The Liberal Peace Is Dead. What's Replacing It?

Talk to many mediators, diplomats and peacebuilders and you will hear a lot of negativity. Budgets have been cut, multilateralism is under threat, and many conflicts seem intractable. It would seem that the international and transnational peace architecture constructed since the end of the Cold War is crumbling. All of the above is true and yet a lot of peacemaking activity is still ongoing. So what’s happening?

A significant change in peacemaking activity is in the actors leading it. Non-western peacemakers are now more prominent as mediators. This change has implications not only for how peace is being made today but also the nature of the peace that is emerging. To observers who are used to peace initiatives being led by Western states or Western-dominated organizations a fundamental shift in thinking is required to navigate this new landscape.

This essay provides a sketch of the emerging peace landscape and the opportunities it offers. The essay draws on multiple research interviews conducted under the auspices of the Effective Peacebuilding Initiative.

It’s not 1992 anymore

The past few decades have seen an enormous growth in the scale and complexity of peace operations. An entire sector has grown and professionalized. It has developed standard operating procedures, a vernacular, and an infrastructure. Key to this has been the growth of civil society organizations, national and transnational, that often engage in the heavy-lifting of peacebuilding and liaison between communities, national governments and international organizations.

Importantly, the idea that peace was possible became normalized. Long-running conflicts that were seemingly immune to peacemaking became the sites of peace processes and, in some cases, comprehensive peace accords. The 1990s and early 2000s were a period in which peace was widely celebrated and the idea that negotiated settlements were possible became accepted among a growing number of governments and armed groups. Whether the end of apartheid in South Africa, the peace accords in Northern Ireland and the former Yugoslavia, or the ending of civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone, there did seem to be pathways towards peaceful outcomes.

Many of the transitions of this period involved much more than signed agreements in diplomatic capitals. The peace agreements were often accompanied by development and reconstruction programs. Lives were transformed and human potential that had been constrained by war was able to flourish. Prisoners were released, repressive military and police forces were retrained, constitutions were rewritten to extend rights, and political conflict moved from the gun to the ballot box. All of this was uneven and the peace dividends did not reach everyone but lives were saved and improved by peacemaking.

Fast forward to today and we find ourselves in a very different era. United Nations peacekeeping missions are closing rather than expanding. The last comprehensive peace accord (that is, a major accord involving large-scale change in politics and society in an attempt to address conflict) was in Colombia in 2016. The percentage of overseas development money spent on peace fell by 20 percent between 2008 and 2024. The United Kingdom, the Netherlands, France, Belgium, the United States and many other countries have significantly cut their spending on peace-related activities.

Many in the peace sector are having a hard time coming to terms with these new realities. One interviewee noted, ‘We compare peacemaking to the past and the 1990s every single time. We need to talk about the future of mediation, not the past’. Much of the 1992 playbook, dating from the United Nations Agenda for Peace document and the policy changes it introduced, does not apply anymore. On the one hand, the international peace infrastructure has never been so well developed. On the other hand, much of that infrastructure and the peacemaking and peacebuilding procedures that go with it, seem ill-suited for the world that we find ourselves in and are being sidelined.

Contemporary Peacemaking

Although much of the peacemaking world is fracturing, there is still a significant amount of peace work under way. Certainly there is residual, and under-appreciated, work by United Nations agencies and many INGOs. Much contemporary peacemaking is being undertaken by non-western states. While much of this work is not new, it is more prominent because many Western peace actors have left the field of play. Qatar, Turkey, Oman, China, Brazil, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Kenya and a number of other states and ad hoc groups of states have been very active in mediation efforts.

The peacemaking of the 1990s and early 2000s relied on a peace optimism among political leaders. That optimism seems to have evaporated among many leaders, but it is alive elsewhere.

To give some examples, the United Arab Emirates has brokered a large number of prisoner exchanges between Russia and Ukraine. These exchanges often involved hundreds of prisoners at a time and occurred on a monthly basis. Oman provided space for the United States and Iran to hold talks on nuclear proliferation. Turkish mediation helped de-escalate a potentially very dangerous dispute between Ethiopia and Somalia, and its brokerage of the 2023 Black Sea Grain Deal arguably staved off food shortages in many parts of the world. While Qatar has been in the headlines for its brokerage role in relation to Israel, Hamas and Hezbollah, it has also been involved in multiple hostage/prisoner release successes ranging from a US journalist in Myanmar to Ukrainian children held by Russia. Indeed, its history of mediation goes back to the 1960s and the state’s constitution notes the importance of mediation to resolve international and regional disputes. Elsewhere, China and Brazil jointly promoted a peace plan for the Russia-Ukrainian war and an African Peace Mission traveled to Kiev and Moscow in the summer of 2023.

A key issue relating to the rise of non-western mediation is access. Many of these states are able to act as interlocutors precisely because they have access. This access might come from a shared faith (often Islam) or a lack of colonial baggage. On the other hand, some Western states may have seen their influence, and access, ebb away in recent years as they have become increasingly interested in security responses and less willing to make open-ended international commitments. This issue of access is crucial as peacemaking resides in the world of the possible and the pragmatic, not in overly idyllic aims.

