The Peacebuilding Field Is Experiencing an Identity Crisis – But That's How We Grow

I was managing the U.S. State Department’s technical bureau for peace work when it was eliminated in 2025. Our bureau was eliminated alongside partner entities at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP), as well as associated foreign aid resources. Some cuts were expected given the new Administration’s stated commitment to slash bureaucracy, but the sweeping nature of these moves was shocking – especially as the President asserted his commitment to pursue new peace deals and resolve conflicts worldwide. Like many colleagues, I am now reckoning with the peace work we thought we were advancing. Just a year before, it seemed our collective efforts were reaching new levels of sophistication and impact, especially through the groundbreaking Global Fragility Act (GFA).

The past year’s whiplash has affected the whole peacebuilding field. As we move through 2026, the field in the United States and beyond, finds itself at a new and potentially existential crossroads. Many are asking: how can we persist, adapt, and renew our work for the future? I believe we can best answer that question if we first create space for reflection on the field’s achievements and shortcomings. With such reflections we can then begin to reimagine how the work could be transformed for the future. We must reckon with how it was so easy to dismantle established peace support institutions and norms without more public outcry, and consider how we could build wider support for this work. If we can communicate bold solutions to the greatest threats to future peace and security, including threats related to artificial intelligence, climate change, global power competition and conflict, and nuclear weapons, we will be in a stronger position to garner this support.

We must reckon with how it was so easy to dismantle established peace support institutions and norms without more public outcry, and consider how we could build wider support for this work.

How We Got Here: The Remarkable Growth of Peacebuilding

The field of peace research and practice gained momentum at the end of the Cold War and grew rapidly over the past 40 years. USIP was established in 1984. It was the result of a multi-decade campaign by veterans, faith leaders, and bipartisan members of Congress who believed the U.S. government should have an academy dedicated to the study of, training, and support for peacefully resolving conflicts worldwide. USAID created the Office of Transition Initiatives to enhance support for countries transitioning from war to peace. Similarly, the United Nations expanded its peacebuilding work in line with the 1992 landmark report, “An Agenda for Peace.” Throughout the 1990s, the UN launched new ventures – albeit often with limited results – to address civil wars and internal conflicts.

The U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations, where I worked, drew its roots in the post-September 11th period. In the wake of U.S. military invasions in Afghanistan and Iraq, leaders recognized the need for more diplomatic capacities to promote post-conflict governance. Over time, the bureau developed technical expertise and tools to support conflict analysis, early warning, peace negotiations, and the implementation of peace agreements. Allied governments, including Germany and the United Kingdom, established similar organizational entities. The U.N. launched and expanded its Mediation Support Unit, Peacebuilding Commission, and dedicated funds. In parallel, an expanded set of civil society organizations emerged to support peace processes. The Alliance for Peacebuilding emerged to connect many of these groups in the United States.

Meanwhile, the formalized study of peace grew. Across the United States alone, there are now over 200 peace and conflict studies programs at colleges and universities. With support from institutions like USIP, peace research and training became more sophisticated. With increased collection and analysis of peace and conflict data, the field developed a better understanding of the causes of violent conflict, ways to de-escalate conflicts, and the keys to building sustainable peace over time. In tandem with increased peace programming, the UN, USAID, and others, invested in expanded monitoring, evaluation, and learning efforts. There are now many high-profile annual events around the world that bring together experts to reflect on this learning: Geneva Peace Week, the Paris Peace Forum, the Stockholm Forum on Peace and Development, and PeaceCon in the United States, among others.

In many ways, the passage of the bipartisan GFA in 2019 embodied the growth of the institutional peacebuilding field in the United States. The law – championed by bipartisan members of Congress and signed by, yes, President Donald Trump – required more focused U.S. engagement, partnerships, and assistance to prevent and resolve wars. Congress subsequently appropriated over $500 million for programs to support the law. As one notable example, the GFA enabled the U.S. government to support partners in Coastal West Africa working to prevent instability and violence in the Sahel from spilling over into fragile border regions. These efforts were pursued in partnership with research entities to analyze shifting conflict dynamics and study the impact of interventions. Early results were promising, but GFA implementation was paused in 2025, and its future is now uncertain.¹

Our Field at a Crossroads

Today, the peacebuilding field is reeling with the dramatic reversal in its growth. The institutional and resource cuts in the United States are having ripple effects globally, and some other governments are following suit. This reversal is happening, worryingly, at a time when wars are increasing² in number, destruction, and internationalization. At the start of 2026, more countries are engaged in conflicts outside their borders than at any time since the end of World War II. The need for peacebuilding is more apparent than ever, yet our overall ability to respond is declining.

Peacebuilding leaders and groups have demonstrated tremendous resilience and adaptability in navigating the disruptions of 2025, including through mutual support. Surely, that resilience will be needed to navigate the period ahead. Simultaneously, there have been increasing discussions about whether and how the field can rebuild and regain its footing. The more I have thought about this challenge facing our field – in dialogue with tremendous colleagues and partners – the more I am convinced that we will be most successful in renewing peacebuilding if we make time and space for critical reflection on our past efforts, reaching out to new and old partners, and reimagining our work for the future.

