Negative Peace
Why the Absence of War Isn’t Enough
For two years, I lived in China, and I can tell you—negative peace feels great… until you realize what it takes to maintain it.
I always felt safe. I never worried about violent crime, theft, or public disorder. The streets were clean, transportation was efficient, and society functioned with a level of order that many countries struggle to maintain.
But critics argue that this sense of security comes with a cost.
I was also keenly aware of the social control that made that stability possible. The government’s presence—through surveillance, media control, and strict laws—was always just under the surface. For some, this trade-off is worth it. For others, it feels like peace built on restriction, not freedom.
This is what negative peace looks like—the absence of war or widespread violence, but not necessarily the presence of justice, freedom, or equality. It’s the kind of peace that prevents uprisings and dissent, but often through force and fear rather than social trust and cohesion.
And that raises a big question: If peace requires control, is it really peace?
To unpack that, we need to look at the different ways violence works. Some violence is loud and visible—wars, riots, violent crime. Other violence is quieter, but just as powerful—it’s woven into laws, policies, and systems:
Direct violence is physical harm inflicted by individuals or groups—things like war, riots, or violent crime.
State violence is violence carried out by the government itself, often through policing, legal punishment, censorship, or coercion. It may not be obvious, but it shapes people’s daily lives.
In these cases, negative peace doesn’t mean the absence of violence—it simply means that violence is controlled and institutionalized rather than chaotic and open.
Defining Negative Peace: What It Is and Why It’s Incomplete
Johan Galtung, one of the pioneers of peace studies, argued that there are two very different kinds of peace: negative peace and positive peace. Understanding the difference is crucial because it explains why some societies remain unstable despite the absence of war.
Negative peace is when violence—war, riots, murder, armed conflict—is absent. It’s when the immediate crisis ends, but nothing has fundamentally changed about the conditions that led to the conflict in the first place. The absence of war doesn’t mean the presence of justice, fairness, or social stability—it just means the violence has stopped (for now).
Positive peace, on the other hand, is when the deeper causes of violence have been addressed. It’s when systems are in place to prevent conflict from returning—not through suppression or control, but through fairness, equality, and stability. Positive peace isn’t just about stopping violence; it’s about creating conditions where violence doesn’t need to happen in the first place. (We’ll discuss positive peace in detail next week.)
The difference between these two ideas is the difference between a ceasefire and true reconciliation, between a dictatorship suppressing rebellion and a society built on trust, or between a fragile treaty and a lasting peace agreement that resolves the root causes of war.
The Fragility of Negative Peace: Why Stopping Violence Isn’t Enough
If negative peace alone were enough, history would be full of stable, peaceful societies. But in reality, some of the most fragile moments in history have come in the wake of negative peace—when violence temporarily ended, but injustice, division, and resentment remained just below the surface.
Few conflicts illustrate this better than the wars in Sudan and South Sudan.
Sudan’s civil wars have lasted decades and have been fueled by deep divisions—ethnic, religious, political, and economic. The first modern civil war (1962–1972) ended with a fragile peace agreement, but because the root causes weren’t addressed, fighting resumed within a decade. The second civil war (1983–2005) followed the same pattern: After years of brutal conflict, a peace deal was signed, leading to the creation of South Sudan as an independent nation in 2011.
But peace didn’t last.
South Sudan quickly fell into civil war (2013–2018) as internal divisions, power struggles, and unresolved ethnic tensions exploded into violence. Even after multiple ceasefires and peace agreements, the cycle of negative peace has continued—each agreement stopping the fighting for a time, but never creating lasting stability. Today, in 2025 the conflict in Sudan continues, with massive loss of life, displacement of civilians, and famine resulting from the ongoing violence and civil war.
Why? Because the deeper issues—power-sharing disputes, ethnic rivalries, resource struggles, and weak governance—were never fully resolved. Ceasefires created moments of negative peace, but they didn’t build the trust, institutions, or stability needed for long-term peace.
This is the problem with negative peace. It can feel like progress, but in reality, with the exception of absolute power, it’s just a pause between conflicts. Unless the underlying causes of violence are resolved, peace is never truly sustainable.
How Negative Peace Masks Underlying Violence
Johan Galtung, the scholar who introduced the concept of negative and positive peace, argued that structural violence can be just as harmful as direct violence. Unlike a war or riot—where harm is immediate and visible—structural violence works more subtly. It happens when governments, institutions, and social systems deny people their basic rights, freedoms, or opportunities, often in ways that don’t make the headlines.
