| Peacebuilding As Politics: Cultivating Peace in Fragile Societies |  | Creators: Elizabeth M. Cousens, Chetan Kumar, Karin Wermester
Publisher: Lynne Rienner Pub
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
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Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 1367299
Media: Paperback
Pages: 248
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 6 x 0.6
ISBN: 1555879462
Dewey Decimal Number: 327.172
EAN: 9781555879464
ASIN: 1555879462
Publication Date: October 2000
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Product Description
Although the concept of postconflict peacebuilding held great promise after the end of the Cold War, within a few years, the situation seemed to worsen. This study examines successes and failures of interventions to build peace in El Salvador, Cambodia, Haiti, Somalia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
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| Customer Reviews:
Can peacebuilding be successful? April 19, 2001
Terri Burns Russo (Drew University, Madison, NJ USA)
Peacebuilding as Politics is a project of the International Peace Academy. It analyzes peacebuilding as a more viable method of sustaining peace in conflicted areas than mere peacekeeping. Furthermore, it analyzes the peace process in five countries on four continents: Haiti, Somalia, Bosnia, and El Salvador, including a historical perspective, what international groups attempted to accomplish, what was actually accomplished, and what further work needs to be done. By studying peace in these nations, the authors hope that lessons can be learned to promote a peaceful world. In the introduction, Elizabeth M. Cousens outlines the aims of this study. First, the contributors wish to expose the "unique conditions for constraints upon peacebuilding"(2). Second, they aim to "examine the quality of international efforts to respond"(2) to the constraints. Third, they hope to make clearer the "ongoing debate over content and purpose of international peacebuilding"(2). Finally, the authors lay out questions to provide thoughtful priorities under varying conditions and to better coordinate international activities to respond to those conditions. If the authors had stuck to these aims, the book would have made interesting reading. As it is, the text is written in choppy, sometimes disjointed styles, which detract from its readability. However, it is chock-full of interesting analyses of the peace efforts after the four-year Bosnian war, the twelve-yeaar El Salvador struggle, the twenty-five year genocide in Cambodia, and Haiti's generations of chaos. In each of the five conflicts in the body of the book, the five basic objectives of peacebuilding are analyzed. The objectives are outlined on page 11 as "self-enforcing cease-fire" (no international intervention), "self-enforcing peace" (no new conflicts), democracy, justice, and equity. With legitimate political governments, these objectives are attainable. The problem is that the analyses of the five conflicts show that peacebuilding is not very successful. El Salvador is used as the "poster child" for peacebuilding success, but problems are still occuring which the author notes. Therefore, the book's thesis would have been better proven through the use of one successful model. The notion of peacebuilding rather than peacekeeping is relatively new. Therefore, this book adds to the literature in this area of study. However, it is flawed.
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