The Rise of the Counter-Peace on the International Stage

The systemic weakening of the international peace architecture through the blockages laid out in the previous chapters points to the crucial importance of investigating how counter-peace dynamics and actors are connected across all scales. Accordingly, this chapter hones in on these connections between the creation of an enabling international environment for counter-peace, the national rejection of the IPA, and societal support for counter-peace dynamics. It illustrates how small-scale tactics have been combined into larger strategies and disseminated transnationally. By identifying this trend, the chapter argues that counter-peace dynamics are escalatory. They aim at the creation of a global counter-peace framework. This analysis elaborates the underlying ideological stances underpinning such a framework in juxtaposition to both the liberal ideology that has shaped the IPA since the 1990s and scientific notions of emancipatory peace.