scholarly journals Chinese Peace? An Emergent Norm in African Peace Operations

2015 ◽  
Vol 01 (01) ◽  
pp. 155-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven C. Y. Kuo
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Security Architecture ◽  
Peace Operations ◽  
Global Order ◽  
Significant Development ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Liberal Peace ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Normative Content

The steady rise in Chinese participation in peace operations in Africa is a significant development in the post-Cold War collective security architecture. An aspect of China's rise and its challenge to the liberal global order is its contribution to post-conflict peacekeeping, peacebuilding, and peace-making in Africa, areas that have been dominated by the West. The purpose of this article is to bring together literatures that do not usually speak to one another: Chinese discourses on peacebuilding and the debate on the liberal peace in Africa. The subject of this article is the emerging "Chinese peace" discourse. By examining the "Chinese peace" — both its normative content and its on-the-ground participation in a comprehensive liberal peace project — as a part of the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) — this article begins to highlight differences, identify tensions, and recognize complementarities between the dominant liberal and the emergent Chinese approach to peacebuilding.

A post-liberal peace: Eirenism and the everyday

2009 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 557-580 ◽  
Author(s):  
OLIVER P. RICHMOND
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Critical Research ◽  
Double Standards ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Peace Processes ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Liberal Peace ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Basic Goal ◽  
Hybrid Forms

AbstractThe ‘liberal peace’ is undergoing a crisis of legitimacy at the level of the everyday in post-conflict environments. In many such environments; different groups often locally constituted perceive it to be ethically bankrupt, subject to double standards, coercive and conditional, acultural, unconcerned with social welfare, and unfeeling and insensitive towards its subjects. It is tied to Western and liberal conceptions of the state, to institutions, and not to the local. Its post-Cold War moral capital, based upon its more emancipatory rather than conservative claims, has been squandered as a result, and its basic goal of a liberal social contract undermined. Certainly, since 9/11, attention has been diverted into other areas and many, perhaps promising peace processes have regressed. This has diverted attention away from a search for refinements, alternatives, for hybrid forms of peace, or for empathetic strategies through which the liberal blueprint for peace might coexist with alternatives. Yet from these strategies a post-liberal peace might emerge via critical research agendas for peacebuilding and for policymaking, termed here, eirenist. This opens up a discussion of an everyday ‘post-liberal peace’ and critical policies for peacebuilding.

The uncritical critique of ‘liberal peace’

2010 ◽  
Vol 36 (S1) ◽  
pp. 137-155 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID CHANDLER
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Market Economic ◽  
Liberal Peace ◽  
Conflict Intervention ◽  
Winner Takes All ◽  
International Statebuilding ◽  
Policy Elites

AbstractFor many commentators the lack of success in international statebuilding efforts has been explained through the critical discourse of ‘liberal peace’, where it is assumed that ‘liberal’ Western interests and assumptions have influenced policymaking leading to counterproductive results. At the core of the critique is the assumption that the liberal peace approach has sought to reproduce and impose Western models: the reconstruction of ‘Westphalian’ frameworks of state sovereignty; the liberal framework of individual rights and winner-takes-all elections; and neo-liberal free market economic programmes. This article challenges this view of Western policymaking and suggests that post-Cold War post-conflict intervention and statebuilding can be better understood as a critique of classical liberal assumptions about the autonomous subject – framed in terms of sovereignty, law, democracy and the market. The conflating of discursive forms with their former liberal content creates the danger that critiques of liberal peace can rewrite post-Cold War intervention in ways that exaggerate the liberal nature of the policy frameworks and act as apologia, excusing policy failure on the basis of the self-flattering view of Western policy elites: that non-Western subjects were not ready for ‘Western’ freedoms.

scholarly journals Reshaping U.S. Smart Power: Towards a Post-Pandemic Security Architecture

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 46-74
Author(s):  
Iskren Ivanov
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Security Architecture ◽  
Global Level ◽  
Global Order ◽  
Smart Power ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Effective Instrument

COVID19 turned out to be one of the deadliest diseases in history. The United States faced a series of new challenges after the Coronavirus spread throughout the world. China is taking advantage of the pandemic to challenge the U.S. global dominance. The main purpose of this article is to analyze the role of the United States in the postpandemic security architecture at a global level. The basic claim of the article is that Washington should reshape U.S. smart power in order to preserve the American global dominance. The article’s claim rests on the assumption that smart power is the most effective instrument of U.S. Foreign Policy in the post-Cold War era. It was U.S. smart power that allowed Washington to maintain its global leadership after the 9/11 attacks. The Coronacrisis will have longterm consequences for the global security architecture. However, this article argues that the Coronavirus pandemic will not change the global order.

