Unpacking the liberal peace: the dividing and merging of peacebuilding discourses

© 2008 SAGE Publications. Post-print version. 12 month embargo by the publisher. Article will be released May 2009.This paper assesses the discursive environment of post-conflict intervention as a prism through which to view the international politics of the post-Cold War era. I argue that the ‘liberal peace’ is not a single discourse but a tri-partite international discursive environment that dynamically reproduces technical solutions which fail to address the core issues of conflict in a given place. The paper starts from the assumption that over the last twenty years we have seen a shift from an understanding of peace as a state of affairs in a given territory (as explored by Michael Banks in a 1987 paper) to peace as a process of post-conflict intervention; a move from peace to peacebuilding. This ‘liberal peace’ sets a standard by which ‘failed states’ and ‘bad civil societies’ are judged according to ethical, spatial and temporal markers. However, the apparent homogeneity of the model obscures the divisions and mergers which characterise the scholarship and practice of international peacebuilding. The boundaries of the peace debate remain; the political differences latent in Banks’ three concepts are retained in the evolving discourses of democratic peacebuilding, civil society and statebuilding. The paper shows how these three basic discourses are reproduced in international policy analyses and major academic works. Moreover, the discursive mediation of their differences is the dynamic by which the liberal peace is sustained, despite its detachment from the lived experiences of post-conflict environments. It is in this sense that we can comprehend international peacebuilding as a virtual phenomenon, maintained in the verbal and visual representations of international organisations, diplomats and academic policy-practitioners. In light of this disaggregation of the discursive environment, a better, more nuanced understand of the liberal peace can be attained; one that is able to grasp how critics and criticisms become incorporated into that which they seek to critique. The paper concludes with three propositions regarding the nature of world order in the era of the tripartite ‘liberal peace’. During this time coercion, military force and even warfare have become standard and legitimate features of peacefare. The discursive dynamics of international peacebuilding illustrate how peace has become ever more elusive in contemporary international politics

Peacebuilding as Practice: Discourses from Post-Conflict Tajikistan

Note that this is the postprint version, not the preprint.Peacebuilding is a contested concept which gains meaning as it is practised. While academic and policy-relevant elaboration of the concept is of interest to international experts, interpretations of peacebuilding in the Central Asian arena may depart immensely from those envisaged within the western-dominated ‘international community’. This article opens up the dimensions and contingent possibilities of ‘peacebuilding’ through an investigation of two alternative approaches found in the context of Tajikistan. It makes the critique that peacebuilding represents one contextually grounded basic discourse. In the case of Central Asia, and in particular post-conflict Tajikistan, at least two other basic discourses have been adopted by parties to the post-Soviet setting: elite mirostroitelstvo (Russian: peacebuilding) and popular tinji (Tajik: wellness/peacefulness). Based largely on fieldwork conducted in Tajikistan between 2003 and 2005, the argument here is that none of these three discourses is merely an artificial or cynical construct but that each has a certain symbolic and normative value. Consequently, a singular definition of Tajik ‘peacebuilding’ proves elusive as practices adapt to the relationships between multiple discourses and identities in context. The article concludes that ‘peacebuilding’ is a complex and intersubjective process of change entailing the legitimation of new relationships of power

Central Asian statehood in post-colonial perspective

Published version produced with permission of the publisher. The ebook is available to University of Exeter students and staff through MyiLibrary (or search the Library catalogue)

Dictators without Borders

Central Asian dictators close down the space for domestic political opposition. But politics is still present, only it has moved offshore, out of the region

Vice-Chancellors should welcome staff participation in the governance of their university’s international partnerships

Universities and higher education institutions in the UK have a more international profile than at any prior point in their existence. As a consequence, they face entanglement in geopolitical issues. In this post, Andreas Fulda, John Heathershaw and Andrew Chubb argue for the increased involvement of academic staff in decision making surrounding internationalisation and for the greater use of academic expertise in guiding university policies in this area

How postcolonial is post-Western IR? Mimicry and mētis in the international politics of Russia and Central Asia

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from CUP via the DOI in this record.Scholars in International Relations have called for the creation of a Post-Western IR that reflects the global and local contexts of the declining power and legitimacy of the West. Recognizing this discourse as indicative of the postcolonial condition, we deploy Homi Bhabha’s concept of mimicry and James C. Scott’s notion of mētis to assess whether international political dynamics of a hybrid kind are emerging. Based on interviews with Central Asian political, economic and cultural elites, we explore the emergence of a new global politics of a Post-Western type. We find that Russia substantively mimics the West as a post-Western power and that there are some suggestive examples of the role of mētis in its foreign policy. Among Central Asian states, the picture is more equivocal. Formal mimicry and mētis of a basic kind are observable, but these nascent forms suggest that the dialectical struggle between colonial clientelism and anti-colonial nationalism remains in its early stages. In this context, a post-Western international politics is emerging with a postcolonial aspect but without the emergence of the substantive mimicry and hybrid spaces characteristic of established postcolonial relations.This paper was produced thanks to the time afforded under the ESRC research project Rising Powers and Conflict Management in Central Asia’ (ES/J013056/1)

Theological Responses to the War against Ukraine: A Reply to Joshua Searle

This is the final version. Available on open access from the Anabaptist Mennonite Network via the link in this recordThis article seeks to place the war against Ukraine in its wider global, political, and theological contexts. The paper demonstrates how Russia’s war against Ukraine is a theological problem, considers Joshua Searle's questions about ethics in this light, and places these questions in the wider pacifist versus just war debate. It argues that the notion of a just war, in this or any context, lacks both utility in political terms and faithfulness in theological terms