CHAPTER 13
International Roles and Reforms
PEACE CANNOT HAPPEN IN A VACUUM; REGIONAL PARTNERS to the conflict societies, and the international community at large, can provide critical support and encouragement throughout the modern peacemaking process. The transition toward comprehensive peace and development aid requires a different approach to rules and regulations on the part of the international community, including the United Nations, the World Bank, the IMF, and individual countries, beginning with members of the Group of Eight (G-8).
Peace is a necessary component of the development of post-conflict countries, a truth that the international community can recognize through solid financial support. Peace aid not only can provide an impetus toward economic growth but also can foster the creation of economic relations that will lead to the successful implementation of the peace treaty.
The international community can greatly improve the quantity and quality of assistance provided for the rehabilitation and development of former war economies and for the cooperative measures to be undertaken by the post-conflict parties. If a substantial portion—15 percent or more—of total governmental assistance to conflict resolution were earmarked for cooperative projects, post-conflict societies would be formally supported in their joint peacebuilding efforts. The international community currently supports post-conflict areas according to the rules and regulations of developmental aid, but international aid can hardly be interpreted as a successful endeavor. When peace assistance goes hand in hand with 144 development, peacebuilding is no longer a side note but a priority.
The isolation that develops as a result of conflict means that conflict zones often lack experience in regional development. The international community has the opportunity to guide the post-conflict area toward regional economic integration and interdependence. This integration covers areas such as legal matters, infrastructure links, investment policies, financial mechanisms (e.g., funds and guarantees), project development, and political cooperation. Such integration may well pay peace dividends on the economic front, but it also could spill over into the spheres of culture, education, youth, and so on.
The most recent and successful example of the integration phenomenon is the European Union, which is considered an extraordinary achievement. However, Europeans are reluctant to guide other regions toward a similar structure, claiming that others are not yet ripe for integration. Europeans prefer to compete with the United States for the dominant diplomatic and strategic role in the different regions, giving the impression that what is good for Europe is not good for others but that what is right for the United States is right for Europe.
Unfortunately for Brussels, both assumptions are wrong on a global scale: different regions in the world certainly can learn from the European experience, and Europe currently cannot compete with the United States in clout and influence. The European structure comprises the essence of modern-day diplomacy, and by guiding other regions toward similar regional frameworks, the European Union improves its chances of achieving influence and political clout in the future.
Therefore, the European Union, in cooperation with the United States and the World Bank, can contribute to modern peacemaking by supporting efforts toward integrative regional economic investment. The political leadership of the European Union can take on a leadership role in this context, as can nongovernmental players and the private sector, whose experience in efficient economic and regional development is invaluable. 145
Peacebuilding, Glocalization, and Peace Ecology
By definition, peacebuilding is a less organized and more spontaneous process than other aspects of peacemaking, because it originates in all sorts of arenas and because it involves nongovernmental organizations. If the security aspects of peacemaking are the most systematic, the peacebuilding aspects are the most anarchic; intensive, hand-in-hand peacebuilding activities create a critical mass of momentum that contributes to peacemaking.
The role of the international community in the sphere of peacebuilding is essentially to provide legitimacy to the peacebuilding efforts. Significant financing can be channeled to peacebuilding activities in the core post-conflict area; those activities will be most effective if the roles of international and local NGOs are reconciled for maximum coverage.
NGOs can help create the orchestrated anarchy in which they operate. International NGOs with experience in conflict regions can create the right atmosphere for peacebuilding by lending their proficiency, passion, and commitment to peace and humanitarian values. Governments and foundations can lend their support through fiscal and legal measures, giving NGOs the flexibility to operate as necessary in sensitive areas. Private-sector companies also have an important role to play in peacebuilding activities, often inspired and guaranteed by the governments of their countries. Such companies can best aid the peacebuilding process by ensuring that activities are more effective, efficient, and even potentially profitable, generating greater peace dividends.
As previously outlined, decentralization and city-to-city diplomacy are very useful for the purposes of peace and development, but their potential remains untapped. Although the concept of twin cities is not new, it generally represents little more than protocol and folklore. In our decentralized peace, however, cities can assume quasi-state functions in relation to peacebuilding.
The international community can contribute to modern peace in this context by rousing and empowering wealthy, developed, 146 and peaceful cities to work with cities across divides in post-conflict areas. Such empowerment involves financing, brainpower, know-how, and encouragement on neutral territory, encouraging joint activities and dialogue. A good portion of aid money—up to 10 percent—can be channeled through local governments to minimize administrative costs and maximize the amount of assistance that reaches the needy.
