washington Is Addicted to Perpetual War | The National Interest Blog

Conflict management is the practice of being able to identify and handle conflicts sensibly, fairly, and efficiently……all qualities that the US does not possess….until we learn this then we will remain in a perpetual footing for war.

A Framework for Analysing International Conflict Management

If you are a math wiz…then maybe this will help……work it out for yourself with a pencil………….(calculator is allowed but please show work)……

To test for the effect of the history of the conflict within a broader context that can control for factors that have been linked to the outcome of mediation, we have specified two multivariate logit models of the conditions contributing to mediation successes. Success for these purposes was operationalized in terms of the outcome of mediation efforts in which at minimum a ceasefire was secured, or at the other end of the scale, a full or partial settlement of the dispute was achieved. We specify two models from which these tests are performed. The first accounts for the conditions associated with successful conflict management attempts; the second disaggregates a specific type of conflict management — mediation — into the different approaches adopted by mediators. The functional form of the models are as follows:

Y1= a + X1 + X2 + X3 + X4 + X5 + e

and

Y1= a + X1 + X2 + X3 + X4 + X6 + X7 + e

where

Y1 = Success of Management (0,1)

X1 = Enduring Rivalry (1 if part of enduring dyad; zero otherwise)

X2  = Power Disparity (absolute value of disparity between power of

      actor A minus power of actor B; range 0-34)

X3 = Tangibility of Issue (1 if tangible; zero otherwise)

X4 = Intensity of Conflict (fatalities/month)

X5 = Management Type (1=mediation; zero=negotiation)

X6 = Directive Strategy (dummy, 1 if directive; zero otherwise)

X7 = Procedural Strategy (dummy, 1 if procedural; zero otherwise)

These two models reflect concerns over the conditions most conducive to successful conflict management, with Model 1 emphasizing, inter alia, the effect of different approaches to conflict management and Model 2 the different strategies that are adopted by mediators.

I like to be thorough……you are welcome.

Like any addiction…it can be ended…but only if we want it to be…..

And right now….WE DO NOT!

The election of 2016 will do nothing to end this addiction….no matter which of the pathetic losers wins…..(and I bet neither one has a pencil with them)….