How are Intractable Conflicts Different from Other Conflicts?

The Intractable Conflict Challenge: the Most Serious Problem Facing Humanity (and a Great Opportunity)

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In Brief

Intractability is a continuum, not a dichotomy. Very stubborn, destructive conflicts are on one end of the continuum, and simple, readily resolvable conflicts are at the other. Many conflicts teeter in between, and if they are handled well, they can probably be resolved. If they are handled in destructive ways, they are more likely to become intractable. Louis Kriesberg argues that intractable conflicts have three, interlocking dimensions: they last a long time, they are waged in destructive ways, and attempts to resolve or transform them have continuously failed. Guy and Heidi Burgess observe that they very often involved non-negotiable "core issues" such as irreconcilable moral differences, status conflicts, and high-stakes distributional issues. Human needs theorists observe that they often involve absence of fundamental human needs, such as identity and security, which too, are non-negotiable.

In addition to non-negotiable core issues, intractable conflicts often involve complicating "overlay issues," such as conflicting visions or frames, communication failures, factual disputes, procedural disputes, and escalation that make the conflict much more difficult. These overlay issues are often combined with large scale and complexity, all factors that are not necessarily present in every intractable conflict, but all of which make conflicts more likely to become intractable.

This question is difficult to answer, because there is considerable disagreement about the definition of "intractable conflict" among conflict scholars and practitioners. We have found that scholars are more comfortable with the term, while conflict resolution practitioners don't like it, because, they think, it implies either their failure or their uselessness. But we agree with the scholars who point to such conflicts as Israel/Palestine, or the red-blue divide in the United States and assert that regardless of whether we like it or not, intractable conflicts DO exist.

In one of the original BI essays, scholar Louis Kriesberg argued that intractable conflicts have three dimensions:

They last for a long time.
They are waged in ways that adversaries and/or observers consider destructive, and
All attempts to transform or end them have failed.

These dimensions, Kriesberg observed, are interdependent: high levels in one dimension tend to produce high levels in the other dimensions. So, destructively conducted struggles tend to be prolonged and may well have been the target of many failed peacemaking efforts. And, as a conflict goes on, it tends to be waged more and more destructively. Similarly, failed peacemaking efforts tend to harden disputants' positions, making them behave in more destructive ways, and causing the conflict to continue for even more time.

We (Guy and Heidi Burgess) wrote an essay about the same time that explained first, that intractability is not a dichotomous concept. Rather, it exists on a continuum, with very stubborn, destructive conflicts on one end of the continuum, and simple, readily resolvable conflicts at the other. Many conflicts teeter in between, and if they are handled well, they can probably be resolved. If they are handled in destructive ways, they are more likely to become intractable.

So there is no set of characteristics that make a conflict intractable -- it is the combination of many different factors that cause a conflict to become very difficult to resolve. As we explain in the essay "Factors that Make Intractable Conflict So Difficult,"

Over our many years of studying intractable conflicts, we have seen that most of them involve certain types of core issues including

irreconcilable moral differences,
status conflicts, and
high-stakes distributional issues

We agree with John Burton and other human needs theorists, that unmet human needs, particularly identity and security, tend to result in intractable conflicts, as people don't negotiate who they are and whether they are safe. They want to be respected and treated fairly. They want to be physically and psychologically safe. If they are not, they are likely to fight until they are.

In addition to non-negotiable core issues, intractable conflicts are usually complicated by what we call conflict "overlay" problems. These are problems, such as conflicting visions or frames, communication failures, factual disputes, procedural disputes, and escalation that make the conflict much more difficult, and often, completely obscure the core issue. One of the most common overlay problems that is making us unable to transform political polarization, for example, is us-versus-them and win-lose framing, which causes us to paint very complex conflicts in simple black-and-white terms: my problems are all "their fault," and if they win, I lose. So my goal is to get rid of them, or force them to lose. It doesn't even matter what the issue is; the goal becomes to beat or even destroy the other side. We will flesh out each of these core and overlay factors in subsequent essays.

The other way in which intractable conflicts tend to be different from more "tractable conflicts" is that they often are very large scale and complex. That isn't always the case, of course. An interpersonal conflict between a husband and wife or two siblings can be very intractable. But when you add in the scale and complexity of societal level conflicts with thousands to millions of different actors with contradictory interests, values, and beliefs, conflict resolution becomes even more difficult. It isn't impossible, of course; otherwise large societies wouldn't exist, and nothing would ever get done. But scale and complexity are two other factors that tend to lead to intractability, and make conflict resolution much more of a challenge.