Peace During and After the Age of Intervention

Abstract

Peacekeeping was a major contribution to the twentieth-century project of peace in the sense of providing a tool through which a preliminary, negative peace could be consolidated in a state-centric world. Upon this basis an elite-level peace agreement could then be mediated between states. However, integrated missions and peacebuilding interventions since the end of the cold war adopted a radically different approach, indicating an ambition to create a liberal state without necessarily receiving local consent. This indicated a shift towards a trusteeship framework, used to install more progressive forms of politics from the West's perspective while enhancing regional security. The latest iteration of this has led to what might be described as neoliberal statebuilding. This has proven to be a dead-end, having done much to discredit the connection between intervention and peace, raising the question of what might replace it, especially in world of structural war and violence.