Is violence a necessary part of international conflict?

Recently, I ran into an interesting debate about the field of conflict analysis & resolution. On one hand, we as peace practitioners are concerned with understanding the underlying issues of the conflict, examining them from unbiased perspectives, breaking them down to their core so we can expose all possible avenues of the conflict to those involved, and if we are lucky, we will take the information and provide multiple avenues of management or resolution. Safety and security are the number one priorities in any conflict analysis situation. However, there seems to be a stigma in our field that everything in conflict analysis and resolution must be based on the best practices of preserving peace and tranquility, the pictures of the 1969’s Woodstock, NY concerts come to many peoples mind. In my opinion, this undermines the true meaning of conflict analysis and the hard work many people in our field deal…