HIKMA SUMMIT
OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

Contesting Liberal Peace

Since the end of the Cold War, international conflict management has been defined by the "liberal peace" consensus. Championed by the UN and Western powers, this model presumed that sustainable peace required the transformation of war-torn societies through democratization, free markets, and human rights. However, this paradigm has faced heavy criticism for its teleological Western-centric vision and fluctuating effectiveness (Paris, 2004; Richmond, 2011).

Specifically, non-Western states have fiercely contested its normative foundations. Russia has increasingly rejected its "subaltern" position within the post-1991 unipolar system (Sakwa, 2019). The collapse of the Soviet Union created a normative vacuum rapidly filled by the expansion of Western-led institutions – NATO, the EU, and the OSCE – which emboldened these bodies to claim liberal authority over domestic affairs in most post-Soviet states.

For Moscow, this liberal intrusiveness – epitomized by the "Color Revolutions" (particularly those in Georgia and Ukraine) – represented not just a Western strategy designed to dismantle its sovereign authority (Lewis, 2020), but an unacceptable "Great Substitution": the subordination of the international system based on sovereign equality to a particularistic, Western-dominated "Rules-Based Order" (Sakwa, 2024). Therefore, denied a role as a co-equal architect of the post-Cold War order, Russia was compelled to adopt a realist posture focused on survival and the recovery of Great Power status (Lynch, 2001).

The unveiling of the Board of Peace (BoP) in January 2026 suggests the U.S. is pivoting toward a transactional approach that mirrors the coercive logic of its rivals. This convergence marks the acceleration of a new paradigm where peace is no longer framed as a universal public good, but as a privatized commodity. As a corporate shareholder model of governance converges with authoritarian stabilization, the distinction between the practices of "spoilers" and the hegemon is fading. Consequently, the liberal peace paradigm is increasingly challenged by both internal hollowing and external contestation. In this vacuum, a competing model has emerged which prioritizes regime security, sovereignty-first stabilization, and the imposition of order through coercion.

This article explores Russia’s rejection of liberal peace assumptions, the mechanisms through which it challenges the foundations of the global order, and the perilous convergence with the rise of transactional peace, exemplified by Trump’s Board of Peace initiative.

The "Peacekeeping Façade"

The Russian approach to peacekeeping can be defined as Authoritarian Conflict Management (ACM). Lewis et al. (2018) conceptualize ACM as a model that explicitly rejects the liberal assumption that peace requires democratic inclusion. Instead, it prioritizes regime security, sovereignty-first stabilization, and the imposition of order through coercion. Crucially, Russia’s approach is not merely a series of ad hoc reactions or "spoiler" behavior; rather, it represents a coherent practice embedded in a broader pattern of geopolitical contestation (Pogodda et al., 2023). By weaponizing international law and constructing a "peacekeeping façade," Moscow has effectively redefined peace operations as tools for regional control (Hansen, 2024).

Lewis et al. (2018) identify three interconnected pillars that define this practice. First, discursive practices aim to construct a hegemonic discourse that sanitizes the conflict environment by delegitimizing opposition, monopolizing public perception, and repressing alternative sources of information like journalists, NGOs, and civil society groups. Exemplified by the Kremlin’s branding of Chechen separatists as "Islamic terrorists," the state monopolizes the narrative, framing political conflicts as binary security threats that justify the use of extraordinary force and the repression of alternative interpretations.

Second, spatial practices aim to restructure physical and legal space to impose dominance and suppress rebellion. Russia employs specific spatial tactics known as "borderization" – the installation of de facto boundary lines separating Georgia from its occupied regions – and "passportization," the mass conferral of citizenship to the population of a particular territory (famously applied in Donbas and Abkhazia). The latter manufactures a permanent casus belli which extends Russia’s sovereignty extraterritorially, effectively erasing legal borders while militarizing political ones (Natoli, 2010; Paris, 2020).

Finally, ACM relies on a political economy of control designed to "buy peace." Unlike liberal models focused on broad market development, Russia directs financial flows and reconstruction funds exclusively toward loyalist networks to ensure that economic survival depends on political loyalty. By monopolizing both licit business and illicit revenue streams, the state reinforces a model where stability is achieved through patronage rather than the resolution of root causes.

The Globalization of Authoritarian and Transactional Peace

While Russian ACM is often cited as a primary external challenge to liberal peace, the paradigm is also facing a crisis of internal hollowing – a process significantly accelerated by the current Trump administration. The authoritarian model has long appealed to regimes in the Global South because it offers a possibility for survival without the intrusiveness of Western conditionality (Tokmajyan, 2024). However, the establishment of the BoP demonstrates that ACM is converging with Western practice to reshape global conflict management toward a transactional and coercive operationalization of peace.

The BoP validates Lewis’s (2022) observation that order is replacing justice as the primary goal of intervention, yet it introduces a distinct variation: transactional sovereignty. Unlike Russia’s statist defense of sovereign equality – where sovereignty acts as a legal shield against interference – the BoP commodifies it as a corporate asset. By exchanging voting rights for capital contributions, it aims to replace the UN Charter with a corporate "shareholder" model (Mohdin, 2026).

This creates a striking convergence: both the Russian ACM model and the new US-led BoP model reject the intrusiveness of liberal conditionality. Both embrace a coercive logic where stability is achieved by removing political agency and utilizing political, economic, or military threats.

The Era of Privatized Peace

This shift has led to an increasingly contested definition of peace, manifested first in the return of "Victor’s Peace," meaning that settlements are increasingly privatized and imposed by coercion – a dynamic that paralyzes international justice mechanisms and allows atrocities to be conveniently reframed as "counterterrorism" (Richmond, 2025). This trend is exacerbated by deep institutional fragmentation, as peacekeeping becomes regionalized and privatized.

The BoP, for instance, acts as a direct threat to the UN mandate; by bypassing the Security Council, it institutionalizes a peace architecture where Great Powers manage conflict through authoritarianism rather than multilateral law (Mohdin, 2026; Richmond & Pogodda, 2024). These dynamics produce an overreliance on external patronage rather than endogenous legitimacy. This creates fragile client states that depend on the fluctuating will of Moscow or the Board’s chairman rather than the stability of international law.

Finally, the emergence of the Board of Peace suggests that the strategic value of the "peacekeeping façade" has been recognized not only by fellow autocrats but by the liberal hegemon itself. As the U.S. pivots to transactional sovereignty – relying on the threat and use of military means, as seen in Venezuela and Yemen, alongside privatized peace – the distinction between Russian and American approaches is blurring. We have entered a new era where peace is no longer a universal public good, but a private transaction between sovereign elites.

References

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