Despite international uncertainty and the fracturing of much of the established peace architecture, considerable peace activity persists. Moreover, and crucially, this peacemaking is having a real world impact, much of it humanitarian. These actors use the language of peace and help maintain the idea that negotiated and peaceful outcomes are better than violent alternatives. This ambition and ‘can do’ attitude is significant and not to be under-estimated. The peacemaking of the 1990s and early 2000s relied on a peace optimism among political leaders – a belief that pro-peace interventions can lead to better outcomes. That optimism and ‘can do’ attitude seems to have evaporated among many leaders (particularly in Europe) but is alive elsewhere.

More recent peacemaking tends to be stripped down. As one observer said, ‘recent agreements are transactional and minimalist’. The emphasis is humanitarian, stopping fighting or facilitating prisoner/hostage releases.

What does this peace look like?

It is worth asking if this non-western peacemaking, and the peace that ensues, is materially different from the peace produced by other types of peacemaking. Four features of non-western peacemaking practice are noteworthy. Each reiterates the need to find a balance between the pragmatic aim to end fighting and address humanitarian needs on the one hand, and address the limitations of these emerging types of peace on the other.

The first feature of the emerging peace landscape relates to the extent of the peace interventions. Many of the peace processes of the 1990s and early 2000s could be described as ‘full service’. Not only did they address security and constitutional issues, but they were often accompanied by support packages and extensive reform programs that sought to deal with underlying conflict-causing issues. This meant that peacemaking was often followed by peacebuilding and multiple projects designed to cement the peace through addressing issues of rights, culture and representation.

More recent peacemaking tends to be stripped down. As one observer said, ‘recent agreements are transactional and minimalist’. The emphasis is humanitarian, stopping fighting or facilitating prisoner/hostage releases. While the peacemaking of a generation ago often had a wider set of goals, current peacemaking seems to be more limited to humanitarian goals. The human benefits of ceasefires and the repatriation of prisoners are not to be minimized. Another interviewee noted, ‘people really care about whether they are safe or unsafe in their immediate environment’. Wider concerns about changing constitutions and identity rights might take a backseat. Yet for those used to more ambitious forms of peace that included explicit political and constitutional change in relation to rights and electoral processes, this more parsed peace might feel problematic.

A second feature of much of contemporary non-western peacemaking is that it sidelines the United Nations, as Richard Gowan notes in this volume. Leading states have been sidelining the United Nations for many years, often working through issue-based coalitions. Similarly, contemporary mediation by non-western states tends to bypass the United Nations. While bypassing the United Nations may allow for more nimble maneuvering, it is worth remembering the value of a near universal organization in a time of international fracturing. The organization retains considerable reach and technical capability as well as providing a space for diplomatic exchange. Importantly, the United Nations has developed a number of protocols, for example in relation to Women, Peace and Security or Youth, Peace and Security that were manifested in peace programming. Without United Nations involvement in peacemaking, these agendas look set to wither. It is worth noting, as one former UN employee observed, ‘We were trying to do too much … we were overloading processes’.

A third feature of peacemaking by non-western actors, and one linked to the above point, is that it tends to be regionally-focused. This is not exclusively the case, but it is a noticeable pattern. A regional focus is understandable in that states have an interest in stability in their own region and may be engaged in competition to be the regional ‘top dog’. The regional and patchwork nature of peace means that the nature of peace may be very fragmented, lacking – for example and as mentioned above – the standard operating procedures that the United Nations has developed on a multitude of issues from disarmament to security sector reform. The case-by-case basis of peacemaking and peace outcomes has implications for the meanings of peace and what people in conflict-affected contexts might expect from a peace deal.

A fourth feature of non-western peacemaking is its lack of transparency. Of course, mediation and negotiations often require secrecy. Yet, it is remarkable how little of a substantive nature a number of non-western peacemakers say. The United Arab Emirates, for example, says virtually nothing about its mediation efforts. There is no justification that might give clues about motivation behind the mediation efforts or an ultimate goal. There are good arguments for just getting on with the business of peace without any fanfare, but greater commentary from peace actors gives important clues about the motivations behind pro-peace interventions and what might come next. In particular, it could help signal the extent to which any peace might be inclusive and have room for rights and representation.

A New Type of Peace

The type of peace emerging from many contemporary mediation efforts reveals a growing constraint on multilateral peacemaking. Indeed, in many cases, minilateralism is the order of the day with small groups of states in ad hoc working groups that do not disguise their interests. The Quad (United States, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt) working on Sudan is a prime example. Many peace initiatives can be best described as ‘humanitarian’ in nature. They alleviate immediate suffering without the promise of comprehensive statebuilding. This presents a conundrum for many associated with the previously established Western peace infrastructure who may view a humanitarian peace as a good start but incomplete. A desire to include the issues of rights, representation and justice in these processes, once prominent in Western approaches to peacemaking, may hinder humanitarian wins. Grappling with this reality will require moving beyond the current whiplash moment and figuring out a strategy to work with the new environment rather than having nostalgia for the old one.