There exists a troubling global reality: peace processes are stagnating, collapsing, or being reversed across diverse contexts. At the heart of this unravelling lies a complex and often overlooked phenomenon: the systematic obstruction of peace itself. Counter-Peace: Tactical Blockages to Peace and Strategic Risks for the International System introduces the concept of counter-peace: a set of interconnected, multi-scalar practices that undermine, distort, or reverse peace processes without necessarily reverting to open warfare. Drawing on detailed case studies, this book reveals how peace processes can become sites of co-optation by elites, tools of geopolitical strategy, or victims of international hypocrisy and inaction. It interrogates the international peace architecture and argues that its failure to adapt to critical insights on justice, legitimacy, and emancipation has rendered it increasingly ineffective. Rather than viewing peace failures as isolated or technical missteps, the authors examine how blockages to peace are embedded in power structures, neoliberal policies, sectarian dynamics, and geopolitical rivalries. Actors exploit the structural flaws and unintended consequences of peacebuilding to pursue revisionist goals or reinforce authoritarian regimes. Through this lens, peace and counter-peace appear as deeply entangled forces that shape and contest the future of the international order. Rich in empirical evidence and theoretical innovation, the authors challenge the traditional explanations that sanitise or depoliticise the idea of peacebuilding, shifting the debate toward more honest, systemic analyses of failure, resistance, and legitimacy. Urgent, timely, and critical, Counter-Peace calls for a fundamental rethinking of how peace is conceptualised, built, and maintained. It provides scholars, practitioners, and policymakers with a new framework to understand why peace often fails and how it can still be reclaimed.

Oliver P. Richmond is Professor of Politics in the Department of Politics at the University of Manchester, UK. Sandra Pogodda is Senior Lecturer in Politics in the Department of Politics at the University of Manchester, UK. Gëzim Visoka is Associate Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies in the School of Law and Government at Dublin City University, Ireland.