Peter Viggo Jakobsen

It seems that regional decision makers during the last two decades has been unable to produce a sustainable peacebuilding plan for the region and it is questionable whether any remarkable change will occur in the near future. Some would argue that the political differences are simply too far apart for an all-inclusive regional peacebuilding plan. The cultural, ethnic, and historically determined tensions are too many and too strong, and regional peacebuilding in a top-down approach can be viewed as a Gordian knot.Politicians from the states in the region have already faced, and will most definitely continue to face, internal challenges even if agreements with a conflicting state are settled. This only underlines the necessity of initiating sustainable initiatives that are capable of affecting politicians from within, or even to some extent have the capability to bypass the political level. With contributions from leading international scholars within the field of security studies this book sets out to explain the main security knots preventing stability to emerge and on that basis to test whether a different approach in addressing these knots. By pursuing an innovative and different approach to the process of peacebuilding, this could prove as a useful tool, and for this reason politicians, officials, and persons in general with an interest in this region will benefit from the perspectives presented here.