By: Shahab Sabahi, policy analyst in Energy Security and
Policy Research Group
In most of conflicts and disputes between nations over a
specific region, one tries to search causes around the region’s natural
resource capacity or its geostrategic advantage. Doubtlessly they could be necessary
factors but may not be always sufficient. My argument is that if natural
resources or geostrategic is ever the case the dispute could be settled down
with a cooperative regime by rationales. However the dispute usually flares up that
could end to a conflict. What might be sufficient condition?
By nature human
being’s desire is not just limited to material resources but also recognition. By
definition recognition is the acknowledgment of another human being’s dignity or
otherwise understood to be status and worth. Status is relative rather than absolute,
thus struggles for status are zero-sum competitions. In other words, one can
have higher status only if everyone else has lower one. When in
a dispute struggle for recognition (e.g. the twenty first century territorial
or social class disputes) comes forefront, a cooperative scheme and its recognizable
gains, which are positive sum and allow players to enjoy, does not work.
In this situation struggle over relative status
is the case in which a gain for one player is necessary a loss for another. It
looks like the old game that was the clash of ideologies.
