Our world of increasing and varied conflicts is confusing and threatening to citizens of all countries, as they try to understand its causes and consequences. However, how and why war occurs, and peace is sustained, cannot be understood without realizing that those who make war and peace must negotiate a complex world political map of sovereign spaces, borders, networks of communication, access to nested geographic scales, and patterns of resource distribution. This book takes advantage of a diversity of geographic perspectives as it analyzes the political processes of war and their spatial expression.
Contributors to the volume examine particular manifestations of war in light of nationalism, religion, gender identities, state ideology, border formation, genocide, spatial rhetoric, terrorism, and a variety of resource conflicts. The final section on the geography of peace covers peace movements, diplomacy, the expansion of NATO, and the geography of post-war reconstruction. Case studies of numerous conflicts include Israel and Palestine, Afghanistan, Northern Ireland, Bosnia-Herzogovina, West Africa, and the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Keeping the Peace explores the new multidimensional role that the United Nations has played in peacemaking, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding over the last few years. By examining the paradigm-setting cases of Cambodia and El Salvador, and drawing lessons from these UN 'success stories', the book seeks to point the way toward more effective ways for the international community to address conflict in the post-Cold War era. This book is especially timely given its focus on the heretofore amorphous middle ground between traditional peacekeeping and peace. It provides the first comparative, in-depth treatment of substantial UN activities in everything from the demobilization and reintegration of forces, the return of refugees, the monitoring of human rights, and the design and supervision of constitutional, judicial, and electoral reforms, to the observation and even organization and conduct of elections, and the coordination of support for economic rehabilitation and reconstruction of countries torn by war.

In this book seven authors examine the legal and political implications, the training of international police in a multinational and multicultural context, the use of community policing, the crucial issue of cooperation between the military and the civilian police components, and what has been learned about planning for the handover to local authority.

Over the past decade the Caspian Sea region has risen from relative obscurity to considerable prominence in global affairs. Located at the crossroads of traditional trade routes between Europe and Asia and possessing vast natural resources, oil and natural gas among them, it attracts widespread international interest. The emergence of new sovereign states in the region has fundamentally transformed its political landscape. The future of the Caspian region is far from certain, however, as it is challenged by a wide variety of political, socio-economic and military threats which include the declining living standards of vast segments of local populations, inter-ethnic and inter-confessional tensions and conflicts, militant separatism, international terrorism, and illegal trade in arms and drugs. The security of the region is also affected by the intensifying strategic competition among major outside powers over establishing their political and economic influence in regional affairs. The book offers a competent analysis of the major political, economic and security developments in the region by a diverse group of highly qualified experts from the Caspian littoral states, the USA and the European Union.

Drawing on research into explosive evidence which had been concealed for 25 years, this book offers a critique of the official Widgery Inquiry into the massacre of innocent and unarmed civilians by British soldiers on Bloody Sunday. It exposes the Inquiry as a gross denial of justice and the rule of law. Expert analysis of the subordination of law to security policy in Northern Ireland reveals that the Bloody Sunday experience is an integral part of a sustained pattern. Belated prospects for a restoration of justice and the rule of law are found in the Good Friday Peace Agreement and the unprecedented establishment of a second Tribunal of Inquiry into Bloody Sunday.

This book assesses the UN Peace Operations in Haiti and establishes what lessons should be taken into account for future operations elsewhere. Specifically, the book examines the UN's approaches to security and stability, demobilisation, disarmament and reintegration (DDR), police, justice and prison reform, democratisation, and transitional justice and their interdependencies through the seven UN missions in Haiti. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and interviews conducted in Haiti, it identifies strengths and weaknesses of these approaches and focuses on the connections between these different sectors. It places these efforts in the broader Haitian political context, emphasises economic development as a central factor to sustainability, provides a civil society perspective, and discusses the many constraints the UN faced in implementing its mandates. The book also serves as a historical account of UN involvement in Haiti, which comes at a time when the drawdown of the mission has begun. In an environment where the UN is increasingly seeking to conduct security sector reform (SSR) within the context of integrated missions, this book will be a valuable contribution to the debate on intervention, UN peace operations and SSR. This book will be of interest to students of peace operations and peacekeeping, conflict studies, security studies and IR in general.

