 I am a pacifist. I am opposed to war, conflict, and militarism. That means that since the moment I stepped into the Department of War Studies, I was told I was in the wrong place. This led me down a road of introspection that culminated in what I want to share with you today. Hello, my name is Isabel Avedore Garcia. And today I want to share with you why, when I think of the study of war and conflict, I think of hope. Hope, above all things, hope that rice is out of a place that it shouldn't rise, and that is what I tried to represent with this drawing. This is how I, a fresh-eyed 20-year-old, came to look at conflict. Why hope, then? Where does someone like me, someone who has a very weak heart and is vulnerable to the atrocities of men and women and to the suffering of others, see hope anywhere in the study of conflict? I see it, above all things, in what may yet be the future of the subject. I see it in the definition of war as merely a continuation of policy by other means. And I see it in the play of events and means. I see it in that perhaps one of the main premises of our subject is just wrong. I think that perhaps we have desensitized ourselves to war and conflict in the most basic way by assuming that it's not only natural, but also inevitable. Now, I know that claiming that war is not natural is not in any way new. In fact, it's the basis of liberal thought. It goes back all the way to when we debated whether or not mankind was good or evil. Quite soon, though, the liberal conscience, as Michael Howard would like to call it, found ways to justify war. And after that, who's left to claim that perpetual peace was possible? After all, war serves a purpose. Well, just like I'm a pacifist and a deeply empathetic person, I am also someone who believes war to be logical, rational, and serving a specific purpose. A political aim, if you will, that, as classmates would very much like to remind us, is achieved through largely military and violent means, but means that must nonetheless serve the aim. Now, understanding, accepting, and condoning are three very, very different things. I understand. I do not condone. What I fear is that this community has crossed a very delicate line into condoning war and violent conflict through the acceptance of war as the natural state of man, as a natural solution to conflict, and as something we can ultimately never get rid of. War, we are told, is everywhere. War is here to stay, and there is no getting rid of it. Most maybe agree with this. The others quietly accept this. At least it means we won't be out of a job, right? And all research, all action goes from there. It's our starting point, if you will. This is the world I stepped into, the first and the last thing I heard in lectures. And I sat there dazed and confused, unable to sleep at night, quite literally tossing and turning. War is everywhere. War is not going away. So why did someone like me, someone who doesn't believe in condone or even stomach war and violent conflict come into this field? Wouldn't it have been better for me to direct my efforts into humanitarian aid or international organizations to lessen the effects of something that wasn't going anywhere and quite simply broke my heart? OK, granted, I might have been hitting my, what am I doing with my life stage a little early at 20? But then after much tossing and turning, I found something. Another very old argument, if human beings are capable of empathy, then war cannot possibly be human nature, right? Yeah, OK, maybe I'm also an optimist. But what we tend to find difficult is to harmonize this basic humane instinct with the understanding and acceptance of war and conflict as rational and logical. Somehow I did, and this outlook gave me hope. My brain, as usual, ran about 1,000 miles ahead of me, and it ended up in a place where inherently no political aim is worth the human cost. Of course, this is a utopic view, but not one that comes from naivety. War for the sake of war cannot be war. There is a political aim and a limited objective that serves it. Conflict will likely always exist, and for logical reasons, it will largely be violent as it has been through history. But that doesn't make it the only possible choice, because make no mistake, it is a choice. If humanity defined itself by how we wage war, that was a choice. And it is a choice, a basic premise that we are capable of changing. Someone like me is capable of looking at war and violent conflict like this with hope, because while I can't promise we will eradicate war someday, now that would be a little more naive, we can't change our outlook and how we look at it. We can't change your starting ground for studying it. The spread of ideas is slow, but it needs to start somewhere. Now, I may very well be an idealist, but everyone can learn a thing of two from hoping, from taking a fresh look at things every so often. Hoping has taught me something very, very important. Challenging our own assumptions is how we move forward, regardless of the result. Even the ones everyone seems to agree with. In my view, this subject has been stuck in the same assumption and a basic premise that we really need to take a fresh look at, and we've been stuck here for far too long. I look to my future studies with hope, because I know that I will continue to challenge every assumption that lands on my desk, even my own. I encourage all of you to have a little hope that you will find something new and take a fresh look and always challenge every assumption that lands on your desk. Thank you.