In these cases, negative peace doesn’t mean true peace—it just means that suffering is controlled, hidden, or ignored. Let’s explore three ways this happens.
1. Authoritarian "Peace" Through Repression
Some governments achieve stability not by resolving tensions but by suppressing them. Dissent is crushed before it can grow into open conflict, and fear takes the place of social trust. There’s no visible war, but there’s also no real freedom.
A clear example of this is Russia, where political opposition, independent media, and civil society groups face increasing restrictions. Over the years, harsh laws have criminalized protests, labeled NGOs as “foreign agents,” and driven independent journalists into exile. Elections still take place, but opposition candidates are frequently jailed, disqualified, or forced to flee the country. Dissent is not eliminated—it is simply made impossible. The state controls political discourse, ensuring that no organized resistance can challenge the government’s authority.
This is negative peace—a country free of visible chaos or mass uprisings, but only because political repression ensures that conflict never has the chance to emerge.
However, some argue that Western democracies also limit dissent, just through different mechanisms. Russian officials and state media frequently point to corporate media bias, social media censorship, and government surveillance programs in countries like the U.S. and U.K. as evidence that all governments, regardless of ideology, seek to control public discourse in some form. They argue that while Russia’s restrictions may be more overt, the fundamental goal—managing dissent to maintain stability—is a universal feature of governance. However, critics warn that this form of stability is fragile, as it suppresses grievances rather than resolving them—raising the question of whether a peace built on control can truly last.
2. Economic Inequality & Superficial Stability
Sometimes, a country appears peaceful not because it is just, but because those who suffer the most have no power to resist.
Consider the Gulf States, including the UAE and Saudi Arabia. These nations are often praised for their economic prosperity and low crime rates. Cities like Dubai boast luxury, innovation, and order. But this stability comes at a cost—one that is largely paid by the millions of migrant workers who keep the economy running but lack full rights and protections.
Under restrictive labor laws like the kafala system, many migrant workers have little to no legal recourse if they face exploitation. Wages can be withheld, passports confiscated, and working conditions made unbearable—all without public protests or legal intervention. From the outside, these societies seem peaceful. But for those at the bottom of the system, peace looks a lot more like quiet suffering.
This is a different kind of negative peace—one that maintains order not through military force, but through deep economic inequality and lack of access to justice.
3. The Illusion of "No War" as Peace
Some governments maintain negative peace until people can no longer tolerate it—at which point, the illusion of stability crumbles.
For decades, Myanmar’s military junta controlled the country with an iron grip. Political dissent was silenced, ethnic minorities faced systematic persecution, and democratic movements were crushed before they could gain momentum. Yet, from the outside, Myanmar seemed "stable."
But this negative peace was an illusion. The deep ethnic and political tensions never disappeared—they were just held down by force. As the democratic system began to gain ground and have real success in 2020 and early 2021, the repressive military government, fearing it was losing, staged yet another coup in February 2021, dissolving the elected government and bringing chaos, violence, and war to what looked to become a period of extended peace and cooperation.
This is what happens when negative peace is mistaken for real peace. In Myanmar, the military was not willing to give up control to elected leaders. This meant that the core problem wasn’t solved—it was just delayed, waiting for the moment when oppression and control would attempt to reassert themselves. The difference in this current civil war is that the majority of the population is no longer willing to tolerate oppression and has committed to eliminating the oppressive military government through armed conflict.
Another example of the fragility of negative peace can be seen in the decades-long conflict between Israel and Palestinian factions, particularly Hamas. Time and again, waves of violence have been temporarily halted by ceasefires, only for fighting to resume months or years later. The world watches as rockets and airstrikes devastate communities, pressure mounts for diplomatic intervention, and finally, a truce is brokered.
But once the immediate violence stops, the deeper issues remain untouched.
The blockade of Gaza continues, limiting access to food, medicine, and essential goods, while the people living there remain economically and politically isolated. Meanwhile, Israeli civilians continue to live under the constant threat of rocket attacks and armed incursions. Attempts at long-term diplomatic solutions routinely stall, leaving the conflict in a permanent state of tension.
Then, inevitably, the cycle repeats.
