The Ideology of Peace: Peacebuilding and the War in Iraq

  • Mikkel Vedby Rasmussen
Chapter
Part of the Palgrave Advances book series (PAD)

Abstract

There is a tendency to reduce peacebuilding, in theory as well as in practice, to a technocratic question. Academics and policymakers in Western capitals, as well as military officers and aid workers from Liberia to Afghanistan, ask themselves how to make a durable peace. The question of ‘how to make peace?’ is the subject of endless number of books and articles, as well as manuals and consultancy reports, that try to describe the best techniques for making peace. However, this focus on how to make peace might have turned our attention away from what kind of peace is actually being made. Perhaps, and this is more troubling, this inattention to the nature of the peace which one strives to achieve is the reason why peace all too often remains unattainable, as well as the reason why the price other people pay for the schemes of the academics, policymakers, officers and aid workers is at times so terribly high.

Keywords

Security Council Nobel Lecture Cluster Bomb Lasting Peace Iraqi Government 
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Notes

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© Mikkel Vedby Rasmussen 2010

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  • Mikkel Vedby Rasmussen

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