The chapter, Peace Studies, in the book Contemporary Security Studies, was written by Paul Rogers, a professor at Bradford University, to explain the different elements of peace studies. He takes a more thorough approach to peace studies by taking a past, present, and future outlook on peace studies as a whole.
In the first subtopic, Paul talks about the early years in the field by detailing the happenings in both the 20th and 21st Century perceptions of war and peace. He then merges that with the evolution amidst controversy subtopic that comes next. In this specific section, he organizes the shifts in focus from World War I to World War II and the different elements that took center stage. To him, war has changed from a military to a civilian-based affair in the manner in which the world wars were conducted. In the second war, more civilians died than did the military men fighting in it. So the paradigms of war keep on shifting based on the objectives as well as the underlying factors that are mostly political in nature.
The next subtopic on the position of peace studies brings together his belief on what it entails to wage war on a specific region. One thing to note now, according to Paul, is that war today is mostly based on avenues of power, and even though there might be goodwill to alleviate it in areas like the Middle East, it possesses even more significant effects when fighting parties retreat. He brings about the concerns of food security and its importance in peace studies because land and food are among the things that drive people to war. Revenge is also one aspect that drives conflict as people are increasingly being radicalized against one another.
Paul suggests that new security threats in the final section should be dealt with using strategies that ensure peace is perpetual and at the same time viable. With the change, more focus needs to be shifted to affairs of food security and debt relief, among others. Radical rethinking ought to be done by the governments involved mostly in Middle East wars to ensure that peace is effected by looking at the root of problems rather than treating symptoms.
References
Rogers, P., 2013. Peace Studies. In: A. Collins, ed. Contemporary Security Studies. 3 ed. s.l.: Oxford University Press, pp. 54-65.
