Más allá de la confrontación: examinando los conflictos relacionales y los espacios de vulnerabilidad en las relaciones internacionales

Objective/context: To develop an analytical framework oriented towards the study of subjectivation processes in scenarios that, even in the absence of conflict, constitute decisive spaces for the very gestation of conflictive configurations. The study relies on a dialogue between distinct theoretical traditions—Western and Sinocentric—addressing the nature and causes of international conflict. Based on this discussion, the notion of relational conflict is introduced as a differentiated yet complementary category regarding conventional conceptions of conflict. Methodology: Drawing on a heterogeneous conceptual basis, a hermeneutic methodological approach is applied, and vulnerability zones are proposed as liminal zones situated between risk and conflict—conventional and relational—characterized by a subjective construction of uncertainty. Conclusions: vulnerability zones constitute a solid theoretical framework for categorizing and analyzing diverse behavioral patterns and filtering mechanisms regarding a single phenomenon, allowing for the expansion of the notion of vulnerability into multiple dimensions. Originality: It examines the role of Chinese relationality in its approach to conflict and highlights the existence of spaces of plural signification that, while manifest in empirical reality, lack adequate theoretical conceptualization within the discipline.