How We Regain Relevance

Reflecting on my own experience (admittedly a U.S.-centric perspective), I can identify certain ways in which our field constrained our work and impact as we grew and became more mainstream. For one, we became more technocratic and developmental in nature. In response to funding dynamics and pressures, we increasingly focused on designing, pursuing, and measuring individual aid programs to achieve discrete changes in conflict-affected countries, often disconnected from broader change processes from war to peace. With the focus on funding and projects, we placed less attention on identifying and/or changing national or international policies that were perpetuating conflict dynamics or impeding peace efforts. As we look to the future, we should consider how we reconnect with the inherently political nature of conflict and peace work.

Arguably, it was so easy to cut peace institutions, at least in part, because of a reduced base of citizen groups and networks supporting them. Many now realize the need to focus on rebuilding a broader peace movement.

In some ways, the growth of the field also led to the creation of an “elite class” of peace professionals, increasingly disconnected from grassroots activism and political mobilization. Arguably, it was so easy to cut peace institutions, at least in part, because of a reduced base of citizen groups and networks supporting them. Many now realize the need to focus on rebuilding a broader peace movement.³ This will require engagement with and communications to a wider swath of citizen organizations, religious communities, and veterans’ groups who can be allies in this work. And, as we have learned more acutely over recent years, there needs to be greater engagement and cooperation with Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities, and others who have traditionally been underrepresented in American power structures and have rich experience of driving political and social movements. It could benefit us to take a page from the U.S. pro-democracy movement, which is seeking to both restructure American power systems that have been historically exclusionary and build a broad-based coalition across communities and sectors.

Finally, in recent decades, the peacebuilding field has evolved and grown primarily around responding to intrastate and regional wars. To be relevant in this new era, we will need to show how peacebuilding approaches, policies, and tools can help manage growing risks of great power conflict and global instability. This includes joining ongoing efforts to halt and reverse a dangerous new nuclear arms race.⁴ The field can also offer important responses to the growing concerns about political violence within the United States and other established democracies. There is a strong case to make about the dangers of the growing embrace of more militarized approaches to safety – domestically and internationally – and the value of investing in peace at all levels of society. As the GFA has shown, a peace agenda can be bipartisan and garner broad support if framed effectively.

Creativity is Born from Crisis

There are some promising ways in which peacebuilding groups are already engaging in the kind of reflection, connection, and reimagination that I have in mind. Peace Direct convened “Peace Connect,”⁵ a pioneering gathering of Global South peacebuilders in Nairobi in late 2025. The Alliance for Peacebuilding (AfP) has launched a “future of peace and security project”⁶ – which I am co-leading – to chart a vision and agenda for rebuilding the U.S. peace and security policy agenda. In March, the University of Notre Dame, AfP, and former leaders of USIP convened⁷ an important conference on “American Peacebuilding at a Crossroads,” which identified⁸ several priorities for adaptation. Similar efforts are taking shape in Europe, and we are discussing ways to better link the efforts.

To be sure, the work of rallying and adapting the peacebuilding field to meet the dangerous future ahead will not be easy nor straightforward. It will require us to think creatively, embrace change, overcome obstacles, forge unlikely connections, and bring more people to the table, in the face of new forms of adversity and authoritarianism. But is that not precisely what we strive to do as peacebuilders when we’re at our best? Our first step should be to create spaces to reflect, connect, imagine, and remember the transformation we are capable of. The need for peacebuilding has not evaporated. To be ready, we must rejuvenate our creativity.

Footnotes

1. Peter J. Quaranto and Kevin Melton, “Global Fragility Act 2.0? Amid a Possible Bipartisan Revival, a Chance to Make U.S. Efforts More Effective,” Just Security, October 15, 2025, https://www.justsecurity.org/122579/global-fragility-act-us-peace-efforts/. ↩

2. Institute for Economics and Peace, Global Peace Index 2025, June 2025, https://www.visionofhumanity.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Global-Peace-Index2025-web.pdf. ↩

3. David Cortright and Peter J. Quaranto, “The American Peace Movement We Need Today,” Waging Nonviolence, December 16, 2025, https://wagingnonviolence.org/2025/12/american-peace-movement-we-needtoday/. ↩

4. Reverse the Arms Race, https://reversethearmsrace.wordpress.com/. ↩

5. Peace Direct, “Peace Connect,” Peace Direct, https://www.peacedirect.org/peace-connect/. ↩

6. Alliance for Peacebuilding, “The Future of Peace and Security,” Alliance for Peacebuilding, https://www.allianceforpeacebuilding.org/the-future-of-peace-andsecurity. ↩

7. Keough School of Global Affairs, University of Notre Dame, “Notre Dame Gathers Experts to Strengthen American Peacebuilding,” University of Notre Dame, https://keough.nd.edu/news-and-events/news/notre-dame-gathers-experts-to-strengthen-americanpeacebuilding/. ↩

8. Keough School of Global Affairs, “Notre Dame Gathers Experts to Strengthen American Peacebuilding.” ↩