The Grand Design: The Evolution of the International Peace Architecture

This book examines the development of the ‘grand design’ and various subsequent attempts to develop a peaceful international order, as well as its implications for the current international peace architecture. The theories and doctrines related to peacekeeping, peacebuilding, and other tools used to end war and conflict, raise a range of long-standing questions about the evolution and integrity of the international peace architecture. This is a term that has begun to appear in the context of peacebuilding through the UN, the African Union, and the broader constellation or alphabet soup of international actors, from transitional civil society, to the UN system, the EU, OSCE, NATO, other regional actors, the international legal system, and the IFIs. This book proposes that there have been six main theoretical-historical stages in this process, which have produced a substantial, though fragile, international architecture, always entangled with, and hindered by, what might be described as a counter-peace framework.