Risks are an integral part of complex, high-stakes decisions, and decisionmakers are faced with the unavoidable tasks of assessing risks and forming risk preferences. This is true for all decision domains, including financial, environmental, and foreign policy domains, among others. How well decisionmakers deal with risk affects, to a considerable extent, the quality of their decisions. This book provides the most comprehensive analysis available of the elements that influence risk judgments and preferences.
The book has two dimensions: theoretical and comparative-historical. The study of risk-taking behavior has been dominated by the rational choice approach. Instead, the author adopts a socio-cognitive approach involving: a multivariate theory integrating contextual, cognitive, motivational, and personality factors that affect an individual decisionmaker's judgment and preferences; the social interaction and structural effects of the decisionmaking group and its organizational setting; and the role of cultural-societal values and norms that sanction or discourage risk taking behavior.
The book's theoretical approach is applied and tested in five historical case studies of foreign military interventions. The richly detailed empirical data on the case studies make them, metaphorically speaking, an ideal laboratory for applying a process-tracing approach in studying judgment and decision processes at varying risk levels. The case studies analyzed are: U.S. interventions in Grenada in 1983 and Panama in 1989 (both low risk); Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia in 1968 (moderate risk): U.S. intervention in Vietnam in 1964-68 (high risk); and Israel's intervention in Lebanon in 1982-83 (high risk).

Risks are an integral part of complex, high-stakes decisions, and decisionmakers are faced with the unavoidable tasks of assessing risks and forming risk preferences. This is true for all decision domains, including financial, environmental, and foreign policy domains, among others. How well decisionmakers deal with risk affects, to a considerable extent, the quality of their decisions. This book provides the most comprehensive analysis available of the elements that influence risk judgments and preferences.
The book has two dimensions: theoretical and comparative-historical. The study of risk-taking behavior has been dominated by the rational choice approach. Instead, the author adopts a socio-cognitive approach involving: a multivariate theory integrating contextual, cognitive, motivational, and personality factors that affect an individual decisionmaker's judgment and preferences; the social interaction and structural effects of the decisionmaking group and its organizational setting; and the role of cultural-societal values and norms that sanction or discourage risk taking behavior.
The book's theoretical approach is applied and tested in five historical case studies of foreign military interventions. The richly detailed empirical data on the case studies make them, metaphorically speaking, an ideal laboratory for applying a process-tracing approach in studying judgment and decision processes at varying risk levels. The case studies analyzed are: U.S. interventions in Grenada in 1983 and Panama in 1989 (both low risk); Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia in 1968 (moderate risk): U.S. intervention in Vietnam in 1964-68 (high risk); and Israel's intervention in Lebanon in 1982-83 (high risk).

In March 2011, NATO launched a mission hitherto entirely unthinkable: to protect civilians against Libya's ferocious regime, solely from the air. NATO had never operated in North Africa, or without troops on the ground; it also had never had to move as quickly as it did that spring. It took seven months, 25,000 air sorties, 7,000 combat strike missions, 3,100 maritime hailings and nearly 400 boardings for Tripoli to fall. This book tells for the first time the whole story of this international drama, spanning the hallways of the United Nations in New York, NATO Headquarters in Brussels and, crucially, the two operational epicentres: the Libyan battlefield, and Joint Force Command Naples, which was in charge of the mission. Weighill and Gaub offer a comprehensive exploration of both the war's progression and the many challenges NATO faced, from its extremely rapid planning and limited understanding of Libya and its forces, to training shortfalls and the absence of post-conflict planning. Theirs is a long-awaited account of the Libyan war: one that truly considers all the actors involved.

The Syrian war has been an example of the abuse and insufficient delivery of humanitarian assistance. According to international practice, humanitarian aid should be channelled through a state government that bears a particular responsibility for its population. Yet in Syria, the bulk of relief went through Damascus while the regime caused the vast majority of civilian deaths. Should the UN have severed its cooperation with the government and neglected its humanitarian duty to help all people in need? Decision-makers face these tough policy dilemmas, and often the "neutrality trap" snaps shut. This book discusses the political and moral considerations of how to respond to a brutal and complex crisis while adhering to international law and practice. The author, a scholar and senior diplomat involved in the UN peace talks in Geneva, draws from first-hand diplomatic, practitioner and UN sources. He sheds light on the UN's credibility crisis and the wider implications for the development of international humanitarian and human rights law. This includes covering the key questions asked by Western diplomats, NGOs and international organizations, such as: Why did the UN not confront the Syrian government more boldly? Was it not only legally correct but also morally justifiable to deliver humanitarian aid to regime areas where rockets were launched and warplanes started? Why was it so difficult to render cross-border aid possible where it was badly needed? The meticulous account of current international practice is both insightful and disturbing. It tackles the painful lessons learnt and provides recommendations for future challenges where politics fails and humanitarians fill the moral void.

