Ten Classifications Of Conflict

In society rules are constantly broken, whether it is from someone shaking hands with their left hand or if a gang call for a battle against a rival, these actions exist every day. These conflicts are classified on a scale to determine the severity of those conflicts. The ten classifications of conflicts, from least severe to most severe, goes as follows: folkway violation, civil law tort, crime, organized crime, riot, terrorism, guerilla war, low-level war, total war, mass destruction. I disagree with the way the ten classifications of conflict are organized and will argue that combining a few levels would make the list more logical and straightforward. The first adjustment I would make to the ten classifications of conflicts is to combine crime and organized crime into one larger level. I understand that in class we spoke about how organized crime has a larger impact on society than other crimes, but I find that to be nonsensical. As an illustration, if one person decides to burn an entire town to the ground because they are pyromaniac and are successful
I would find that to have a large impact on that society. Considering the internets impact on society alone, the impact of cyber-crime would be devastating to a society or multiple societies since the internet allows access to hundreds of thousands of people in a few second.
In a newspaper article published by The Financial Express; Dhaka, they examine different ways cyber-crimes affect society—one being the impact of monetary losses. According to the article the impacts of a single, successful cyber-attack can have “…far-reaching implications and that the overall monetary impact of cyber-crime on society and government is estimated to be billions of dollars a year” (“Cyber Crime Affects Society…”). They addressed the fact that cyber-criminals of this century have stolen billions of dollars, billions of those dollars have not been detected, and trillions will be stolen in the future (“Cyber Crime Affects Society…). If a nation loses millions and the global market loses billions, then the economy will surely suffer to the point of its own collapse. When economic downfall occurs then banks will close, demands will exceed supplies leaving people hungry and without basic medical supplies and other materials, water and electricity would eventually cease, and a whole nation would be flipped upside-down. Separating organized crime and crime into two different levels is illogical because both severely impact society. Therefore, crime and organized crime should be combined into one level due to the fact both create grievous repercussions in societal life.
In addition, guerilla war and low-level war should also be combined into one level due to the fact that both are under the intensity of conventional war but requires militarized groups to typically fight against a state or a non-state group. The only difference between the two types of conflicts is that guerilla war is an informal war because they are formed by paramilitary personnel’s or armed civilians and low-level war is formal because the own government or state use their military force. Nonetheless, both affect society in a large way by reducing resources, causing massive public fear, and both reside in a gray area. To clarify, both types of conflicts reside in a gray area because they cannot simply be classified as a fully developed war—they reside in a limbo. In addition, the word “guerilla” is a Spanish word meaning “little war,” which in turn is derived from the word “guerilla” meaning war. The word itself literally means a small war and a low-level war is exactly that—conflict at a lower magnitude that is not yet considered total war. Both types of conflict do not equate to total war but are severe enough to be considered a type of war. Under those conditions, guerilla war and low-level war should be combined into one level and both types named as a low-level war.
As a result, combining organized crime and crime into one level and guerilla war and low-level war into one level makes the classifications of conflict simpler.
After all, simplicity is key, and it is needless to add extra levels to the classifications of conflicts when combing levels that are parallel to each other make the list straightforward and simplistic. Any type of crime can have an equal or higher impact on society as the way organized crime affects society. Cyber Crime is just one example of how severe a crime other than organized crime can affect society. In the same fashion, guerilla war and low-level war share resemblances. In the names of themselves describes the kind of wars they are. Both types of war require some sort of military force, whether it is formal or informal; resources; and an opposition to fight against such as a state group, a non-state group, or against an entire localized
state. I found this topic very interesting and wished it was touched upon a little longer in class. The classifications of conflicts caught my interest due to the fact of the lack of knowledge of such a list existed. I did not know what a folkway violation was, and even less did I know it was a type of conflict. I believe going into deeper detail of what each conflict entails and the reasoning for their placement would have clarified the concept of the classifications of conflicts and made it easier to grasp. I stand by my point, some of the levels in the classifications of conflicts are redundant and should be combined if the ideas of those levels are parallel. This pertains to simplifying crime and organized crime into just crime alone, and low-level war and guerilla war would be reduced to a single category of low-level war. To many, simplicity is favored over concepts that are needlessly convoluted and redundant.