Destroy, Build, Secure argues that pacification has been essential to the survival of capitalism and that we need to take the concept seriously.

This volume examines the causes and purposes of 'post-conflict' violence. The end of a war is generally expected to be followed by an end to collective violence, as the term ‘post-conflict’ that came into general usage in the 1990s signifies. In reality, however, various forms of deadly violence continue, and sometimes even increase after the big guns have been silenced and a peace agreement signed. Explanations for this and other kinds of violence fall roughly into two broad categories – those that stress the legacies of the war and those that focus on the conditions of the peace. There are significant gaps in the literature, most importantly arising from the common premise that there is one, predominant type of post-war situation. This ‘post-war state’ is often endowed with certain generic features that predispose it towards violence, such as a weak state, criminal elements generated by the war-time economy, demobilized but not demilitarized or reintegrated ex-combatants, impunity and rapid liberalization. The premise of this volume differs. It argues that features which constrain or encourage violence stack up in ways to create distinct and different types of post-war environments. Critical factors that shape the post-war environment in this respect lie in the war-to-peace transition itself, above all the outcome of the war in terms of military and political power and its relationship to social hierarchies of power, normative understandings of the post-war order, and the international context. This book will of much interest to students of war and conflict studies, peacebuilding and IR/Security Studies in general.

In From Victory to Peace, Elise Kimerling Wirtschafter brings the Russian perspective to a critical moment in European political history. This history of Russian diplomatic thought in the years after the Congress of Vienna concerns a time when Russia and Emperor Alexander I were fully integrated into European society and politics. Wirtschafter looks at how Russia's statesmen who served Alexander I across Europe, in South America, and in Constantinople represented the Russian monarch's foreign policy and sought to act in concert with the allies. Based on archival and published sources—diplomatic communications, conference protocols, personal letters, treaty agreements, and the periodical press—this book illustrates how Russia's policymakers and diplomats responded to events on the ground as the process of implementing peace unfolded. Thanks to generous funding from the Sustainable History Monograph Pilot and the Mellon Foundation the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access (OA) volumes from Cornell Open (cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornell-open) and other Open Access repositories.

Researchers have recently reinvigorated the idea that key features associated with a capitalist organization of the economy render nation states internally and externally more peaceful. According to this adage, the contract intensity of capitalist societies and the openness of the economy are among the main attributes that drive these empirical relationships. Studies on the Capitalist Peace supplement the broadly received examinations on the role that economic integration in the form of trade and foreign direct investment play in the pacification of states. Some proponents of the peace-through-capitalism thesis controversially contend that this relationship supersedes prominent explanations like Democratic Peace according to which democratic pairs of states face a reduced risk of conflict. This volume takes stock of this debate. Authors also evaluate the theoretical underpinnings of the relationship and offer an up-to-date idea history and classification of current research. Leading scholars comment on these theoretical propositions and empirical findings. This book is an extended and revised version of a special issue of International Interactions.

This unique guide to the politics and recent history of Central America by one of its most distinguished commentators opens with a succinct overview of pacification and democracy in the region. Dunkerley focuses on the causes and consequences of the ending of civil war in El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua. Drawing on a wide range of local and international sources, he stresses the variety of means by which peace has been sought and achieved. He also analyses economic performance, relations with the US, refugee and human rights problems, narcotics and corruption, and the issue of war crimes. The second section of the book comprises a detailed chronology covering all key developments between 1987 and 1993. the book concludes with indispensable appendices which clearly set out statistical profiles of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua for the decade since 1982. they document US economic and military aid to Central America, the dates and results of regional elections, and provide statistics on refugees and displaced persons. The Pacification of Central America is a valuable tool of reference for anyone with an interest in the complicated and often confusing politics of the region.

State crackdowns on drug cartels often backfire, producing entrenched 'cartel-state conflict'; deterrence approaches have curbed violence but proven fragile. This book explains why.

Peace is a universal ideal, but its political life is a great paradox: "peace" is the opposite of war, but it also enables war. If peace is the elimination of war, then what does it mean to wage war for the sake of peace? What does peace mean when some say that they are committed to it but that their enemies do not value it? Why is it that associating peace with other ideals, like justice, friendship, security, and law, does little to distance peace from war? Although political theory has dealt extensively with most major concepts that today define "the political" it has paid relatively scant critical attention to peace, the very concept that is often said to be the major aim and ideal of humanity. In War for Peace, Murad Idris looks at the ways that peace has been treated across the writings of ten thinkers from ancient and modern political thought, from Plato to Immanuel Kant and Sayyid Qutb, to produce an original and striking account of what peace means and how it works. Idris argues that peace is parasitical in that the addition of other ideals into peace, such as law, security, and friendship, reduces it to consensus and actually facilitates war; it is provincial in that its universalized content reflects particularistic desires and fears, constructions of difference, and hierarchies within humanity; and it is polemical, in that its idealization is not only the product of antagonisms, but also enables hostility. War for Peace uncovers the basis of peace's moralities and the political functions of its idealizations, historically and into the present. This bold and ambitious book confronts readers with the impurity of peace as an ideal, and the pressing need to think beyond universal peace.

Through a wide-ranging and close analysis of archival sources, this book re-evaluates both the role of royal authority and of local agency in the French religious wars in the lead up to the Edict of Nantes of 1598. Drawing on extensive research, it provides a new perspective on the political, religious, social and cultural history of the conflict.

For decades, Colombia has contended with a variety of highly publicized conflicts, including the rise of paramilitary groups in response to rebel insurgencies of the 1960s, the expansion of an illegal drug industry that has permeated politics and society since the 1970s, and a faltering economy in the 1990s. An unprecedented analysis of these struggles, Guns, Drugs, and Development in Colombia brings together leading scholars from a variety of fields, blending previously unseen quantitative data with historical analysis for an impressively comprehensive assessment. Culminating in an inspiring plan for peace, based on Four Cornerstones of Pacification, this landmark work is sure to spur new calls for change in this corner of Latin America and beyond.