The Conflict Environment of Nations: a Study of Conflict Inputs to Nations

This research was designed to answer three specific questions about the conflict behavior of nations: (1) What are the dinenslons of variation 1r environmental inputs to nations from the international conflict system? (2) To what degree is a nation's conflict activity a response to these conflict stimuli from the environment? (3) Which characteristics of nations explain deviations from a simple stimulus-response model of conflict behavior? The work reported here is designated to produce systematic Information about contemporary patterns of conflict behavior. It Is based upon the belief that behavior begets behavior. To this end, data have been collected on several measures of foreign conflict behavior for all nations exhibiting conflict in 1963. These data were organised into two matrices. The first matrix is an input matrix in which each observation represents the total amount of conflict behavior received by a nation regardless of sender. The second matrix is an output matrix in which each observation is a record of the nation's total conflict behavior. The data in these matrices were each intercorrelated and factor analysed. The factors derived from each matrix were then compared to assess the relationship between Inputs end outputs of nations by use of canonical regression techniques. The residuals (conflict variance which is Independent of this relationship) from the above analyses were then regressed on a set of twenty-two variables of national characteristics which represented the basic patterns of attributes found by Rummel for 1963. The conflict environment of nations was found to be composed of four major patterns of conflict experience: Official Military Violence, Negative Sanctions, Unofficial Violence/Negative Communications and Warning and Defensive Acts. A high correlstion between conflict actions sent and received was found. Thus nations which engage in military violence received military violence from the international environment. Those nations which experienced deviations from the expected relationship of conflict sent to conflict received were identified and the discrepancies were found to be related to national characteristics. The paper suggests an alternative way to conceive the national international linkage problem and demonstrates a linkage between domestic violence and international conflict.