Imagining Restorative Diplomacy

Restorative diplomacy outperforms realism at preventing war, climate change, financial crises, pandemics, and at accomplishing national interest objectives. Peacebuilding Compared finds narratives of the broken promise have been impediments to peace in 41 out of 73 armed conflicts. Restorative diplomacy requires promise-keeping that learns from American Indigenous wisdom on ritualizing peace agreements, with regular commemorations at which statecraft speaks from the heart, apologizes, forgives, ritualizes collective memory, and builds new commitments atop growing architectures of peace. Learn restorative diplomacy lessons from the Marshall Plan. Put deposits, financial and emotional, in the banks of old adversaries. Learn restorative diplomacy lessons from South African spymaster Niël Barnard. South African nuclear weapons destruction, Africa as a nuclear weapons-free continent, and Apartheid abolition illustrate the possibilities of restorative diplomacy.