Beyond the Neoliberal Peace: From Conflict Resolution to Social Reconciliation

Introduction The 1990s has been a decade of contradictions, of order and chaos, of integration and fragmentation. On the one hand, the world has witnessed more than 30 intrastate wars, which have torn apart countries in Asia, Africa, and Europe.(1) On the other hand, some of the most intractable conflicts of the past 50 years - in Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Israel/Palestine, Guatemala, El Salvador, Northern Ireland, and South Africa - have been brought, with varying degrees of success and some failures, toward peaceful settlement.(2) How can we account for these two apparently different phenomena? Are they contradictory or linked? Are some places simply ripe for war and others for peace? Are there conjunctural or contextual factors that lead some societies toward dissolution, while others find ways of reintegrating? Is it the involvement of external interlocutors that contribute to peace? Or, is there some unique set of factors at work here, one that plays a major role in both the onset of domestic wars and the move toward resolution? In this article, I make an effort to consider these and other questions. I begin with a discussion of the changing character of war and the rise of "neoliberal peace" as the solution to intrastate conflicts. I then turn to a consideration of the contradiction described above - the recent proliferation of both war and peace. In the part three, I describe why reconciliation is so difficult and largely absent from the contemporary literature on peacemaking and conflict resolution. What Price Peace? This article is based on two arguments. First, the onset of intrastate war and its resolution are not some sort of organic or determined historical process arising from social, ethnic, or other kinds of ascriptive differences. Though there are specific permissive conditions within societies that may move them toward internal conflict and war, and although historical and cultural attributes such as "ethnicity" may loom large if friction develops between communities, it is the instrumental activities of particular powerful individuals, elites, and groups that mobilize populations and trigger outbreaks of domestic violence (Frederickson, 1997: 74; Lipschutz, 1998a). Second, the settlement of civil conflicts such as those listed above has generally come about not because societies have become "exhausted" of war or because people have mobilized in peace movements to demand an end to fighting. Rather, they are again the result of the decisions and actions of specific individuals, elites, and groups in positions of power and authority, who recognize that they can realize greater benefits from "peace" than from the continuation of a state of high tension or war. In other words, what I offer is not a structural explanation for the causes of either recent wars or consequent peace arrangements, although elements of historical structures, in the Gramscian sense, do play an important role in explaining these outcomes (Cox, 1987). Yet, neither am I proposing a rational choice explanation, inasmuch as history and culture do matter, although not as the immutable, fixed referents they are sometimes made out to be (Delmas, 1997; Lipschutz, 1999). The instrumentalism inherent in the dynamics of domestic war has been recognized in recent negotiations and settlements. As the case of Angola illustrates (albeit unsuccessfully), it is often necessary to "buy off" Big Men if warring armies are to be persuaded to put down their arms. Sometimes, it is necessary to guarantee warring elites a place in a "government of reconciliation," where they can share in (or skim off) the fruits of international assistance and investment. At other times, as with the late President Mobutu of Zaire, it may be prudent to buy them a plane ticket to a safe haven, one that will also protect their bank accounts and real estate. Yet, these agreements leave much to do. Although such a peace might be counted a success by foreign negotiators, critical lacunae that are often not addressed remain. …