Peacebuilding, Statebuilding, Nationbuilding – Turtles All the Way Down?

Peacebuilding has not been the success the world had hoped for when in June 1992 the then Secretary-General of the United Nations Boutros Boutros-Ghali put forward the ‘Agenda for Peace’. The Agenda refashioned the traditional doctrine of the UN, according to which the role of the peacekeeping missions was not to take sides or meddle in the political affairs of the regions in conflict. Just like many policy analysts of the time, Boutros-Ghali interpreted the collapse of communism in 1989 as resulting in the dissolution of the classical realist distinction between external security policies and internal stability and peace. Peacebuilding became synonymous with statebuilding and democratisation. Stabilising and pacifying weak or failed states has become a security issue in its own right – a necessary precondition for a more stable and peaceful international environment.