Peacemaking and peacekeeping: Introduction

This second issue of The EPS Journal takes up the theme of economic aspects of peacemaking and peacekeeping. Economics Nobel-Laureate Lawrence R. Klein reviews the arguments for, and the likely cost of, a standing United Nations peacekeeping force. Lloyd J. Dumas argues that minimizing economic stress points also helps minimize the potential for conflict, and Dietrich Fischer reviews the cost of war as against the cost of war-prevention. But for all the good reasons of why peace is cheaper than war, war nonetheless recurs. Jurgen Brauer examines why there seems to be so little peace - if it is so cheap to obtain - and studies the conditions under which states appear willing to intervene in trouble spots elsewhere. Bassam Yousif, Guy Lamb, J. Paul Dunne, and Ross Fetterly, present a set of country studies - on Iraq, Namibia, Mozambique, Rwanda, and Canada. The Canadian piece is of particular value as there is virtually no literature in existence that tries, as Fetterly does, to compute the cost of providing peacekeeping services. The other country studies offer valuable comparative lessons of what does, and does not, work in post- conflict reconstruction. The final two articles look at the business side of things. Bob French has written a forceful account of what it takes to clean up land mine pollution, and John T. Marlin examines what consumer campaigns might do, and have done, to rattle the market for gold jewelry - and thereby compel gold-mining companies to adopt behaviors that might reduce conflict.