Conflict Resolution Questions and Answers

Answer: D

The key accepts both statements as correct. The United Nations has steadily taken on new tasks, such as peacekeeping, election monitoring and humanitarian work, so its duties and powers are expected to expand.

The reason, as the key reads it, states that intervention is not justified when a government falls into anarchy and civil war, a position of non-intervention that is part of the debate over the UN's role. Many would argue the reverse, as UN operations in Somalia and Cambodia show, so a reviewer may want to check this item.

Answer: A

The concept of confidence building measures originated at the Helsinki Conference of 1975, the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, whose Final Act included measures such as advance notice of military manoeuvres.

The Treaty of Versailles ended the First World War and imposed terms on Germany. The NPT negotiations in the 1960s dealt with the spread of nuclear weapons, and the Missile Technology Control Regime was formed in 1987 to control missile exports. None of them is the origin of confidence building measures, so the first option is the keyed answer.

Answer: B

An agreement to suspend hostilities in order to negotiate for peace is called an armistice. It stops the fighting for a time but is not itself a peace treaty, and it leaves the way open for talks.

Amnesty is a pardon, usually given to a group of people for past offences. Appeasement is the policy of making concessions to an aggressor to avoid war. Military peace is not a standard term for such an agreement. The key gives armistice for this reason.

Answer: C

Aman Ki Asha was started by the Times of India group and the Jang group of Pakistan, and the two newspapers named in the third option are the Times of India and Jung. It is a joint campaign for peace between India and Pakistan that was launched in 2010.

The Indian Express, The Hindu and DNA are Indian newspapers but they were not the Indian partner of this initiative, and Rawalpindi Times, Lahore Times and Karachi Daily are not the Pakistani partner. Only the third pairing is correct.

Answer: B

The creation of demilitarised areas and neutral states to prevent new wars in Europe belonged to the Congress of Vienna of 1814-15. After the Napoleonic wars the powers set up buffer states, and Switzerland's neutrality was recognised, to keep France in check and the peace in place.

The Treaty of Versailles settled the First World War, the League of Nations was a later organisation, and the Treaty of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years War in 1648.

Answer: B

The term preventive diplomacy was coined by Dag Hammarskjold, the second Secretary-General of the UN, who used it of action to keep local conflicts from being drawn into the Cold War rivalry.

Boutros Boutros-Ghali later developed the idea in An Agenda for Peace, and Kofi Annan and George Bush used the idea, but the coiner of the term is Hammarskjold. Hammarskjold's idea was to keep the great powers out of local disputes, and the term was widely used after the end of the Cold War as well.

Answer: A

The ascending order is the Helsinki CBM Document (1975), the Stockholm CSBM Document (1986), the Vienna CSBM Document (1990) and the Helsinki Document (1992).

The other options place the Vienna document before the Stockholm one or put the Helsinki Document first, which breaks this order. Each document extended the earlier one: the 1975 measures were voluntary, and the Stockholm and Vienna documents added obligations for notification and inspection of military activities.

Answer: D

The remark that India and Pakistan have brought confidence building measures to a demeaning status is attributed to Michael Krepon, the American analyst who has written extensively on CBMs and South Asian nuclear stability.

Rajiv Gandhi, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Pervez Musharraf were leaders who took part in the CBM process, not the critic who made this observation about it. Krepon helped to found the Stimson Center in Washington and has long argued that the confidence building measures have been too limited.

Answer: C

Both statements are true, but the reason is not the correct explanation of the assertion. Managing conflicts in society is a primary and lasting responsibility of government, and peacekeeping has become one of the prominent strategies for resolving conflicts among the global community.

The reason talks of international conflicts and global strategy, whereas the assertion is about conflicts within society, so one does not explain the other.

Answer: B

The process by which conflicts such as ethnic conflicts are changed into peaceful outcomes is conflict transformation. It changes the relationships, attitudes and structures behind the conflict, instead of only ending the fighting.

Conflict management aims to contain violence, prevention to stop it before it starts, and resolution to reach an agreement on the issues in dispute. Transformation is the term for turning the conflict itself into a peaceful relation.