Roland Paris’s At War’s End is all about time and timing. It is a scholarly study of peacebuilding in broken countries after internal or civil strife and a practical prescription for doing it better in the future. Paris’s prescription says: don’t rush to create liberal market democracies in post-conflict states without first creating the institutions necessary to support them, because democracies and market economies, while essential for long-term peace and stability, can be disruptive and destabilizing at first. Take the time to do it right.
Paris, a Canadian political scientist based at the University of Boulder, Colorado, believes in getting involved, really involved. He refers often to the concepts of peacebuilding promoted by United Nations secretaries general Kofi Annan and Boutros Boutros-Ghali and rightly reminds us that too often in the last 15 years we have merrily declared victory, pronounced stability and then either disrupted it or simply...
Ross Reid is a former member of Parliament and a consultant on democratic development who has lived in Ukraine, Ghana, Kosovo and Afghanistan, and has worked extensively in all the Balkan countries, the Middle East, central and eastern Europe, and central Asia. He is now Deputy Minister to the Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador.
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