United Nations Peacekeeping in Africa provides an exploration of United Nations military intervention in Africa, from its beginnings in the Congo in 1960 to the new operations of the twenty-first century. The scene is set by an examination of the theoretical bases both of United Nations peacekeeping and of Africa's post-independence politics and international relations. The peacekeeping project in Africa is then described on a region by region basis - Central Africa, Southern Africa, West Africa, the Horn and Trans-Saharan Africa - with comparisons and contrasts within and between each part of Africa highlighted throughout. A number of key questions are considered: how have developments in the broader international system affected conflicts in Africa? what are the internal and external forces which have caused African states to 'fail' and 'collapse'? how have external powers 'used' UN Peacekeeping in pursuit of their own political agendas? what determines success and failure in African peacekeeping? are there African solutions to African problems which could supplant UN involvement? As well as providing an account of UN involvement, the book is concerned to explore the long historical origins of the African conflicts with which the UN has been engaged. Written in an engaging and accessible manner, United Nations Peacekeeping in Africa provides an invaluable examination of the complex issues surrounding UN interventions in Africa.

Drawing from a diverse range of military, policing, academic and policymakers' experiences, this book seeks to provide solutions of how national militaries and police can work together to better support future United Nations peacekeeping operations. It addresses the growing tension between increasing non-combat related responsibilities being placed on land forces and the ability of UN peacekeeping forces to fulfil the demands of government and development tasks in fragile and conflict-affected environments. An original contribution to the debate on UN peacekeeping reforms that includes constructing an enhanced partnership for peacekeeping; building on renewed commitment to share the burden and for regional cooperation; providing peacekeepers with the necessary capabilities to protect civilians; and supporting nations in transition from conflict to stabilisation. This book offers the very latest in informed analysis and decision-making on UN peacekeeping reform.

The global security environment in the last five years has been characterised by a state of 'no war, no peace' among major powers, resulting in a state of uncertainty about their national security objectives. For instance, the US has been concerned about the attitudes of Iran, Russia, North Korea, China, and others, and yet did not expect a direct military conflict with them. On the other hand, China has expanded its naval strategy from a mere 'off-shore defence' to 'open seas protection' and has called for both 'defence and offence' instead of merely 'territorial air defence', thereby indicating preparedness for the possibility of a military confrontation. The major powers have been thus groping for suitable responses to their threat perceptions. It is in this kind of a complex and confusing international environment that India, as a rising power, has been called upon to wade through its strategic partnerships with major powers and nurture friendships with various Asian and African countries. This sixteenth volume of India's National Security Annual Review offers indispensable information and evaluation on matters pertaining to national security. It undertakes a thorough analysis of the trends to provide a backdrop to India's engagement with various countries. The volume also discusses persisting threats from China and Pakistan. With contributions from experts from the fields of diplomacy, academia, and civil and military services, the book will be one of the most dependable sources of analyses for scholars of international relations, foreign policy, defence and strategic studies, and political science, and practitioners alike.

Contested Sites in Jerusalem is the third and final volume in a series of books which collectively present in detail the work of the Jerusalem Old City Initiative, or JOCI, a major Canadian-led Track Two diplomatic effort, undertaken between 2003 and 2014. The aim of the Initiative was to find sustainable governance solutions for the Old City of Jerusalem, arguably the most sensitive and intractable of the final status issues dividing Palestinians and Israelis. This book examines the complex and often contentious issues that arise from the overlapping claims to the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif, the role of UNESCO, and the major implications of the JOCI Special Regime for such issues as archaeology, property, and the economy. Part I is dedicated to holy sites - ground zero of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a point reinforced by the autumn 2014 disturbances which threatened to spiral out of control and engulf Palestinians and Israelis in yet another wave of violence. Parts II-IV of the volume contain studies on archaeology, property, and economics that were written after the completion of the Special Regime model, specifically to address in depth how a Special Regime would deal with each of these three important areas. Contested Sites in Jerusalem offers an insightful explanation of the enormous challenges facing any attempt to find sustainable governance and security arrangements for the Old City in the context of a peace agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians. It will therefore be of immense value to the policy-making community, as well as anyone in academia with a focus on Middle East politics, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the Middle East peace process.

