Peaceworks

Bosnia, Rwanda, Haiti, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria - a quarter-century of stumbles in America’s pursuit of a more peaceful and just world. American military interventions have cost thousands of lives and billions of dollars, yet we rarely manage to enact positive and sustainable change. In Peace Works: America's Unifying Role in a Turbulent World, ambassador and global conflict leader Rick Barton uses a mix of stories, history, and analysis for a transformative approach to foreign affairs and offers concrete and attainable solutions for the future. Drawing on his lifetime of experience as a diplomat, foreign policy expert, and State Department advisor, Rick Barton grapples with the fact that the U.S. is strategically positioned and morally obligated to defuse international conflicts, but often inadvertently escalates conflicts instead. Guided by the need to find solutions that will yield tangible results, Barton does a deep analysis of our last several interventions and discusses why they failed and how they could have succeeded. He outlines a few key directives in his foreign policy strategy: remain transparent with the American public, act as a catalyzing (not colonizing!) force, and engage local partners. But above all else, he insists that the U.S. must maintain a focus on people. Since a country’s greatest resource is often the ingenuity of its local citizens, it is counterproductive to ignore them while planning an intervention. By anchoring each chapter to a story from a specific conflict zone, Barton is able to discuss opportunities pursued and missed, areas for improvement, and policy recommendations. This balance between storytelling and concrete policy suggestions both humanizes distant stories of foreign crises, and provides going-forward solutions for desperate situations. The book begins and ends in Syria – the ultimate failure of our current approach to foreign policy, and with devastating consequences.

Since World War II, a complex network has emerged of bilateral and multilateral agencies that manage economic assistance to low-income countries in the form of investment projects, policy advice, and technical assistance. Although each of these agencies has its distinctive personality, most of them have avoided facing up to the post-Cold War reality of burgeoning ethnic conflict. This reluctance to deal with the violent consequences of ethnic pluralism is often self-defeating, for such violence can destabilize the environment within which the agencies operate and thus undermine their efforts. The same reluctance can also blind agencies to the damage that the ill-considered provision of foreign aid can inflict on ethnic relations within aid-receiving nations. Some interventions may have neutral or even positive sum outcomes. This paper represents the author's conclusions from a conference held in October 1995 at Cornell University on the effects of development assistance on ethnic conflict.

Presents a broad-ranging examination of the growing economic, political, and humanitarian struggle in Zaire, along with suggestions for preventative action to ameliorate Zaire's problems. Topics include: understanding the unending crisis in Zaire, the structure of society, economic structures and prospects, political structures and prospects, urgent issues, a framework for action to arrest further violence, and how best to provide international economic aid in Zaire. Includes a discussion on Rwandan refugees in Zaire and a chronology of the situation in Zaire from 1960-1996. Charts and tables.