The Global Seminar: Global Issues

Brilliant and engagingly written, Why Nations Fail answers the question that has stumped the experts for centuries: Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine? Is it culture, the weather, geography? Perhaps ignorance of what the right policies are? Simply, no. None of these factors is either definitive or destiny. Otherwise, how to explain why Botswana has become one of the fastest growing countries in the world, while other African nations, such as Zimbabwe, the Congo, and Sierra Leone, are mired in poverty and violence? Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson conclusively show that it is man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or lack of it).

Many ceasefires and peace agreements in civil conflict are initially unsuccessful. Some give way to renewed, and often escalating, violence. In other cases, peace processes have become lengthy and circular negotiations in which concessions are rare. Given the huge material and human costs of a failed peace process, the international community has a strong interest in helping these processes succeed. Challenges to Peace-building approaches this problem by focusing on "spoilers"-- groups and tactics that attempt to obstruct or undermine conflict settlement through a variety of means, including terrorism and violence. Drawing upon experience from Northern Ireland, the Basque region, Bosnia, Colombia, Israel-Palestine, Cyprus, the Caucasus, and Kashmir, it considers why spoilers and spoiling behavior emerge and how they can be addressed. This volume considers a broad range of actors as potential spoilers: not only rebel groups and insurgents, but also diasporas, governments, and other entities. It also demonstrates that ill-conceived or imposed peace processes can themselves sow the seeds of spoiling.

Civil wars pose some of the most difficult problems in the world today and the United Nations is the organization generally called upon to bring and sustain peace. Lise Morj Howard studies the sources of success and failure in UN peacekeeping. Her in-depth 2007 analysis of some of the most complex UN peacekeeping missions debunks the conventional wisdom that they habitually fail, showing that the UN record actually includes a number of important, though understudied, success stories. Using systematic comparative analysis, Howard argues that UN peacekeeping succeeds when field missions establish significant autonomy from UN headquarters, allowing civilian and military staff to adjust to the post-civil war environment. In contrast, failure frequently results from operational directives originating in UN headquarters, often devised in relation to higher-level political disputes with little relevance to the civil war in question.

Dennis C. Jett examines why peacekeeping operations fail by comparing the unsuccessful attempt at peacekeeping in Angola with the successful effort in Mozambique, alongside a wide range of other peacekeeping experiences. Jett reviews the history of peacekeeping and the evolution in the number, size, scope, and cost of peacekeeping missions. He also explains why peacekeeping has become more necessary, possible, and desired and yet, at the same time, more complex, more difficult, and less frequently used.

A groundbreaking investigation in which Erna Paris explores the policies behind America's opposition too the creation of a permanent international criminal court and the implications for the world at large. The ICC is the first permanent tribunal of its kind. The mandate of the ICC is to challenge criminal impunity on the part of national leaders and to promote accountability in world affairs at the highest level.

The term 'genocide' was coined in 1944, but it has been practiced for centuries. Beginning with an introduction that defines the term 'genocide', ""Genocide and International Justice"" discusses the field of comparative genocide studies and outlines the stages of the Holocaust, which has become the template for evaluating and defining other genocides. It treats the Armenian genocide, as well as the genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, and Darfur. Efforts by the international community to prevent genocide and to prosecute those who commit acts of genocide are also discussed.

A finalist for the Samuel Johnson Prize, the UK's most prestigious non-fiction award, Deliver Us From Evil is a dramatic, behind-the-scenes investigation into how the West, led by the United States, has attempted to deal with the complexities of the post-Cold War world. Taking readers to Kosovo, Cambodia, Rwanda, Nigeria, Iraq, and other places torn apart by ethnic conflicts, famines, and other crises and to deliberations at the UN, Shawcross argues that, despite good intentions, intervention can not succeed when there is no peace to keep, no right side, and no infrastructure in which to sow the seeds of order. Integrating the stories of humanitarian workers and peacekeeping troops with his own incisive observations, Shawcross provides a disturbing new perspective on modern war.