t, if they do so now theydeserve attention. While the international community stresses the need to haltthe disintegration of states and stem the tide of communal violence, theeffectiveness of outside powers in both regards is seriously constrained bytheir inability to examine the incentives and disincentives for violence fromthe perspective of the aggressors themselves@ (King 1997, p. 81).The motivation for fighting can easily change over the course of the conflict.While the origins or root causes of war may in fact lie in some genuine sense ofgrievance, over the course of the conflict greed can become a more prominentmotivating factor. Obviously in practice these distinctions are seldom neat orclearly identifiable, and it is not difficult to envisage the process throughwhich a transition from collective political objectives to elite privateobjectives occurs. The real fuel for economically driven warfare however comesfrom natural resources including tropical hardwood, gems, minerals, oil, and theillicit trade in narcotics.The challenge is to restructure economic incentives and disincentives toencourage conflict resolution and to ensure that future conflict is managedwithout recourse to violence. Securing peace after years of war also requireslimiting the benefits that some derive from the continuation of hostilities. Inshort, effective peace building must make peace pay and take the profit out ofwar. Acting on this conclusion requires a reorientation of our peace buildingefforts. First we must ensure that our external interventions do not havecounter-productive consequences, however unintended. Second, the internationalcommunity must specifically target their interventions to address the economicdimensions of contemporary conflicts. Most peacebuilding activities are, in oneway or another, an attempt to strengthen the hand of those that want peace,particularly civil society organizations. Close cooperation between police andintelligence ...
