Only 25 years after the end of the Cold War, the Western-dominated global order is fading and our hopes that liberal democracy would spread and bring world peace are evaporating. While the West is increasingly preoccupied with its internal problems, threats to global peace have fundamentally changed: wars among nation-states and their alliances, once the dominant scourge of humankind, have almost disappeared and are replaced by a triple threat from intra-state armed conflicts, the failing of nation-states and the rise of belligerent non-state actors. The global peace we felt within our reach in 1991, is escaping us. On Building Peace seeks the answers that the UN Charter can no longer provide. Once meant as a guarantor for peace, the Charter was never designed to deal with intra-state conflicts and today its core principles are eroded. The book makes two rather simple, but possibly unpopular suggestions for preserving future peace: first, we must rescue the nation-state, not despite but because of globalization, and second, we must not further undermine the United Nations, but expand its Charter for dealing collectively with this triple threat.The struggle for survival in a world of limited resources and environmental degradation will deepen intra-state conflicts. We must prevent slipping back into a new round of Cold War-type confrontations and focus on finding collective solutions for building peace. For the sake of billions of people of future generations, we cannot get this wrong.
- Cover
- Table of Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Foreword
- Introduction
- 1 The Fading of the Post-Cold War Peace Order
- 1.1 The Emergence of a Post-Cold War Peace Order
- 1.2 The Unraveling of Western Global Dominance
- 1.3 The Delusion of a Just Peace
- 2 The Failing of the Nation-State
- 2.1 The Surge in Intrastate Armed Conflicts
- 2.2 The Rise of Belligerent Nonstate Actors
- 2.3 The Neglected Dual Character of Nation-States
- 3 The Marginalization of the United Nations
- 3.1 The Eroded International Law of the United Nations
- 3.2 The Inherent Limitations of the United Nations
- 3.3 The Loss of Innocence of the United Nations
- 4 Rescuing the Nation-State
- 4.1 The Nation-State and Peacebuilding
- 4.2 The Nation-State and Belligerent Nonstate Actors
- 4.3 The Nation-State and Peace Agreements
- 5 Building Peace on Collective Security
- 5.1 Restoring the Primacy of the UN Charter
- 5.2 Expanding the Mandate of the UN Charter
- 5.3 Broadening Collective UN Decision-Making Processes
- 6 Striking a New Grand Bargain for Global Peace and Security
- 6.1 Fears of a Global Power Vacuum
- 6.2 Prospect of Preserving Democratic Values
- 6.3 Risks of Fighting the Last Wars
- 7 Must Future Peace Be Different?
- Annex I – UN Peace Missions: When Peacekeepers Turn into a
Conflict Party
- Annex II – UN Reforms: Two Reviews Are One Too Many
- Annex III – A New Diplomacy for Intrastate Relations
- Annex IV – Glossary of Terms Used
- Bibliography
- Text Boxes by Chapters
- Introduction – The Syrian Conflict and the End of the Post-Cold War Peace Order
- Box 1.1 – Promises of Paradise
- Box 1.2 – Wars Shape Peace
- Box 1.3 – Will We Be Able to Manage This?
- Box 2.1 – Do Intrastate Conflicts Come in Waves?
- Box 2.2 – Afghanistan’s Unsuccessful Liberators
- Box 2.3 – Iraq and the Storming of a Country under Siege
- Box 3.1 – Shifts in UN Peace Operations
- Box 3.2 – From the Iran-Iraq War to the Sierra Leonean Civil War
- Box 3.3 – Rwanda, the Peacekeepers’ Nightmare
- Box 4.1 – Is Peacebuilding Trying to Cheat History?
- Box 4.2 – Who Is Responsible for Lynching Farkhunda?
- Box 4.3 – Holy Books and Secular Constitutions
- Box 5.1 – Sierra Leone: When the British Saved the United Nations
- Box 5.2 – Iraq’s Mistrusted Nation Builders
- Box 5.3 – Libya and the Failure to Protect
- Box 6.1 – Candles, Flowers, and the Caliphate
- Box 6.2 – Refugees, Migrants, and Teddy Bears
- Box 6.3 – Are We Setting Ourselves Up for Failure?
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