This pattern erupted once again on October 7, 2023, when Hamas launched a large-scale attack on Israel, killing over a thousand civilians and soldiers and taking hostages into Gaza. In response, Israel launched a full-scale military campaign, resulting in massive bombardments, a ground invasion, and the near-total destruction of Gaza’s civil infrastructure. The humanitarian crisis escalated rapidly, with tens of thousands of Palestinian deaths, mass displacement, and an increasingly dire situation for civilians trapped in the fighting. What was once a cycle of sporadic violence has now escalated into one of the most devastating wars in the region’s history.
Each ceasefire pauses the fighting without addressing the root causes of the conflict. The territorial disputes, security concerns, and political grievances are never resolved—only postponed. The result is an unstable equilibrium, where a single spark can reignite violence at any time.
This focus on temporary ceasefires rather than long-term solutions has led to increasingly extreme proposals for ending the conflict—proposals that prioritize stopping violence over addressing justice, fairness, or rights.
A striking example of this came from Donald Trump, who proposed a plan that would permanently dispossess the Palestinian people from Gaza. Dispossession, in this context, refers to the forced removal of a population from their land, stripping them of their homes, rights, and national identity. Under this plan, Palestinians in Gaza would be relocated to neighboring countries, while Gaza itself would be transformed into an economic hub—a "Riviera of the Middle East"—under external control.
This approach embodies negative peace at its extreme: an attempt to eliminate violence not by resolving grievances, but by removing the people affected by them. Rather than addressing the core issues—territorial sovereignty, political self-determination, and historical injustices—Trump’s proposal seeks to end the conflict by erasing one side’s presence entirely.
The consequences of such a policy would be catastrophic. Mass displacement, loss of cultural identity, and the deepening of historical injustices would not create real peace, but rather ensure long-term instability, resentment, and further cycles of resistance and violence. Instead of moving toward reconciliation or a just resolution, this plan would reinforce a peace built on exclusion and coercion rather than justice and coexistence.
This raises a fundamental question: Can true peace ever be achieved if one group’s rights are sacrificed for the stability of another? If peace is simply the absence of resistance, rather than the presence of justice, is it peace at all?
This raises a crucial question: If every ceasefire ends in renewed conflict, what would it take to break free from the cycle of negative peace?
Why Negative Peace Is Not Enough
Negative peace can be deceptive. It offers the appearance of stability while leaving the root causes of conflict untouched. It quiets violence but does not resolve the tensions that make violence inevitable. It may create order, but often through repression, economic disparity, or political exclusion rather than through trust, justice, or cooperation.
History shows that when the deeper causes of conflict remain, negative peace is always fragile. In Sudan and South Sudan, repeated ceasefires and peace agreements have collapsed because the fundamental issues of power, ethnic division, and economic inequality were never fully addressed. In Myanmar, decades of military control kept the country superficially stable, but the moment the military clung to power after a democratic transition, conflict erupted on a massive scale. In Israel and Gaza, ceasefires have come and gone, but as long as territorial disputes and political grievances remain unresolved, violence inevitably returns.
These examples reveal a hard truth: Negative peace is not a long-term solution—it is a temporary pause in an unresolved struggle.
Breaking Free from the Cycle
So how do we move beyond negative peace? There is no simple answer, but history suggests that lasting peace requires more than just suppressing violence—it requires addressing why the violence happened in the first place. That means acknowledging historical injustices, restructuring political and economic systems to be more inclusive, and ensuring that peace is built on justice, trust, and meaningful cooperation rather than fear or coercion.
This is why the study of negative peace matters. Recognizing the limitations of negative peace allows us to ask deeper questions about what it really takes to build sustainable peace. If we accept peace as nothing more than the absence of war, we will continue to see history repeat itself. But if we seek something more—a peace that is built on fairness, reconciliation, and long-term stability—then we must be willing to do the hard work of addressing the deeper causes of conflict.
In the end, the question is not just whether peace exists, but what kind of peace we are willing to accept. Is the absence of war enough, or should we demand something more?
Is peace really peace if it is built on fear, exclusion, or inequality?
That’s the question we must keep asking.
Next Week: The Challenge of Positive Peace
If negative peace is not enough, then what does true peace look like? Next week, we’ll explore positive peace—what it means, why it’s harder to achieve, and how it can create lasting stability. While negative peace simply stops violence, positive peace builds the systems, relationships, and social structures that prevent violence in the first place. We’ll examine real-world examples of positive peace in action—and the challenges that come with trying to create it.
Can a world without war also be a world without oppression, injustice, or fear? That’s what we’ll tackle next. Stay tuned.