Journal number 9

What factors influence conflict dynamics as we look at why individuals, groups, and nations engage in conflict? Why do you think humans seem so willing to commit horrible acts of autrocity against other humans in the name of justice, security, and peace?

There are many different factors that influence conflict dynamics. On the one side there are the different parties and their goal and how much they differ from each other and also the aspect if they have a past and if so how bad is it? If the past has been kind of tough and the fronts hare really hard it is almost impossible to have a soft conflict dynamic.
Besides these facts there are also different dynamics like the spiral dynamic which is most likely.
Groups, nations engage in conflict mostly if they feel that their needs are either not respected or they want more power or have an issue in general. There are many different aspects to engage in a conflict but from my experience the most common are to gain more power, to be taken more serious and obviously from nations territorial and economic reasons.
I think humans are willing to engage in horrible acts of autocracy because they hope the outcome will be better for them. From what I have experienced in the past and what my feeling is is that nations and people most likely are not interested in Other's need primary but in their own first. The Other's needs are secondary for us. If a country has a chance to get more oil or more power in general they will find a way to get into the country and try to reach their goal. However, they won't tell the other nation what their primary interest is, they will most likely come up with an excuse which makes others believe that they are seeking for the Other party to be helpful but that is most of the time not the primary interest.
For example is the UN and the NATO interfering in other countries to make them help develop peace through blue helmet insertion and it is true that they want to help build up more security and democracy in those countries but they also have a positive outcome themselves, which is for example getting closer to a perpetual peace or at least less war and that brings stability and that leads to more economic trades through the world and the latest at that point the interfering countries will meet some of their main needs. As a result of that you can say that even if interfering are not only to help Others but also to help meet your own needs and goals in the long run and to meet these needs people and nations are willing to do some horrible acts sometimes but not always.