Description
Over the last few years, the literature has claimed that liberal peacebuilding has reached its end. Certainly, since about the 2010s, key aspects of liberal peacebuilding, such as the goal of building liberal states, have diminished. One prominent implication has gone however under radar: the transformation of the organisation of military violence. The article argues that if we explore liberal peacebuilding as a way of distributing the means of violence, its decay reveals a shift from the monopoly of the means of violence, and, in particular, from the claim to the legitimate use of these means by multilateral actors, to a decentralisation of these means of violence towards states under a claim to project, protect or consolidate state power. Yet rather than recentralising around states, these have in turn distributed them across state, non-state and corporate actors. In this move we can see new hybrid military alliances, a focus on threats from society, the displacement of liberal legitimations for war, and the reinstatement of racist discursive divides about modern state capabilities. This study is based on Fanon and the Sociology of Militarism to draw the potential far-reaching implications both for war-making as for global governance, without dismissing that they reproduce old dynamics of capitalism, racism, and militarism. Methodologically, it is based on a thematic analysis of core peacebuilding documents and interviews with UN and EU officials in headquarters, and a comparison of the conflicts in the Sahel Region and the Democratic Republic of Congo from field interviews and observations.
