In an increasingly globalized, super-connected world, violent conflict moves faster and less predictably than a generation ago, with less regard for national borders. It combines dangerously with cyber networks, social media, environmental degradation and disease.

Frank Sesno and Nancy Lindborg

And, says Nancy Lindborg, the new president of the U.S. Institute of Peace, it has become increasingly likely to erupt in the world’s “fragile states,” where governance is ineffective or illegitimate. Many such countries “have been doing the spin cycle of conflict” for decades, she told the Institute’s International Advisory Council in a conversation on February 11 moderated by Frank Sesno, a former CNN correspondent and director of the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University.

Lindborg joined USIP this month following 20 years of peacebuilding work with the U.S. Agency for International Development and Mercy Corps. At USAID, Lindborg wrote that fragile states harbor an increasing concentration of the world’s most deeply impoverished people, making them more vulnerable to violent conflict. USIP works abroad to prevent and heal such conflicts -- and researches, designs and teaches better strategies for doing it. While USIP is an independent center, its close partnerships with U.S. government agencies as well as private organizations allows the Institute to convene both peacemaking practitioners and officials in ways that can yield better policies for countering violence, Lindborg said.

“We need a ground game.” and “It is imperative that our tax dollars are invested in peace.”

The following are edited excerpts from Lindborg’s question-and-answer session with Sesno and Council members, who include former diplomats, corporate executives and peace policy specialists.

Somalia, Yemen, Syria, Central African Republic are all places that you’ve experienced. How does that inform your perspective?

I’ve spent many years working to promote and build more accountable democracies, supporting civil society, and also, far too much of it has been on the reactive side of providing urgently needed humanitarian assistance.  … There are gigantic packages of military assistance, of peacekeeping assistance, and of humanitarian assistance that are continually pushed out in response to these terrible situations. ...

Most of those countries that you mentioned have been doing the spin cycle of conflict for decades, especially in the post-Cold War era. And we absolutely need to be more adept at understanding what works on the ground, having an evidence basis for understanding that, and connecting that to helping a broad cadre become peacebuilders, … to really focus in on getting upstream, to work more in a way that helps us understand how do you help to prevent violent conflict, how do you end it more quickly?

Is there a pattern in these new conflicts that strikes you, that helps to inform how you try to resolve them?

If you look at the terrible year of 2014 that we just had, where we had a record number of the kinds of crises that are categorized by the U.N. as “level three”—these are the worst kind of humanitarian crises—all of them had their roots in either ineffective and/or illegitimate regimes. And so … how do we tackle that set of problems?

We need to think about fragility [of states and their institutions], and the flip side is greater resilience. So that when conflicts do happen, from the community level up, and from the government level down, conflicts can be managed and not become violent.

And so, just looking at each of those places that you named, these are … all human-made crises. I’ve also spent a lot of my time on the other side—natural disasters. … In 2013, we had the big typhoon in the Philippines. It was a relief to work on that­­. All of the people who worked on that were like, ‘Thank God, you’ve got a government you can work with, you’ve got communities that are moving swiftly to recover, there’s social cohesion.’ As tragic as it was, it had a positive progression in the right direction.

In Syria, South Sudan, so many places, governments are so corrupt, so weak, so uncommitted to the well-being of their people, that managing those conflicts seems very difficult.

Well, South Sudan is probably the conflict that I find most heart-rending, because—and [former Assistant Secretary of State] Johnnie Carson is here, and I think [former Special Envoy for Sudan and South Sudan] Princeton Lyman as well … I worked with both of them, as South Sudan was born, and went through this euphoric new stage…

There was such hope, and [now] it is such a rank prioritization of personal gain and wealth by those leaders over the welfare of their people. It’s heartbreaking.

So what do you do about it? What we’ve learned is you have to help the people be a part of the conversation, including in terms of holding their governments accountable. It’s a challenge when you’ve got an almost entirely illiterate population, as you do in places like South Sudan. But I met with extraordinarily courageous journalists and civil society leaders, people who had run radio stations throughout South Sudan, who really do have a vision of what their country can be.

And that’s, I think, where you start, and where you find hope. You continue to work with them. And I would say as complex as Syria is, similarly, in the midst of all of that complexity, one thing that feels very, very certain is the importance of working with the on-the-ground peacebuilders, who -- if not now [then] into the future -- will be absolutely essential for that country moving forward.

Speak for a moment, about your priorities here and USIP’s capabilities as you engage these sorts of conflicts.

You need a ground game. You can have all the best ideas in the world, but you need to know that they work. And so having the opportunity at a place like USIP to have a ground game and to connect that to the deeper ability to research it and think about ‘Does that work?’ … and then loop that to training, so you can spread those learnings out. … And loop that to our extraordinary power of convening … and being able to help inform better policy choices. That’s extraordinary, to be able to have that linkage.

