"spark a conflict" is correct and usable in written English.
You can use this phrase when you are referring to the beginning of a disagreement or disagreement. For example: "The decision to increase prices without consulting staff sparked a conflict between the management and employees."
Forcing the Russian fleet from Sebastopol against its will might have sparked a conflict.
Less than a week after Congo's independence in June 1960, it announced it was seceding, sparking a conflict fuelled by Cold War rivalries.
Within weeks, pro-Russian rebels had taken over cities in eastern Ukraine sparking a conflict with Ukrainian armed forces that has led to more than 6,000 deaths and the displacement of some 1.1 million people, according to the UN.
Criticized for his eccentric idea of imitating egalitarian Bolshevik practices and doing away with military ranks, he also sparked a conflict when he arrested the more conservative officer Voicu Niţescu.
This is the land where Indigenous protester Dudley George was killed by the Ontario Provincial Police in 1995, after a group occupying the former Ipperwash army camp moved to take over a neighbouring park, sparking a conflict with heavily-armed police.
Rwanda, which U.N. experts accuse of giving orders to the Tutsi-dominated rebels and supplying arms and recruits, has twice invaded Congo over the past two decades, sparking a conflict that has killed more than 5 million people.
LeMond is a vocal opponent of performance-enhancing drug use, and at times his commercial ventures have suffered for his anti-doping stance as in 2001, when he first accused Lance Armstrong of doping and sparked a conflict that led eventually to the dissolution of his Lemond Bikes brand in 2008, which was licensed by Armstrong's primary sponsor Trek Bicycles.
PHOTOS: Summer Sneaks 2013 The film, adapted from the book by and told from the point of view of Assange's friend Daniel Brühlheit-Berg (Daniel Brühl), follows the journey of Assange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and his colleagues as the controversial website and its founder become their own media story and WikiLeaks' popularity sparks a conflict between the two Internet sleuths.
