The Great Decisions lecture series continued Tuesday, when CEO of the Alliance for Peacebuilding, Charles Dambach, discussed the process of peace building and its promise for the future.

“What we’re trying to do is get the US government to embrace peacebuilding as a fundamental part of US foreign policy,” Dambach said. “(It’s) never been done before but there’s reason to believe it can happen now.”

Dambach started by pointing to the cataclysmic economic effects of war.

“The cost of war is something that we’ve not paid all that much attention to,” Dambach said. “Let’s dispel the myth that war is good for the economy. What utter nonsense. The average cost of a civil war … is 60 billion dollars, in places like Ethiopia, the Congo and Nepal.”

While Dambach joked that economic predictions are, by nature, imprecise, he pointed to the cost of war worldwide.

“Recent studies indicate that the cost of maintaining a war economy in society worldwide, the negative impact on the global economy is about 7.2 trillion dollars,” Dambach said. “That’s about 10 percent of the global economy.”

Secondly, Dambach pointed to the novelty of peace building.

“Thirty, 40 and 50 years ago, academic institutions studied war to figure out how to win the next one,” Dambach said. “Starting about 20 or 30 years ago… [institutions began studying] war and how to prevent the next one. That did not exist just a couple of decades ago.”

Dambach noted that peacebuilding efforts needed to be collaborative in order to produce success.

“Effective peace building is strategic and it’s systemic,” Dambach said. “Among the key ingredients in effective peacebuilding … the reason we were able to be effective is that we were able to build a trust relationship with belligerents. This is something that our government officials here in the United States don’t do very well.”

Illustrating his point, Dambach pointed to a scenario in which he had to mediate a particularly gruesome conflict in the Congo.

“I am on a first name basis with some folks who have done some things, or at least their troops have done some things, that would make your skin crawl,” Dambach said.

Specifically, Dambach pointed to a time when he met with the leader of a Ugandan rebel group from the Congo, only a day after if was reported that the rebel group was using cannibalism as a tool of warfare.

“We need to be able to be objective, be balanced and be fair,” Dambach said. “Another of the tough things is to be able to maintain a positive attitude. It can get pretty darn discouraging.”

A note of personal triumph was clear when Dambach discussed his role in the ending of the 1998-2000 Ethiopia-Eritrea War. After helping to settle the conflict regarding Ethiopia and Eritrea, Dambach received a personal letter from the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, thanking him.

The Ethiopian Prime Minister flew to Washington one morning to breakfast with Dambach, and before they started to eat, “The prime minister said the war is over, and I want to thank you for making it happen,” Dambach said.

Dambach closed by summarizing what exactly the Alliance for Peacebuilding is.

“What we are is a network of applied peacebuilding professionals and organizations,” Dambach said. “We’re not out on the streets marching; we’re in the meeting rooms meeting with … the people who are involved in violent conflict.”

Dambach was both hopeful and optimistic in noting the successes that peacebuilding programs have had at academic institutions.

“We are now training people to become professional peace builders,” Dambach said. “This can make a tremendous difference in the world.”