Peace Progress And The Professor

What does it mean to be Mennonite in the modern world? And what is the witness of a peace church that is always at risk of splintering? C. Henry Smith—son of an Amish family, erudite historian, urbane bank president, and pioneer of Mennonite scholarship—sought answers to these questions in the middle of the 20th century, and his answers reverberate through the church to this day. In this engaging narrative biography, historian Perry Bush chronicles Smith’s childhood in an Illinois farming community, his youthful turn toward intellectual inquiry, and his confidence that Anabaptist faith and life offer gifts to the wider world. By recounting the story of one of the foremost Mennonite intellectuals, Bush surveys the storied terrain of 20th-century Mennonite identity in its selective borrowing from wider culture and its tentative embrace of progressive reforms and higher education, and growing conviction that Anabaptism served as a taproot of Western civilization. Bush argues that Smith’s body of historical writing furnished a new generation of Mennonites with both an understanding of their shared past and the tools to navigate an ever-shifting present. Volume 49 in the Studies in Anabaptist and Mennonite History Series.

Evidence taken before Sub-committee C (Foreign Affairs, Defence and Development Policy)

At turns surprising, funny, and gut-wrenching, this is the hopeful story of the ordinary yet extraordinary people who have figured out how to build lasting peace in their communities The word "peacebuilding" evokes a story we've all heard over and over: violence breaks out, foreign nations are scandalized, peacekeepers and million-dollar donors come rushing in, warring parties sign a peace agreement and, sadly, within months the situation is back to where it started--sometimes worse. But what strategies have worked to build lasting peace in conflict zones, particularly for ordinary citizens on the ground? And why should other ordinary citizens, thousands of miles away, care? In The Frontlines of Peace, Severine Autesserre, award-winning researcher and peacebuilder, examines the well-intentioned but inherently flawed peace industry. With examples drawn from across the globe, she reveals that peace can grow in the most unlikely circumstances. Contrary to what most politicians preach, building peace doesn't require billions in aid or massive international interventions. Real, lasting peace requires giving power to local citizens. The Frontlines of Peace tells the stories of the ordinary yet extraordinary individuals and organizations that are confronting violence in their communities effectively. One thing is clear: successful examples of peacebuilding around the world, in countries at war or at peace, have involved innovative grassroots initiatives led by local people, at times supported by foreigners, often employing methods shunned by the international elite. By narrating success stories of this kind, Autesserre shows the radical changes we must take in our approach if we hope to build lasting peace around us--whether we live in Congo, the United States, or elsewhere.

How can we know if the peace that has been established following a civil war is a stable peace? More than half of all countries that experienced civil war since World War II have suffered a relapse into violent conflict, in some cases more than once. Meanwhile the international community expends billions of dollars and deploys tens of thousands of personnel each year in support of efforts to build peace in countries emerging from violent conflict. This book argues that efforts to build peace are hampered by the lack of effective means of assessing progress towards the achievement of a consolidated peace. Rarely, if ever, do peacebuilding organizations and governments seek to ascertain the quality of the peace that they are helping to build and the contribution that their engagement is making (or not) to the consolidation of peace. More rigorous assessments of the robustness of peace are needed. These assessments require clarity about the characteristics of, and the requirements for, a stable peace. This in turn requires knowledge of the local culture, local history, and the specific conflict dynamics at work in a given conflict situation. Better assessment can inform peacebuilding actors in the reconfiguration and reprioritization of their operations in cases where conditions on the ground have deteriorated or improved. To build a stable peace, it is argued here, it is important to take the measure of peace.

Presenting the Middle East peace process as an extension of US foreign policy, this book argues that ongoing interventions justified in the name of ‘peace’ sustain and reproduce hegemonic power. With an interdisciplinary approach, this book questions the conceptualisation and general understanding of the peace process. The author reinterprets regional conflict as an opportunity for the US through which it seeks to achieve regional dominance and control. Engaging with the different stages and components of the peace process, he considers economic, military and political factors which both changed over time and remained constant. This book covers the US role of mediation in the region during the Cold War, the history and present state of US-Israel relations, Syria’s reputation as an opponent of ‘peace’ compared with its participation in peace negotiations, and the Palestinian-Israel conflict with attention to US involvement. The End of the Middle East Peace Process will primarily be of interest to those hoping to gain an improved understanding of key issues, concepts and themes relating to the Arab-Israeli conflict and US intervention in the Middle East. It will also be of value to those with an interest in the practicalities of peacebuilding.

This book brings together contributions that revisit the dynamics and complexities of the history of war and peace in relation to the pursuit of progress. This book was published as a special issue of Third World Quarterly.

Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have become important actors in the globalised world. They run aid and relief programmes in the poorest countries, support international institutions (like the United Nations), or are watchdogs of them (for example watchdogs of the Bretton Woods institutions). In doing so, NGOs naturally work permanently with state-agencies and it is probably hard to find an NGO which is totally free of any governmental support (in financial, logistical or informative matters). Thus, there are strong NGO-government connections on a daily-work basis. NGOs run multiple attempts to contribute to the resolution of conflicts on all political levels. They bring together people on the grass-root level, they try to influence high officials through public pressure and they organise conferences and discussions with members and consultants of the concerned parties. The latter approach is analysed in this study. But how do NGOs influence the level of official international relations? To which degree can NGOs improve the relations of two conflicted parties, especially when the conflict is protracted and severe? The aim of this book is to define the preconditions of successful NGO mediation, to measure the NGO influence as an ?antecedent condition? for successful mediation, and to exhibit its limits. The underlying assumption is that conflict resolution is more likely if NGO mediation supports this attempt. This approach can be labelled as an ?assumption of constant effect? since the focus is on understanding the NGOs influence on international conflict resolution.

The conventional portrayal of Japan’s role in international affairs is of a passive political player which – despite its position as the world’s second largest economic power – punches below its weight on the world stage: its foreign policy driven by Washington, mercantilism and constrained by domestic pacifism. This book examines Japan’s emerging identity as an important participant in conflict prevention and peace-building in Southeast and South Asia, demonstrating that Japan has increasingly sought a positive and active political role commensurate with its economic pre-eminence. The book considers Japanese involvement in many of the region’s most serious recent conflicts: including Japan’s part in the brokering and maintaining of peace in Cambodia, which in 1992 saw the first dispatch of troops abroad by Tokyo since the end of World War II, and the attempts to bring peace to Aceh, Sri Lanka, East Timor and Mindanao. The Japanese example, when compared with other countries prominent in the fields of conflict prevention, suggests that Tokyo – given its pacifist strategic culture – relies on diplomacy and Official Development Assistance rather than peace enforcement through military means. Overall, this book provides a lucid appraisal of Japan’s overall foreign policy, as well as its new role in conflict prevention and peace-building - analysing the reasons behind this shift towards an active international role and assessing the degree of success it has enjoyed.