David Cortright

Peace: A History of Movements and Ideas
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008)
Veteran scholar and peace activist David Cortright offers a definitive history of the human striving for peace and an analysis of its religious and intellectual roots. This authoritative, balanced, and highly readable volume traces the rise of peace advocacy and internationalism from their origins in earlier centuries through the mass movements of recent decades: the pacifist campaigns of the 1930s, the Vietnam antiwar movement, and the waves of disarmament activism that peaked in the 1980s. Also explored are the underlying principles of peace-nonviolence, democracy, social justice, and human rights-all placed within a framework of “realistic pacifism.” Building Peace brings the story up-to-date by examining opposition to the Iraq War and responses to the so-called “war on terror.” This is history with a modern twist, set in the context of current debates about “the responsibility to protect,” nuclear proliferation, Darfur, and conflict transformation. [book]

“The Movement against War in Iraq,” Nonviolent Social Change, the Bulletin of the Manchester College Peace Studies Institute, Manchester, IN, (November 2007): Volume 34. [article]

Overcoming Nuclear Dangers [PDF]
The Stanley Foundation policy brief, November 2007
In January 2007 the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved the hands of its famous Doomsday Clock two minutes closer to midnight, in recognition of the growing danger from nuclear weapons. While nuclear dangers and East-West rivalries are on the rise, recent months have brought glimmers of hope for a denuclearized future. Perhaps the most remarkable sign of hope came in January 2007, when former Secretaries of State George Shultz and Henry Kissinger joined with former Senator Sam Nunn and former Secretary of Defense William Perry in issuing a statement, published in The Wall Street Journal, calling for “a world free of nuclear weapons.” This paper, published in a policy brief in November 2007 by the Stanley Foundation is a contribution to that discussion.

Uniting Against Terror:
Cooperative Nonmilitary Responses to the Global Terrorist Threat
coedited with George A. Lopez (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2007).
Uniting Against Terror argues that defeating the global terrorist threat requires engaging international financial, diplomatic, intelligence, and defense communities and law enforcement organizations in an atmosphere of cooperation. It examines cooperative diplomatic and economic policies to address the changing face of terrorism and the global Al Qaida threat, differentiates between protective measures and long-term preventive policies, and makes recommendations for effective cooperative nonmilitary strategies. Included are chapters that analyze the UN and its role, the unique blend of sanctions and diplomacy that convinced Libya to end its support of terrorism, efforts to halt the financing of terrorist networks, and an account of the European Union’s unified “Plan of Action” against terrorism.

Sanctions
A chapter in The Oxford Handbook on the United Nations
ed. Thomas G. Weiss and Sam Daws (Oxford: Oxford University Press, June 2007)
Cortright offers a comprehensive examination of  sanctions implemented by the United Nations over the past sixty years, providing expert analysis about sanctions efficacy, sanctions and human rights, and the interrelatedness of sanctions and international law.

Sanctions and Stability Pacts: The Economic Tools of Peacemaking
In Peacemaking and International Conflict: Methods & Techniques, rev. ed., ed. I. William Zartman, 385-418 (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace, 2007)
In this chapter, Cortright examines current opportunities and cases where economic tools can be more effectively employed.