The Peace

"In The Peace, Româeo Dallaire shows us the face of war through the prism of his own life in the military. His has been the journey of a man raised as a Cold Warrior, who became a New World Order warrior after the Berlin Wall fell. That man believed in the mandate of the UN to reinforce peace in Rwanda in 1994, only to see his mission collapse and the country descend into the hell of genocide. The battered, tortured person who emerged from that catastrophe grew determined to become a warrior who now fought against the new world disorder--to prevent genocide, to find ways to intervene in conflicts in defence of humanity. Dallaire helped craft doctrines called the "will to intervene" and "the right to protect," and then witnessed those initiatives fail to be deployed because of the same old power politics, national self-interest and general indifference that allowed the Rwandan genocide to unfold. Now in his final act, Dallaire has become a warrior working towards a better future in which those old paradigms are cracked. In The Peace he names all the things that undermine true peace and security because they reinforce the dangerous, self-interested belief that "balance" of power is the best we can do. Too often we settle for a definition of "at peace" that means we are content to stand by when the bombs are falling elsewhere because we ourselves are not under attack. Drawing on his own experience and witness, Dallaire shows us a path to what he calls "the peace," a state where, above all else, humanity values the ties that bind us and the planet together--and acts accordingly. The Peace is the cri de coeur of a warrior who has been to hell and back, and hopes to guide us to a better place."--