The third, or mediating, cities serve to facilitate joint activities and dialogue between post-conflict cities by providing a neutral meeting point and by offering the knowledge and assets to aid peacebuilding activities. The third city also can provide important capacities for urban areas (on both sides, or on only one side) and can recruit the goodwill of its civil society to operate in tandem with local civil society organizations from the post-conflict region.
There are many examples of third-city contributions that illustrate the success of the glocalization theory, including Barcelona, Spain-Nablus-Rishon Le-Zion (youth dialogue); Rome-Kigali (exchange of agricultural expertise); Baltimore-Freetown (provision of additional garbage trucks for the Sierra Leone capital); Washington, DC-Addis Ababa; and Seattle, Washington-Haiphong, Vietnam. The international community should encourage these cities to continue their peacebuilding activities and should inspire more third cities to participate in the process. It should recruit for that purpose the aid of international organizations such as the World Bank; the Glocal Forum; UN-Habitat, the UN instrument responsible for city operations; and United Cities and Local Governments, a global NGO that operates on the local government level in hundreds of cities.
Peace ecology is another important element that the international community can foster. Marketing peace to civilians and constituencies has seldom been perceived by the international community as an important element of peacemaking. In regions where peace prevails, peace is generally taken for granted, as is the perception that most people reject war and support peace. But this is not the case. 147 In conflict zones, many constituencies have developed negative stereotypes of the enemy; there is a kind of comfort in the familiar status quo of conflict and hostility.
The international community can help conflict parties create an environment of peace and can influence the conflictladen values dominant in such societies. World leaders can demonstrate the importance of peace ecology through rhetoric that reflects peaceful values. Most Western nations have cultural and information-dissemination institutions, such as the British Council, that work with counterpart institutions in conflict countries to generate peace-promoting public relations campaigns. It is important to encourage multiculturalism in post-conflict environments by holding pluralistic events that promote respect and tolerance; such values almost always fall victim to conflict.
Public relations events and campaigns also can be instituted by the international public sector, working with their counterparts from the post-conflict region. A public relations campaign event can intelligently and aggressively contextualize each region in terms of culture and environment and can advance peaceful coexistence. In the same vein, the international community can galvanize its academic institutions to work with peers in conflict areas to create an academic literature that endorses tolerance and negates the stereotypes encouraged by such literature during the conflict years. The most successful modern peace agreements introduce tangible goods and peace dividends into the conflict region and influence those community members who fail to recognize the value of peace.
Security Arrangements
International contributions to security in post-conflict areas can strengthen local forces and provide additional support for cooperative military activities. The security functions of the international community include assistance in antiterror activity through intelligence, monitoring of the peace treaty and all control agreements, 148 and peacekeeping in border areas. This kind of aid can be acquired primarily from the United States and the European Union, but possibly also from regional players.
International peacekeepers also can take on a peacebuilding function; they can secure locations for joint ventures in engineering and employee training in various industries, in addition to providing assistance with prefeasibility studies. The most useful characteristics of UN and other international peacekeepers thus include both peacekeeping and peacebuilding skills.
A further security role for the international community lies in assisting post-conflict countries in their demilitarization process, including the transformation of military industries into civilian ones and the retraining of military personnel for civilian life. These demilitarization activities are important components of the social and economic rehabilitation process of post-conflict areas; the move also is symbolic of the transition from war to peace.
An important aspect of the relationship between the international community and post-conflict countries lies in the pacts between them that guarantee national security—or, preferably, regional security. A post-conflict country may have created a security pact or an agreement for antiterror training and intelligence exchange with a particular country, region, or international institution; however, the most effective collaborations add to regional stability and political security rather than detracting from it. These arrangements can exist, for example, between a former conflict country or region and NATO, as exemplified by the Partnership for Peace, a pact between NATO and former Eastern Bloc countries. This partnership has stabilized the region by demanding both security cooperation and political coordination, and it has linked Eastern Europe with a stable system of governance. Such a model could be used as the basis for partnerships to enhance cooperation and stability in other regions.
In a peace setting, security arrangements that run parallel to political arrangements will be most effective; political will and cooperation will create the common interests that sustain security 149 and uphold stability, rather than security creating common interests. The United States, given its military capacity and willingness to use it, can take the lead on this approach by making use of its unmatched ability to plan and implement in a strategic fashion.
