confrontation

Etymology

From Middle French. Morphologically confront + -ation

noun

1. The act of confronting or challenging another, especially face to face.
   During the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, this commitment brought him into frequent critical confrontation with entrenched forms of conservative thinking (in academic areas from history and social science to the more abstract domains of ethical and political philosophy)[…] 1999, Nicholas Walker, “The Reorientation of Critical Theory: Habermas”, in Simon Glemdinning, editor, The Edinburgh Encyclopedia of Continental Philosophy, Routledge, page 489
2. A conflict between armed forces.