1 Introduction
This volume collects nine chapters about peacebuilding as a global practice. The chapters were first presented at a workshop on peacebuilding that we, the editors of this volume, organized. That workshop was the third in a series of three workshops on various understandings of war and peace in the present era. The first workshop examined the continuing relevance of pacifism as a politico-ethical doctrine (Kustermans et al. 2019). The second workshop revolved around the notion of non-nuclear peace and investigated a āpossible futureā (cf. PatomƤki 2006) world without nuclear weapons, exploring more particularly whether and how peace could be maintained in such a context (Sauer et al. 2020). As organizers of this series of events, we had originally thought that the workshop on peacebuilding would be the more self-confident one. After all, peacebuilding has secured for itself institutional footing. The United Nations has had a Peacebuilding Commission for some 13 years now and its Secretariat now alsoāsince 2019āhas a Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs (which used to be named rather more simply Department of Political Affairs [1992ā2019] and before that Department of Political and Security Council Affairs [1952ā1992]). To the extent that meaning can be read in such a change of names, it suggests an increased commitment to peacebuilding on the part of the international community and thus, enough reason for self-confidence among its practitioners and its observers. However, that was not the impression that we got during the workshop, where, quite on the contrary, a dark mood reigned.
Admittedly, we did not invite field practitioners nor U.N. civil servants to the event. The workshop was a scholarly gathering and it is to be expected that scholars will critically assess whatever phenomenon they decide to engage with. That is, after all, the scholarly vocation. We do not celebrate; we examine. We do not champion; we question. And yet, more appeared to be going on. The two other workshops that we organized were scholarly workshops much in the way that the third one was, but the same kind of generalized skepticism did not animate the discussions there. In spite of pacifism and nuclear elimination having rather less institutional support than peacebuilding does, the tone was rather more hopeful then than it was in the deliberations about peacebuilding. Obviously, this could be due simply and exclusively to the selection of participants, but we do not think so. We think there is more going on and we call this āmoreā peacebuildingās predicament. Interestingly, peacebuildingās predicament may imply that peacebuildingāas a global practice, but also more particularly as an international projectāwill outlive our qualms about it and our sense of its moribundity. Peacebuildingās future may be more secure than we think. Our singing, or even our composing, its requiem may be rather premature.
We do admit to advancing these claims as outsiders looking in. We (the editors) ourselves are not involved first-hand in the study of peacebuilding. We organized a workshop and are now introducing the volume that was ābirthedā during that workshop. What we will do in the remainder of this introductory chapter, therefore, is to explain how our claims emerged from the workshop (and thus from the chapters that comprise this volume). In a first section, we document the ādark mood among the expertsā as it transpired from the workshop and as we also see it evidenced in the broader literature on peacebuilding. We obviously recognize that not every expert shares in this mood and we give ample space to more hopeful voices in the second part of this volume. It is significant, though, that these more hopeful voices typically draw attention to forms of peacebuilding that are developing outside of the reach of capital I and P āInternationalized Peacebuilding.ā Peacebuilding persists as a global practiceāas an all but spontaneous, human practice, that isāeven if it is being challenged as an international project. At the same time, it is unmistakable that peacebuilding is being challenged as an international project and this needs to be addressed. At the end of the first section of this chapter, we reflect on the reasons for this dark mood. What explains it? In a second section, we turn toward the future. Here we introduce the idea of peacebuildingās predicament and we explain why scholars sounding its requiem may be acting prematurely.
2 A Dark Mood Among the Experts
2.1 The Dark Mood Documented
A mood is by definition intangible, but to say that a mood is intangible is not to say that it is fleeting. Quite on the contrary. While emotions are experienced in immediate response to a particular event, moods develop more slowly and, once in place, are more difficult to shake off. One easily imagines the expression of disappointment at the failure of this or that particular peacebuilding initiative in the 1990s, but the overall mood, at that time, remained one of optimism or even triumphalism (Hobson 2015, p. 3). By now the mood has swung like a pendulum, and disappointment has become pervasive. Assessments of the failures of peacebuilding become ever more radical, with a leading scholar recently coming to the conclusion that the āliberal peacebuilding framework [was] an accident of the historical moment and liberal overconfidence in the 1990s. A policy blip that was always destined to fail based as it was more on our naĆÆve idealism than any understanding of the worldā (Chandler 2017, p. 12; Chandler is paraphrasing Lake 2016). Very similar sentiments are being expressed in some of the chapters in the present volume. For example, in what was originally meant to be a somewhat hopeful reflection on the future of peacebuilding, Oliver Richmond diagnoses the current predicament of international peacebuilding as one of āincreasing moribundity.ā Chandler (2017, pp. 6ā9), it might be noted, pushes the idea further and claims peacebuilding has come to its end already, citing a number of United Nations documents announcing that the U.N. will no longer do peacebuilding. Chandler appears to be documenting the euthanasia of peacebuilding. Our contributors do not appear to agree with that radical assessment, although their diagnoses, like that of Richmond, are often sobering. Michael C. Pugh, a veteran observer of the international peacebuilding project, expresses severe doubt with respect to the possibility of āsalvagingā the practice and he ends his chapter with a disabusing observation, when he suggests that āpeacebuilding, like King Lear, is becoming senile.ā In a similar vein, in the conclusion of his chapter on the so-called local turn in peacebuilding (and in development policy), Filip Ejdus wonders whether āthe local turn still provides a progressive avenue for the future of peacebuilding,ā but immediately adds the possibility that it may have been āonly a swan song of the declining liberal order.ā Similarly skeptical is the assessment of Cynthia Carrillo, who, in her chapter on the peace-fostering role of Peasant Reserve Zones in Colombia, presents āthe decline of international peacebuildingā as though it were an obvious fact.
We are well aware that our emphasis on these quotes and the words that appear in themāhistorical accident (Chandler), moribundity (Richmond), senile (Pugh), swan song (Ejdus), decline (Carrillo)ādo not do justice to the complexity of their argument. Actually, we do not even think that any of them would totally agree with David Chandler that peacebuilding is definitively on its way out. But at the same time, it would be a mistake to dismiss the use of these words as mere rhetorical flourish, as the kind of expressions that academic authors will occasionally use to give slightly more rhetorical punch to their otherwise overly nuanced arguments. We think that rhetorical flourish has considerable significance insofar as it serves to indicate a mood. The (somewhat) poetical words chosen by our authors are signals of the intellectual mood in which they find themselves operating. A dark mood reigns among the experts indeed.
2.2 The Dark Mood Qualified
If we are well aware that the arguments of scholars cannot be reduced to the intellectual mood that suffuses those arguments, we are equally aware that not everybody in the field of peacebuilding is experiencing the same mood. Plenty of scholars and practitioners of peacebuilding are soldiering on courageously. It is not difficult to find relatively recent research articles, published in the more prominent journals, which express a belief that international peacebuilding, as instituted and organized by the United Nations, can indeed be successful. It may have to be remodeled a bit here and there, but, on this view, nothing should be assumed intrinsically to stand in the way of its ultimate success (e.g., Gizelis 2009). An important, and still relatively recent, book by Peter Wallensteen (2015) exemplifies the position too. Wallensteen introduces the concept of quality peace and argues that we should evaluate any situation of peace and any plan for peace in light of this notion. If one bears in mind that other scholars are arguing in favor of increased recognition of the inevitability of ācompromised peacebuilding,ā the significance of Wallensteenās championing of such notion as āquality peaceā is all the more obvious. It signals a refusal to give up on the promise of peacebuilding. That...