By looking at the role of the international community in its entirety we can create a multisector approach, employing a diversity of players led by the US administration, in areas such as economic recovery, regional development, peacebuilding, decentralization, and comprehensive security. Support will be most effective coming from governments, multilateral organizations, NGOs, private-sector groups, and social and cultural institutions as well as from the United Nations, the United States, the European Union, Japan, the World Bank, the IMF, and other relevant regional players.
The international community is a key part of this complex puzzle and must maintain its clear orientation toward creating and sustaining peace. Peacemaking is about mixing apples and oranges, and it requires an interdisciplinary approach to the content and the actors.
International Reforms
The international community cannot execute its functions in the modern peace process without large-scale reforms. The repeated threats of the use of nonconventional weapons, in addition to the failure of current security and peace doctrines, may result in the collapse of international stability. Consequently, a change in the international attitude about the implementation of modern peace is both probable and necessary. A revolutionary approach has the potential to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of international actors. Peace on a local scale has a greater chance of success when it is built within a global framework that supports it.
In addition to a change in attitude, modern peace also demands structural reforms, but such reforms are not guaranteed and can result from the erosion of the nation-state’s clout within the relevant institutions. (This process has already been initiated by the onset of globalization, though less so within the framework of 150 international institutions.) Weakened states are making important decisions and generally expressing narrow self-interests. To combat the limits of such an approach, international institutions dealing with peace and development can create a realistic peace coalition to help modernize peace and ensure its sustainability.
The United Nations—the parliament of nations—is the central body through which many reforms can begin. One potential restructuring involves the creation of an upper and lower house within the United Nations. The UN General Assembly can become the upper house, maintaining its general authorities and functions, while the lower house can comprise the mayors of the one hundred fifty most populous cities in the world. This glocalized lower house can debate global, peace-related economic, social, and cultural issues, taking on an advisory role to the assembly and bringing the decision-making process closer to the interests of citizens. The lower house can convene biannually.
A peace and security council can operate parallel to the UN Security Council, convening approximately four times a year on issues of peacemaking, at the discretion of the secretary general. This council represents a way to promote inclusive and participatory decision making from many spheres. It can involve the fifteen members of the UN Security Council; the heads of the fifteen largest and most active international NGOs, as selected by a committee of elder statesmen named by the secretary general; a representative of the World Bank; and representatives of peace-oriented foundations. This council, operating in an advisory capacity to the UN Security Council, can provide a balanced, multisector approach to peacemaking on a global scale.
The G-8 also can amend its agenda to include issues relating to peace and peace-related ventures. By inviting relevant institutions such as local governments, NGOs, and business leaders to participate in this agenda, the G-8 can promote values of social inclusion and can legitimize the prioritizing of peacebuilding in the international arena.
The current mandate of UN peacekeeping forces is often limited, 151 resulting in occasionally dramatic lapses, such as the impotence of the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda in 1994. Nonetheless, peacekeeping forces have the potential to represent a more holistic approach to peacemaking, and their mandate can be expanded to include peacebuilding activities. This reform would require the recruitment of development and peace experts to work with the post-conflict parties on joint peacebuilding projects. Such a function would parallel the peacekeeping function, contributing to cooperation between former enemies and the additional involvement of regional actors.
Separating development from peacebuilding is artificial and erroneous. If the World Bank, the biggest international development agency, works with the United Nations to operate parallel units of development and peacebuilding, lasting peace will have a greater chance of success.
A research institute linked to the United Nations, such as the International Peace Institute, can help measure and steer peace ecology by conducting ongoing research into attitudes about peace and living conditions in post-conflict zones. Such systematic research can compose the peace ecology yardstick, or peace barometer.
A formal body of youth representatives from all member states can contribute to glocalization and the evolution of an empowered international youth community. The establishment of a youth council at the United Nations—responsible for debating an agenda for the future and submitting a yearly report to the general assembly and the security council—can serve not only to train young peace diplomats but also to encourage and empower youth to influence the international agenda, both generally and on specific peace issues. The engagement of youth in the international arena has a great deal of potential as a catalyst for change.
Ultimately, it is in the international community’s best interests to implement reforms toward a new peacemaking model. The international community will benefit from improved global security 152 and stability; economies will grow and regions will be less likely to be upset by massive power imbalances.
The modern edifice of peace rests on the four pillars and reflects the principles of cooperation, vision, and peaceful values. Peace and conflict are functions not only of politics but also of human nature, of the human battle for power versus the need to connect societies for the preservation and development of life itself. Modern peace espouses life and social growth, inviting us to move past our limitations in pursuit of greater humanitarian ideals.