Engines for Peace? Extractive Industries, Host Countries, and the International Community in Post-Conflict Peacebuilding

Extractive industries can provide great opportunities for post-conflict peacebuilding in resource-rich countries by providing revenue to finance reconstruction and set the economy back on track. However, the process of resource extraction often poses challenges for peacebuilding. This article first explains the various challenges that valuable natural resources can pose in post-conflict countries, and establishes a typology of post-conflict contexts where extractive industries, the host country, and the international community can play primary roles as peace promoters. It then elaborates on the specific roles each of these actors can play: i) what approaches are available for responsible companies that aim to be peace sensitive and even promote peace and development locally and nationally;ii) how a country that has some capacity and political will to secure long term peace and development can promote responsible exploitation;and iii) how international actors can promote responsible company and government behaviour in countries with low capacity and willingness use the natural resource base for the best of its whole population.

Revisiting the Problem of Post-Soviet Revolutions:The Armenian Revolution Makes Some Difference

The phenomenon of recurrent revolution in the post-Soviet political space deserves a new examination,as the Year 2019 marks not only 30 years since the chain of revolutions in Eastern Europe,but also the first anniversary of the revolution in Armenia.There are scant reasons to expect that economic underperformance or even a sharp spasm of crisis would bring any of the seven unmistakably authoritarian post-Soviet regimes to an abrupt end,but the deepening resentment against corruption could produce a powerful demand for change in the course of elections,which theses regimes feel obliged to stage.Manipulations of elections are the most common trigger for revolutions,but the big question of whether such explosions of social energy could deliver on the demand for change is set to remain open.

Revisiting Military Spending—Security Nexus in Africa

The military spending in Africa is not only high but it is persistent,unconstrained,and even defies the COVID-19 fiscal challenges.With militaries including intelligence been projected as the“guarantors”of national security,this phenomenon has been perpetuated by the assumption that more military spending will improve security conditions.This article revisits this assumption by showing the traditional state-centric military security threats that justify such high spending are increasingly been overtaken by the growing non-military security threats that have become the major national security concerns.Based on the available data on security,safety,and military spending in Africa,it is shown in this article the presence of inverse relationship between high military spending and security.The main driver of such spending is the backroom resource-driven defense policies that are grounded on the military-centric definition of strategy,which advocates military solutions and more resources to military as panacea for securing survival of state and safety of its citizens.Such military solutions might be detrimental to state and human security.The urgent war to be fought today in Africa is not about existential threat of state and its territorial integrity but it is a war against a web of complex threats to the lives and livelihoods of African citizens.One possible way of constraining the high military spending in Africa is to formulate new defense policies that are inclusive,transparent,people-centered,and guided by inclusive people-centered national security strategies and core budgetary principles.