We need to do that in a way that focuses on building networks and partnerships. Because if we want to accomplish what is a most audacious vision -- of a world free of violent conflict -- we need to employ all those approaches in a way that is linked with institutions, partners, organizations, universities. …

One thing that became clear to me at AID is that many, many organizations are out there doing courageous, important work on the ground. The challenge is …  making singular programs add up to a greater whole. And that aggregation on the basis of work that we know will make a difference is something that USIP has the ability to do. We can bring forward our experience, our learnings, spread that through the teaching and training capabilities that we have, and really form those partnerships so that you can begin to move the needle in a particular environment and then bring that information into the policy realm. A lot of those organizations doing extraordinary work right now don’t have access to the policy world.

Are U.S. tax dollars spent wisely here? Why should American taxpayers invest in such a venture?

It is imperative that our tax dollars are invested in peace. And USIP, as we move toward this vision of a world without violent conflict, if we are the go-to institute for providing the kind of experience, information and convening that can help make decisions that get upstream and actually prevent violent conflict, then we will be the enduring institution that the world can’t do without.

You’ve had direct experience with another type of threat: the Ebola virus. Where does that fit into this discussion?

Ebola was a very important wake-up call for the world and in particular the United States about why it’s so important to pay attention to conflict and fragility. Because that virus [has] rampaged through West Africa in large part because two of those three countries had only recently emerged from decades of just terrible, terrible conflict. Sierra Leone and Liberia were both moving in the right direction. But they were still very, very fragile. … In fact, a lot of the conflict fissure lines are still there and could still re-erupt even now.

And so what had been for 40 years a contained problem with each of the [Ebola] outbreaks in other countries in Africa just went up in conflagration and, as we know, started moving around the globe. And to me it helps illustrate the fact that it matters what happens around the world, it matters that we fix the holes in the net, both for our national security, certainly for economic reasons, and absolutely for the reasons of trying to avoid the terrible suffering that results.

You had long experience in the field in the NGO world, the bottom-up world. And then you went to USAID, which is often in the Washington world of top-down. What did you learn that is going to be applicable now, in this space between the top-down and the bottom-up that is USIP? 

That could be a long list. Let me pick a couple of things. The first is, if I hadn’t been to a lot of these places before I joined the government, I would have had really very little understanding of what’s going on. Because the lack of freedom of movement, the constraints on where you can go, who you can talk to, what you can do as an official American are far beyond anything that I imagined. And that, I believe, is actually one of the real positive benefits that USIP offers. … [Being] inside-outside government means that we have the access to the policymakers, but we can get around. We’re not inside the wire. Because being inside the wire is a terrible place to be for very long. That’s number one.

Number two is that, as I told a number of friends and colleagues, I feel like I’ve been in a wind tunnel for the last four years, because it happens at such a ferocious pace, there’s so much going on. I mean, all of you who’ve been in government must agree. For us [at USIP], with our ability to move around more, to do this connective tissue of practice and policy and research and learning, we have to be really on our game to get into that wind tunnel -- with precise, concise policy recommendations that can find their way to an audience that is overworked and dealing with too many … crises.

So those would be my top two takeaways.  And anyone who rails against federal employees should spend some years with people who get up every morning and do amazing work under a lot of constraints.

The relationship between USIP and the government, particularly the State Department and USAID, is critical. … I wonder how much of that you’ve been able to see in your first days here.

Quite a lot. And I think the key, in part, is making sure that all of those partners -- DOD, State, USAID -- deeply understand who we are, what we can do, and the kind of partner that we are. Because we are a different kind of partner, and we need to really celebrate and articulate that, and do the kind of co-creation of solutions that result in the programs we do on the ground. And absolutely, we’re an enormously important resource … being able to do things that they otherwise can’t.

We’ve heard senior military people say the investment in ending conflicts has to go way beyond military investment -- that we can’t fight our way to peace. Do you plan to engage military leadership more in this conversation here, as part of your convening and research and grounding?

I think it’s essential. We talk a lot in this town about the three Ds [defense, diplomacy and development]. Bringing them together so that there’s a different kind of dialogue than we might have otherwise, in other government settings, I think is an important part of what we do and need to continue. I have been very struck … by the powerful leadership that we’ve seen from everyone from [former] Secretary [of Defense Robert] Gates to [retired General Anthony] Zinni to a lot of the guys and the gals on the ground that I’ve worked with. … They’re very expeditionary, so they get out there on the ground and understand that there are better, different ways than just going to arms. So that’s a very important conversation and set of relationships.

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