The peaceful end of apartheid in South Africa was a monumental event in late twentieth century history. A racist regime built upon a foundation of colonialist exploitation, South Africa had become by that point a tinderbox: suffused with day-to-day violence and political extremism on all sides. Yet two decades later it was a stable democracy with a growing economy. How did such a deeply divided, conflicted society manage this remarkable transition? In When Political Transitions Work, Fanie du Toit, who has been a participant and close observer in post-conflict developments throughout Africa for decades, offers a new theory for why South Africa's reconciliation worked and why its lessons remain relevant for other nations emerging from civil conflicts. He uses reconciliation as a framework for political transition and seeks to answer three key questions: how do the reconciliation processes begin; how can political transitions result in inclusive and fair institutional change; and to what extent does reconciliation change the way a society functions? Looking at South Africa, one of reconciliation's most celebrated cases, Du Toit shows that the key ingredient to successful reconciliations is acknowledging the centrality of relationships. He further develops his own theoretical approach to reconciliation-as-interdependence-the idea that reconciliation is the result of an integrated process of courageous leadership, fair and inclusive institutions, and social change built toward a mutual goal of prosperity. As Du Toit conveys, the motivation for reconciliation is the long-term well-being of one's own community, as well as that of enemy groups. Without ensuring the conditions in which one's enemy can flourish, one's own community is unlikely to prosper sustainably.

Combining the insights of a seasoned practitioner with the academic rigor of a meticulous policy and risk analyst, del Castillo discusses the major obstacles to peacebuilding that need to be removed before war-torn countries can move towards peace, stability, and prosperity. As Secretary-General Antonio Guterres assumes leadership in January 2017, a top priority must be to address the bleak peacebuilding record where over half of the countries under UN watch relapse back into conflict within a decade. While policy debate and the academic literature have focused on the security, political, and social aspects of the war-to-peace transition, this book focuses on "the economic transition"-that is, "economic reconstruction" or "the political economy of peace"-which, in the author's view, is the much-neglected aspect of peacebuilding. The book argues that rebuilding war-torn states effectively has acquired a new sense of urgency since extremist groups increasingly recruit people by providing jobs and services to those deprived of them due to government and economic failures. Based on past lessons and best practices of the last quarter of a century, the author makes recommendations to move forward and improve the record. It will be of great use to students and scholars of peacebuilding, as well as policymakers in national governments, donor countries and international organizations involved in peacebuilding, statebuilding, and development.

Settlements to civil conflict, which are notably difficult to secure, sometimes contain clauses enabling the combatant sides to participate as political parties in post-conflict elections. In Electing Peace, Aila M. Matanock presents a theory that explains both the causes and the consequences of these provisions. Matanock draws on new worldwide cross-national data on electoral participation provisions, case studies in Central America, and interviews with representatives of all sides of the conflicts. She shows that electoral participation provisions, non-existent during the Cold War, are now in almost half of all peace agreements. Moreover, she demonstrates that these provisions are associated with an increase in the chance that peace will endure, potentially contributing to a global decline in civil conflict, a result which challenges prevailing pessimism about post-conflict elections. Matanock's theory and evidence also suggest a broader conception of international intervention than currently exists, identifying how these inclusive elections can enable external enforcement mechanisms and provide an alternative to military coercion by peacekeeping troops in many cases.

