Overcoming Obstacles to Peace: Local Factors in Nation-Building

Following on a series of RAND Corporation studies of nation-building, this monograph analyzes the impediments that local conditions pose to successful outcomes in these interventions. It examines how external actors and local leaders in a variety of societies modified or worked around those conditions to promote enduring peace.

James Dobbins (Georgetown School of Foreign Service) is director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at RAND. A veteran diplomat who has held senior White House and State Department positions under four presidents, he most recently served as the Bush administration's special envoy for Afghanistan. He served as U.S. special envoy for Kosovo, Bosnia, Haiti, and Somalia. Ambassador Dobbins has held a variety of State Department and White House posts, including Assistant Secretary of State for Europe, Special Assistant to the President for the Western Hemisphere, Special Adviser to the President and Secretary of State for the Balkans, and Ambassador to the European Community.

Laurel E. Miller recently joined the RAND Corporation as a senior policy analyst. She has been an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University and a senior rule of law adviser at the United States Institute of Peace. She previously served in several positions at the U.S. Department of State and the National Security Council.

Christopher S. Chivvis is a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation and teaches international history at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at The Johns Hopkins University. Chivvis has served in the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Policy and worked for more than a decade on international security and political economic issues in the United States and Europe. He has written for several top policy and scholarly journals including Current History, International Affairs, the Journal of Contemporary History, Foreign Policy, The National Interest, Survival, The Washington Quarterly, the International Herald Tribune, The Washington Times, the US News and World Report, The Christian Science Monitor and CNN.com.

Keith Crane (PhD, Economics, Indiana University) is a senior economist at RAND. Areas of expertise include Economics of Transition and Economic Forecasting, Transportation Economics, and Defense Economics.