Peacekeeping initiatives in post-conflict countries are expensive and complex, and the war in Iraq has undermined rich nations’ belief in their likely success. But, used as one part of a package that includes aid and limits military spending, peacekeeping initiatives remain an effective way to stabilize fragile nations and reduce the suffering of the world’s most vulnerable people.
OXFORD – Because peacekeeping initiatives in post-conflict countries are expensive and complex, and because the war in Iraq has undermined rich nations’ belief in their likely success, a dispassionate look at the use of military intervention is timely. A new study for the Copenhagen Consensus project that includes the first ever cost-benefit analysis of United Nations peacekeeping initiatives concludes that military might is an important tool for reducing bloodshed around the world.
Iraq is a misleading guide to the effectiveness of such initiatives. Unlike the vast majority of conflicts, its civil war was sparked by an international war. The far more typical scenario is political violence within a small, low-income, low-growth nation burdened with strong ethnic divisions.
Dealing with these structurally dangerous countries is clearly one of our generation’s most pressing security challenges. There is good reason to think that trouble will escalate. Half of all civil wars are post-conflict relapses, and recent negotiated peace settlements have left many countries unstable. The commodity boom and discovery of mineral resources in fragile states have sown seeds of discord, while the spread of democracy in low-income countries – perhaps surprisingly – increases the statistical likelihood of political violence.
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The European Jewish Association’s recent insistence on the exceptional nature of anti-Semitism raises important questions about the nature of privilege and oppression in contemporary societies. The risk is that the EJA’s conceptual framework could all too easily reproduce the very bigotry it seeks to oppose.
sees problems with efforts to treat hatred toward Jews separately from other forms of bigotry.
In October 2022, Chileans elected a far-left constitutional convention which produced a text so bizarrely radical that nearly two-thirds of voters rejected it. Now Chileans have elected a new Constitutional Council and put a far-right party in the driver’s seat.
blames Chilean President Gabriel Boric's coalition for the rapid rise of far right populist José Antonio Kast.
OXFORD – Because peacekeeping initiatives in post-conflict countries are expensive and complex, and because the war in Iraq has undermined rich nations’ belief in their likely success, a dispassionate look at the use of military intervention is timely. A new study for the Copenhagen Consensus project that includes the first ever cost-benefit analysis of United Nations peacekeeping initiatives concludes that military might is an important tool for reducing bloodshed around the world.
Iraq is a misleading guide to the effectiveness of such initiatives. Unlike the vast majority of conflicts, its civil war was sparked by an international war. The far more typical scenario is political violence within a small, low-income, low-growth nation burdened with strong ethnic divisions.
Dealing with these structurally dangerous countries is clearly one of our generation’s most pressing security challenges. There is good reason to think that trouble will escalate. Half of all civil wars are post-conflict relapses, and recent negotiated peace settlements have left many countries unstable. The commodity boom and discovery of mineral resources in fragile states have sown seeds of discord, while the spread of democracy in low-income countries – perhaps surprisingly – increases the statistical likelihood of political violence.
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