Peace Works: America's Unifying Role in a Turbulent World.

• Author: Bullington, J.R.
• Position: Book review

Peace Works: America's Unifying Role in a Turbulent World

By Rick Barton

Rowman& Littlefield Publishers, April 2018

Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 978-1538113004 and ISBN-10: 1538113007

Rick Barton is passionate about peace. Yet, he is no pacifist. His lengthy career has been focused on conflicts and how American diplomacy, economic development, and humanitarian aid can be used to avoid them if possible, bring them to a successful end, and build long-term stability to preclude their recurrence.

That's what this book is about. It uses stories, history, and analysis to develop lessons and policy prescriptions for American involvement--or its avoidance--in foreign conflicts.

First, in the spirit of full disclosure, my Foreign Service career was also in large measure focused on conflict, from my first overseas assignment, in wartime Vietnam in 1965-68, to my post-retirement recall to active duty as a special envoy in Senegal to help end a 30-year secessionist insurgency in the southern part of that country, the Casamance, in 2012-14. In the latter assignment, Rick was my boss, as Assistant Secretary of the Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations, CSO, to which I reported. He was a good boss, both empowering and supportive, and I hold him in high regard.

Rick was born in Buenos Aires and accompanied his Foreign Service family on several assignments. After graduating from Harvard, he became a Congressional staffer, ran unsuccessfully for a Maine Congressional seat, and was Chairman of the Maine Democratic Party. He began his international career in 1990 as an election trainer and observer with the National Democratic Institute. He then served as founding director of USAID's Office of Transition Initiatives, promoting democratic change in conflict-prone countries; Deputy High Commissioner of the UN refugee agency, UNHCR; co-director of a post-conflict reconstruction project with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where he led conflict-related studies on Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, and Pakistan; and U.S. Representative to the UN Economic and Social Council, working on development, peace building, and human rights.

Rick brought this rich and relevant experience to his next job, as Secretary Clinton selected him to head the newly-created Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations in 2012.

CSO was the latest organizational result of a recurrent struggle within the State Department over the nature and structure of the U.S. civilian...