PrintTurbulent Peace
The Challenges of Managing International Conflict
Like its predecessor, Managing Global Chaos, this comprehensive volume explores the sources of contemporary conflict and the vast array of possible responses to it. The authors—50 of the most influential and innovative analysts of international affairs—present multiple perspectives on how best to prevent, manage, or resolve conflicts around the world.
In the five years since Managing Global Chaos was published, the geopolitical landscape has changed in significant ways and we have learned important lessons. Turbulent Peace underlines the volatility and vulnerability of states and peoples in a world that is both increasingly interconnected and ever more differentiated and decentralized in its political and social structures. Four new themes emerge from Turbulent Peace: the return of geopolitics; the recognition that different societies require different peacemaking strategies; the pull and tug between conflict management and post-conflict governance issues, such as democratization; and the understanding that creating a sustainable peace is as difficult as making peace in the first place.
Although this volume features many of the contributors to Managing Global Chaos (in most cases with updated and revised chapters), almost 70 percent of the contributors are new. The editors commissioned the new essays to address emergent themes in conflict analysis and management, to offer a wide range of viewpoints in contentious areas, and to respond to feedback from readers and the needs of educators. The result is a volume of unparalleled breadth and depth, an invaluable resource for teachers and students no less than for practitioners and policymakers.
About the Authors
Chester A. Crocker is the James R. Schlesinger Professor of Strategic Studies at Georgetown University where his teaching and research focus on conflict management and regional security issues. He served as chairman of the board of the United States Institute of Peace (1992-2004), and continues as a member of its board. From 1981-1989, he was U.S. assistant secretary of state for African affairs. As such, he was the principal diplomatic architect and mediator in the prolonged negotiations among Angola, Cuba, and South Africa that led to Namibia’s transition to independence, and to the withdrawal of Cuban forces from Angola. He serves on the boards of ASA Ltd., a NYSE-listed, closed-end fund focused on gold mining; Universal Corporation, Inc., a leading independent trading company in tobacco, agricultural and lumber products; Good Governance Group Ltd; and First Africa Holdings Ltd. He serves on the advisory board of the National Defense University in Washington. Dr. Crocker is the author of High Noon in Southern Africa: Making Peace in a Rough Neighborhood, co-author (with Fen Osler Hampson and Pamela Aall) of Taming Intractable Conflicts: Mediation in the Hardest Cases, and coeditor of Grasping the Nettle: Analyzing Cases of Intractable Conflict; Turbulent Peace: The Challenges of Managing International Conflict; and Herding Cats: Multiparty Mediation in a Complex World.
Fen Osler Hampson is professor of international affairs and director of the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs. Hampson was a senior fellow at the United States Institute of Peace in 1993-94. He is chair of the Human Security Track of the Helsinki Process on Globalization and Democracy, a joint initiative of the governments of Finland and Tanzania.
Pamela R. Aall is the Institute's vice president for domestic programs, Education and Training Center. Before joining the Institute in 1993, she was a consultant to the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities and to the Institute of International Education. She held a number of positions at the Rockefeller Foundation. She has also worked for the European Cultural Foundation (Amsterdam and Brussels), the International Council for Educational Development (New York), and the New York Botanical Garden.
She holds a B.A. from Harvard University and an M.A. from Columbia University and attended the London School of Economics, conducting research on political and economic integration in Scandinavia and Europe.