The Architecture of Aid: U.S. Diplomatic Engagement and Nonviolent Peacebuilding in Post-Cold War Liberia

Ongoing Research 

This project investigates how U.S. diplomatic involvement through foreign assistance was conceptualized and deployed as a non-violent tool of peacebuilding in Liberia (1989-2005). The central goal is to analyze institutional architecture of nonviolent peacemaking that shifts scholarly debates from whether aid works to how it was designed and imagined to work. It therefore opens two related lines of inquiry. First, how officials debated the composition of aid portfolios, their presumed efforts and impact on preventing conflict relapse to rebuild state capacity without direct military rule. Second, tracing how bureaucratic politics and geopolitical pressures shaped aid strategies in fragile post-Cold War environments, such as Liberia. Liberia is suitable case because it was marked by sustained US diplomatic engagement and institutional experimentation. Already existing agencies designed to bridge humanitarian and development aid, understood the relationship between humanitarian relief and targeted peace-building support in the recurrence of conflict and maintaining peace following Liberia’s Civil Wars.