The post-Cold War period has witnessed a substantial increase in armed humanitarian interventions-the use of military force by one or more states, acting with or without the imprimatur of the United Nations, to stop mass atrocities in another state, generally without its consent and thus without regard to its sovereignty. The increase has three sources: the emergence of the United States as a peerless power; Western states' embrace and propagation of universal human rights norms; and the international human rights movement's dogged and effective lobbying, using national and international forums, in support of the project. The campaigns in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Libya demonstrate the salience humanitarian intervention has now acquired in world politics. In this new era, states' sovereign immunity is being reevaluated and intervention based on universal human rights principles has become common. Rajan Menon's The Conceit of Humanitarian Intervention presents a trenchant challenge to the conventional wisdom on this policy. He contends that universalistic principles invoked in support of it tend to be fig leaves and that armed interventions to stop mass killing occur on a highly selective basis. The rationales offered to justify them more often than not derive from national interest and power politics. States, no matter how powerful, are unwilling to intervene (or resort to lesser measures) when the costs are prohibitive, even when killing unfolds on a massive scale, or when the perpetrators happen to be friends or allies . This short work will range broadly, moving from the Balkan intervention of the 1990s to the 2011 intervention in Libya. It also assesses the failed US intervention in Iraq and the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan to highlight the problems-ones relevant to humanitarian wars-that interventions encounter, and create, in the post-war phase. Menon is not advocating that we turn a blind eye to mass killing. Rather, he is asking us to look at the world as it rather than as we wish it to be, to recognize the extent to which power and national interest underpin humanitarian intervention, and to face up to the problems and unintended consequences humanitarian intervention creates rather than resorting to idealistic cliches that evade reality or that cloak states' self-interest and cynicism. As the slaughter in Syria demonstrates, power politics, not human rights norms, determine whether or not humanitarian intervention takes place. Despite the magnitude of mass killing in Syria, the United States and its allies decided to eschew intervention, judging it far too hazardous. Menon's searching critique of the theory and practice of armed humanitarian intervention will force us to see this grand project in a new light.

This book identifies some of the main lessons for civil-military interactions that can be derived from the experiences of Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) in Afghanistan.

A key underlying theme of the book is simply that the ways in which civil and military actors interact in theatres of operations such as Afghanistan "matter" for both those categories of actors, and for the ordinary people who their interactions serve. But a second, equally important, theme is that these interactions are invariably complex. A third, which arises specifically from the PRT experience in Afghanistan, is that such teams vary significantly in their roles, resourcing, and operational environments, so that if one is seeking to appraise the value of the PRT experience, it is necessary to unpack with some care the experiences of different PRTs, which the use of case studies allows one to do.

The volume comprises an introduction, identifying some key questions to which the PRT experience gives rise, and case studies of the experiences of the United States, United Kingdom, New Zealand, Canada, The Netherlands, Australia, Germany and France; chapters dealing with the roles played by NGOs and the UN system; a discussion from an Afghan perspective of the implications of civilian casualties; and a conclusion. It is the combination of the diverse cases discussed in this book with a focus on the broad challenges of optimising civil-military interactions that makes this book distinctive.

This book will be of much interest to students of the Afghan War, civil-military relations, statebuilding, Central Asian politics and IR in general."

The peaceful end of apartheid in South Africa was a monumental event in late twentieth century history. A racist regime built upon a foundation of colonialist exploitation, South Africa had become by that point a tinderbox: suffused with day-to-day violence and political extremism on all sides. Yet two decades later it was a stable democracy with a growing economy. How did such a deeply divided, conflicted society manage this remarkable transition? In When Political Transitions Work, Fanie du Toit, who has been a participant and close observer in post-conflict developments throughout Africa for decades, offers a new theory for why South Africa's reconciliation worked and why its lessons remain relevant for other nations emerging from civil conflicts. He uses reconciliation as a framework for political transition and seeks to answer three key questions: how do the reconciliation processes begin; how can political transitions result in inclusive and fair institutional change; and to what extent does reconciliation change the way a society functions? Looking at South Africa, one of reconciliation's most celebrated cases, du Toit shows that the key ingredient to successful reconciliations is acknowledging the centrality of relationships. He further develops his own theoretical approach to reconciliation-as-interdependence-the idea that reconciliation is the result of an integrated process of courageous leadership, fair and inclusive institutions, and social change built toward a mutual goal of prosperity. As du Toit conveys, the motivation for reconciliation is the long-term well-being of one's own community, as well as that of enemy groups. Without ensuring the conditions in which one's enemy can flourish, one's own community is unlikely to prosper sustainably.

