Twenty-first Century Perspectives on War, Peace, and Human Conflict

This open access book responds to the urgent need to improve how we prevent and resolve conflict. It introduces Adaptive Peacebuilding through evidence-based research from eight case studies across Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America. It also considers how China and Japan view and practice peacebuilding. The book focuses on how peacebuilders design, implement and evaluate programs to sustain peace, how interactions between external and local actors have facilitated or hindered peacemaking, and how adaptation to complexity and uncertainty occurred in each case study.

Ultimata feature as a core concept in the coercive diplomacy scholarship. Conventional wisdom holds that pursuing an ultimatum strategy is risky. This book shows that the conventional wisdom is wrong on the basis of a new dataset of 87 ultimata issued from 1920–2020. It provides a historical examination of ultimata in Western strategic, political, and legal thought since antiquity until the present, and offers a four-pronged typology that explains their various purposes and effects: 1) the dictate, 2) the conditional war declaration, 3) the bluff, and 4) the brinkmanship ultimatum. The book yields a better understanding of interstate threat behaviour at a time of surging competition. Background materials can be consulted at www.coercivediplomacy.com.

This book proposes a new Ethics of Political Commemoration adapted from the Just War tradition, reflecting that remembrance is often conducted with political – and even coercive – intent. With its Ius ad Memoriam (what to commemorate) and Ius in Memoria (how to commemorate) criteria, the framework looks to guide debates that are currently inchoate so that remembrance of the past can transform relationships in the present and build a shared future. Offering a moral argument with memorable illustrations, Gutbrod and Wood draw on experiences from Armenia, Georgia, Ireland, Lebanon, and Libya, while connecting to mainstream debates in Western Europe and the United States. Bringing together an ethical tradition with the practice of conflict transformation, the framework fuses two perspectives that enrich each other. The book, in providing a first systematic presentation of the ethics, seeks to engage citizens and scholars, and help those who work to transform conflicts.

This is an open access book.

The book tells (and analyzes) the story of the United Nations multidimensional stabilization operation in Mali (MINUSMA), which closed at the end of the 2023 after almost a decade of existence. MINUSMA, which is the UN operation that has by far attracted the most media attention, has been the laboratory of contemporary peacekeeping, combining several interesting elements. It came on the tail of a French-African military intervention (rehatting African contingents), operated ‘in parallel’ to various counterterrorism forces (Barkhane and JF G5 Sahel). It has been the deadliest peace operation due to asymmetric threats but has also managed to adapt to a new environment and has witnessed a ‘return’ of European troop contributors to peacekeeping in Africa but also a significant contribution from China. Most importantly, MINUSMA ultimately became caught in the geopolitical crossfire, with a host government led by a military junta and supported by Russia (and the Wagner Group) defying the Security Council, in the context of a return of East-West rivalries exacerbated by the 2022 Ukraine invasion.

The book tells (and analyzes) the story of the United Nations multidimensional stabilization operation in Mali (MINUSMA), which closed at the end of the 2023 after almost a decade of existence. MINUSMA, which is the UN operation that has by far attracted the most media attention, has been the laboratory of contemporary peacekeeping, combining several interesting elements. It came on the tail of a French-African military intervention (rehatting African contingents), operated ‘in parallel’ to various counterterrorism forces (Barkhane and JF G5 Sahel). It has been the deadliest peace operation due to asymmetric threats but has also managed to adapt to a new environment and has witnessed a ‘return’ of European troop contributors to peacekeeping in Africa but also a significant contribution from China. Most importantly, MINUSMA ultimately became caught in the geopolitical crossfire, with a host government led by a military junta and supported by Russia (and the Wagner Group) defying the Security Council, in the context of a return of East-West rivalries exacerbated by the 2022 Ukraine invasion.

Over the last two decades the frequency of humanitarian interventions in Africa has increased. The British military intervention in the Sierra Leonean civil war in the early 2000s is often cited as an example of successful intervention and solidified Security Sector Reform (SSR) as a key component of state-building and development. Yet in-depth analysis of the long-term legacies of this ‘successful’ intervention are sparse and there remains a notable dearth in research exploring the British involvement from the perspectives of those directly affected. This book provides a novel outlook by exploring micro-level experiences, thus addressing this lacuna through examining the legacies within Sierra Leone and in British foreign policy from an experiential perspective. The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) is used as a framework to draw out implications for global intervention practice, as arguably R2P must also be accompanied by a responsibility to fully understand the legacy of this social phenomenon. By exploring the link between official narratives and the perspectives of those on the ground, a disconnect is exposed and important nuances are identified within the interpretation of the success of the British intervention. Through a critical analysis of these experiences significant questions are raised regarding the dynamics between intervening forces and the affected population; perceptions of legitimacy; accountability; and the implications for R2P more broadly.

Over the last twenty years, the protection of civilians (POC) has become central to the mandates of multidimensional peacekeeping operations, elevated as a core issue on the Security Council’s agenda, and designated as a priority among mandated tasks. This prioritization is based in part on assumptions that POC is a critical enabling factor to achieve peace and that it contributes to the durability of peace. However, the truth of these assumptions remains untested.

In this illuminating study, Jenna Russo explores the relationship between violence against civilians and peace, including whether such violence lengthens conflict duration or undermines the prospects for longer-term peacebuilding. Using a mixed-methods approach, including case studies on South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, she then examines the extent to which UN POC activities are able to protect civilians from violence and mitigate the potential negative impact it has on peace. This book contributes to both academic and policy debates around the effectiveness of peacekeeping and the protection of civilians, as well as academic research related to conflict duration and the effects of violence.