551 José María Santé Abal How to prevent social conflicts from becoming armed conflicts may not be contemplated.41 Baquer also defines it as a relationship between groups of men marked by the intentional use of violence or the dialectic of hostile desires.42 In the same vein, the definition of war provided by Giner43 may be accommodated within our definition of armed conflict. Over the course of armed conflict, escalation and hostility may meld until they engender a desire to destroy or to subjugate the opposing group and lead to bloodshed. Nevertheless, although we must admit that war falls under the spectrum of armed conflict in our definition, we do not endeavour to establish a conceptual delimitation.44 The purpose of this article is to research the transition process that sees social conflict become armed conflict, if applicable, without drawing distinctions between the type of armed conflict and restricting ourselves to the definitions provided. On the other hand, we must mention that war is a phenomenon that does not merely come about due to social conflict. Despite the fact that wars arising from clashes between states may be linked to factors related to the existence of social conflict within one of the opposing states, they do not fall under our concept of armed conflict since neither do they fall under the scope of our concept of social conflict wherein we established that the geographical sphere of the concept would remain delineated by state borders. It thus follows that we may conclude that war is a phenomenon that may ensue from social conflict and that when this is the case it falls within the armed conflict system as defined for the purposes of this article. By way of conclusion, it is worth noting that this definition of armed conflict seeks to exclude the phenomenon of terrorism from the concept defined. This is because one fundamental characteristic of terrorism if that attacks are not perpetrated against the opposing group but instead against state-level social organisation in attacks against those that the terrorists identify with this system.45 41 CLAUSEWITZ, Carl. von, On War HOWARD Michael (Trad.) and PARET Peter (Trad.) Princeton (New Jersey) Princeton University Press, 1976, ISBN 0-691-05657-9, 1985 edit. ISBN 0-691- 01854-5 p 75-77. 42 BAQUER, Miguel A. ¿A qué denominamos guerra? What do we call war? Madrid, Ministry of Defence, 2001, ISBN 84-7823-854-9, p 13-14. 43 GINER, Salvador. Opus cit, p 197. 44 See an example of the delimitation of the concept of war in the reference to the definition of the SIPRI (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute) given in ORTIZ Román D. “Las nuevas guerras civiles” The New Civil Wars in CUETO Carlos de and JORDÁN Javier (Coords.) Introducción a los estudios de Seguridad y Defensa Introduction to Studies of Security and Defence, Granada, Comares, 2001, ISBN 84-8444-278-0 p 36. 45 LÁZARO, José. “Los mecanismos de la violencia: Diálogos con Enrique Baca Valdomero” Mechanisms of Violence: Dialogues with Enrique Baca Valdomero in AZNAR Federico et al, La http://revista.ieee.es/index.php/ieee
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