Fighting for Peace in Somalia provides the first comprehensive analysis of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), an operation deployed in 2007 to stabilize the country and defend its fledgling government from one of the world's deadliest militant organizations, Harakat al-Shabaab. The book's two parts provide a history of the mission from its genesis in an earlier, failed regional initiative in 2005 up to mid-2017, as well as an analysis of the mission's six most important challenges, namely, logistics, security sector reform, civilian protection, strategic communications, stabilization, and developing a successful exit strategy. These issues are all central to the broader debates about how to design effective peace operations in Africa and beyond. AMISOM was remarkable in several respects: it would become the African Union's (AU) largest peace operation by a considerable margin deploying over 22,000 soldiers; it became the longest running mission under AU command and control, outlasting the nearest contender by over seven years; it also became the AU's most expensive operation, at its peak costing approximately US$1 billion per year; and, sadly, AMISOM became the AU's deadliest mission. Although often referred to as a peacekeeping operation, AMISOM's troops were given a range of daunting tasks that went well beyond the realm of peacekeeping, including VIP protection, war-fighting, counterinsurgency, stabilization, and state-building as well as supporting electoral processes and facilitating humanitarian assistance.

Exploring the story of Africa's contemporary history and politics through the lens of peacekeeping, this concise and accessible book, based on over a decade of research across ten countries, focuses not on peacekeeping in Africa but, rather, peacekeeping by Africans. Going beyond the question of why post-conflict states contribute troops to peacekeeping efforts, Jonathan Fisher and Nina Wilen demonstrate how peacekeeping is - and has been - weaved into Africa's national, regional and international politics more broadly, as well as what implications this has for how we should understand the continent, its history and its politics. In doing so, and drawing on fieldwork undertaken in every region of the continent, Fisher and Wilen explain how profoundly this involvement in peacekeeping has shaped contemporary Africa.

The legal position of visiting forces transcends domestic and international law and is of growing importance in our increasingly globalized and insecure world. 'In area' and 'out of area' operations, both for the purpose of establishing and maintaining peace and in connection with the conduct of other military operations and training, are likely to become more frequent for a variety of reasons. Finding where the applicable law places the balance between the interests, sensitivities and needs of the host state and the requirements, often practical in nature, of the visiting force is a key objective in ensuring that the relationship between hosts and 'guests' is and remains harmonious. All of this must be achieved in an increasingly complex legal environment. This fully updated second edition of The Handbook of the Law of Visiting Forces addresses the issues surrounding visiting forces and provides a full overview of the legal framework in which they operate. Through an analysis of jurisprudence and historical developments, it offers a comparative commentary to the UN, NATO, and other SOFA rules. The Handbook then continues its analysis through cases studies of visiting forces in key countries, including a fully updated chapter on Afghanistan that considers the various stages of the conflict , before offering conclusions on the current state of the law and its likely future development.

Contested Sites in Jerusalem is the third and final volume in a series of books which collectively present in detail the work of the Jerusalem Old City Initiative, or JOCI, a major Canadian-led Track Two diplomatic effort, undertaken between 2003 and 2014. The aim of the Initiative was to find sustainable governance solutions for the Old City of Jerusalem, arguably the most sensitive and intractable of the final status issues dividing Palestinians and Israelis. This book examines the complex and often contentious issues that arise from the overlapping claims to the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif, the role of UNESCO, and the major implications of the JOCI Special Regime for such issues as archaeology, property, and the economy. Part I is dedicated to holy sites - ground zero of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a point reinforced by the autumn 2014 disturbances which threatened to spiral out of control and engulf Palestinians and Israelis in yet another wave of violence. Parts II-IV of the volume contain studies on archaeology, property, and economics that were written after the completion of the Special Regime model, specifically to address in depth how a Special Regime would deal with each of these three important areas. Contested Sites in Jerusalem offers an insightful explanation of the enormous challenges facing any attempt to find sustainable governance and security arrangements for the Old City in the context of a peace agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians. It will therefore be of immense value to the policy-making community, as well as anyone in academia with a focus on Middle East politics, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the Middle East peace process.

The rule of law is indispensable for sustained peace, good governance, and economic growth, especially in countries recovering from civil war. Yet despite its importance, we know surprisingly little about how to restore the rule of law in the wake of conflict. In this book, Robert A. Blair proposes a new theory to explain how the international community can help establish the rule of law in the world's weakest and most war-torn states, focusing on the crucial but often underappreciated role of the United Nations. Blair tests the theory by drawing on original household surveys in Liberia, highly disaggregated data on UN personnel and activities across Africa, and hundreds of interviews with UN officials, local leaders, citizens, and government and civil society representatives. The book demonstrates that UN intervention can have a deeper, more lasting, and more positive effect on the rule of law than skeptics typically believe.