Since the end of the Cold War a decade ago, the United Nations has exercised authority in significant new ways to address various aspects of resolving conflicts and dealing with their consequences. These new approaches have included the use offeree to end interstate and internal violence, the resolution of boundary issues and other disputes that might prolong the conflict, the elimination of threatening weapons capabilities, the prosecution of violations of international humanitarian law, and the compensation of victims of the conflict. These actions have been taken either with the consent of the state or states involved, or pursuant to the authority of the Security Council under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, or both.

The central question of postconflict societies remains political: how to construct a stable form of domestic power sharing and governance. Adversaries mutually exhausted by conflict will still set an adequate degree of influence and voice in future political arrangements as the price of terminating the conflict. Where adversarial identities have become all-encompassing or the war has gone on for too long, the only available solutions may be more radical, including autonomy or partition.

The task of international mediators is to help the parties assess the available forms of sharing power. In the dominant view of the United Nations community and international financial institutions, the available choice set is the various forms of representative government—for both idealistic and practical reasons. Democracy has become the dominant political philosophy of the multilateral community, even where it is not always observed in practice, and its breadth of participation may be likeliest to placate former adversaries. But any social engineer or planner must also take into account the practical problems that democracy will probably encounter in the aftermath of conflict, including the conditions necessary for its stability and prestige. In addition, the portfolio of democracy has varied structures that may give greater confidence to both sides and persuade the combatants to lay down their arms.

Intrastate war is now the predominant form of armed conflict. The civil wars of the last decade have scarred the world’s poorest countries, leaving a legacy of more than five million dead, many more driven from their homes, billions of dollars in resources destroyed, and wasted economic opportunity. Meeting the challenge of curbing such civil wars—and preventing their re-ignition—requires a radical readjustment. Restructuring must reach beyond traditional institutional mandates and methodologies. New players—particularly the private sector, as well as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)—must be enlisted in a new approach to economic peace building.