A Research Agenda for the Study of Peaceful Change in World Politics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deborah Welch Larson ◽  
T.V. Paul ◽  
Harold A. Trinkunas ◽  
Anders Wivel ◽  
Ralf Emmers
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
World Order ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Mechanisms Of Change ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Conceptual Clarity ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Made In

This concluding chapter offers a summary and evaluation of the key ideas contained in the chapters of this Handbook. The chapter discusses peaceful change in terms of conceptual clarity; historical evolution of scholarship in the area, especially the interwar, Cold War, and post–Cold War era efforts at analyzing the concepts; and the policy innovations in this realm. This is followed by an evaluation of the key umbrella theories of international relations—realism, liberalism, and constructivism—and how they approach peaceful change. Some important sources and mechanisms of change are analyzed. This is followed by discussion of the policy contributions of selected great and rising powers toward peaceful change. The chapter then offers a summary of contributions and progress that various regions have made in the area of peaceful change. It concludes with some ideas for future research while highlighting the significance of the subject matter for international relations and the world order.

Of Power and Promises

The NGO Game ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrice C. McMahon
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
International Assistance ◽  
The Past ◽  
Post Conflict

This chapter provides evidence of what can only be called the “NGO revolution.” It documents the growth of NGOs and measures their power. This chapter not only describes how NGOs have changed as they have grown in number, but it explains what is new about their behavior in the post-Cold War period and how their involvement in post-conflict countries differs from the past. This chapter also exposes the disjuncture between the discourse Western actors use when they talk about peacebuilding and international assistance and the realities on the ground. With their numbers, money, and access, it is clear that NGOs had significant sway in Bosnia's rebuilding. Yet, there is little evidence that the NGO boom had much to do with empowering locals or advancing peace.

Keeping the Peace in Africa: Why “African” Solutions Are Not Enough

2008 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 309-329 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul D. Williams
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Conflict Management ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Peace Operations ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
General Terms ◽  
Conflict In Africa ◽  
Constituent Elements

Since the early 1990s, a variety of African and Western governments alike have often suggested that finding “African solutions to African problems” represents the best approach to keeping the peace in Africa. Not only does the empirical evidence from post-Cold War Africa suggest that there are some fundamental problems with this approach, it also rests upon some problematic normative commitments. Specifically in relation to the problem of armed conflict, the “African solutions” logic would have at least three negative consequences: it would undermine the UN; it would provide a convenient excuse for powerful Western states that wished to avoid sending their own soldiers to peace operations in Africa; and it would help African autocrats fend off international, especially Western, criticism of their policies. After providing an overview of the constituent elements of the “African solutions” approach, this article sets out in general terms the central problems with it before turning to a specific illustration of how these problems affected the international responses to the ongoing war in Darfur, Sudan. Instead of searching for “African solutions”, policymakers should focus on developing effective solutions for the complex challenges raised by the issue of armed conflict in Africa. To this end, Western states in general and the P-3 in particular should give greater support to conflict management activities undertaken by the United Nations, develop clearer guidelines for how these should relate to regional initiatives, and facilitate the efforts of civic associations to build the foundations for stable peace in the continent's war zones.

scholarly journals Narrating Global Order and Disorder

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 94-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Levinger ◽  
Laura Roselle
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Global Order ◽  
Media Environment ◽  
International Context ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Order And Disorder ◽  
Political Purpose ◽  
Strategic Narratives

This thematic issue addresses how strategic narratives affect international order. Strategic narratives are conceived of as stories with a political purpose or narratives used by political actors to affect the behavior of others. The articles in this issue address two significant areas important to the study of international relations: how strategic narratives support or undermine alliances, and how they affect norm formation and contestation. Within a post-Cold War world and in the midst of a changing media environment, strategic narratives affect how the world and its complex issues are understood. This special issue speaks to the difficulties associated with creating creative and committed international cooperation by noting how strategic narratives are working to shape the Post-Cold War international context.

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