[Studies in Strategic Peacebuilding] Daniel Philpott, Gerard Powers - Strategies of Peace (2010, Oxford University Press) - libgen.lc (1)

AN OVERVIEW 25
Time has been the stumbling block of several otherwise savvy or at least
well-intended interventions. The robust definition of peacebuilding we advocate
incorporates the often bitter lessons of experience, learned from interventions
(or noninterventions) such as Rwanda, Cambodia, Iraq, and Afghanistan,
regarding the critical importance of getting both the timing and the duration
of interventions right.
As various chapters in the present volume illustrate, a lack of clarity about
the end goal of such interventions clouds planners’ thinking about timing
and duration. Professional peacebuilders, well aware that a comprehensive
and sustainable approach to ending violence in deeply divided societies takes
significantly more time and commitment than governments and intergovernmental
agencies typically allot, might subscribe to a modified form of Colin
Powell’s dictum: “If it’s broke,” they might say, “who cares who broke it? We
are going to try to fix it.” “Fixing it,” they realize, requires strategic thinking
about how to forge the collaborative local-national-transnational alliances and
partnerships and movement-to-movement, person-to-person relationships that
will be needed to build a justpeace. Consider the experience-based counsel of
peacebuilders who have observed and consulted in settings of sustained violence
across millions of miles and dozens of years: the period of time it takes to
accompany a society out of a protracted period of deadly violence, achieve stability,
and move toward a justpeace, will be at least as long as it took the conflict
to gestate, turn violent, and run its course. 5
Such sobering considerations might give pause to politicians and policy
makers, potential donors, intergovernmental organizations, and other critical
contributors to any peacebuilding operation that would be planned according to
the requirements of our comprehensive definition. Presumably, no one wants to
sink (much less dive) into what looks like a quagmire—which is how long-term
interventions within “bloody borders” far from home can readily be depicted.
How does one go about building the political will necessary to compel governments
and other players to expand the time horizon of their commitment? 6
Two partial responses begin the discussion of this crucial question. First,
one cannot object to the fact that states and intergovernmental agencies act in
their own interests. Yet we are encouraged by the growing realization by powerful
actors, ranging from major foundations to the European Union, that smart
investment in carefully planned and coordinated peacebuilding operations is
“in their own interests,” given the increasingly interdependent environment.
This interdependence can be seen most vividly in the current debates, in places
like Nogales, Colombia, and Mozambique, about immigration, displaced populations,
and the strain put on both the international and local communities
as people seek survival from the hotbeds of conflict. This is only predicted to
increase when we consider the impact of environmentally driven conflicts, particularly
over issues like the access to and use of water and land, as the case of
Mindanao’s indigenous peoples suggests. 7
That awareness of the utility of “carefully planned and coordinated peacebuilding
operations” brings us to a second and fuller response, which is the
burden of this chapter. How do we best attempt to ensure that peacebuilding