Impact on the IPA and International Order

This chapter explores how the rise of the counter-peace impacts upon the international peace architecture and international order. In order to assess this impact, the analysis first examines the entanglement of the IPA with counter-peace processes, before juxtaposing their rationalities. It concludes that the dominant counter-peace approaches examined in this book exaggerate the current trajectory of failed peacemaking, and follow a very different logic. In counter-peace approaches, fierce states are not unintended consequences of peace interventions, but central pillars of stability. Civil society demands are oppressed as ‘factionalism’ in order to preserve national unity. Gendered, ethnic and religious hierarchies are cemented in pursuit of securing order against the forces of disorder. For the IPA to incorporate this logic, it would have to reduce its interventions to stabilisation missions and shed any emancipatory or normative aspirations for peace. Alternatively, the IPA could become part of the ideological competition over the allegiance of the global south in the emerging multipolar order. Yet, achieving legitimacy in conflict-affected populations in the global south would require a thorough revision of the IPA and its incorporation of broader principles of justice, sustainability and emancipation.