Open Calls

The Conflict Peace & Democracy Policy Blog takes an interdisciplinary approach and would like to encourage experts and scholars from various fields and disciplines to contribute. We are always looking for divers and innovative perspectives to incite social dialogue as well as to reflect a multitude of voices.
We welcome submissions in accordance with our content guidelines. Texts will go through an editing process and a blind peer-review.

The classic Roman maxim "si vis pacem, para bellum" (if you want peace, prepare for war) expresses a paradox at the heart of international security: the maintenance or pursuit of peace is intimately interrelated with violence. From nations such as Israel whose current security strategy foresees offensive military interventions to defeat of potential regional threats, to a reassertive Russia that demarcates its projected zone of regional influence through armed force, and the subsequent debates over EU defense integration and NATO burden-sharing — the logic of armed strength is persistently framed as a non-negotiable prerequisite for stability. At the same time, UN peace missions have increasingly been permitted to use force to fulfil their mandate over the past twenty years – with questionable success, as demonstrated by one of the most robust missions, MONUSCO in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
With military force being rendered as the only realistic means to maintain some kind of international order, unarmed strategies towards peace are being neglected and rejected as naïve. Non-military responses to this militarist perspective in turn reject the use of force for peace. They describe the absence of the threat of violence as the superior tool to achieve peace and underscore the value of classic political practices such as diplomacy or negotiation.

This blog series critically examines the role of violence for international peace and security within the current geopolitical constellation and its armed conflicts. It intends to discuss questions such as:

• Is there an interlinkage between peace and violence?
• Is peace without force realistic in the international community?
• Is an exclusively militaristic perspective realistic?
• What are the reasons underlying the current preference of armed violence as a tool for international security?
• Where is the line between the legitimate use of force brute aggression?

We are interested in receiving submissions comprising 8.000 signs (including spaces) according to our style guidelines attached.

Send your text to josef.muehlbauer@uni-graz.at not later than January 11, 2026.