Author Talk: Ambassador Rick Barton, Peace Works: America's Unifying Role in a Turbulent World

Event has passed

Wednesday, May 22, 5:30 PM  

Join us in the Great Room for a conversation with Frederick D. Barton author of Peace Works: America’s Unifying Role in a Turbulent WorldThe conversation will be facilitated by Bill Hammond, local foreign policy enthusiast and indispensable Used Book Store volunteer.

Copies of the book will be on sale and light refreshments will be served.

About the author:

Rick Barton currently teaches at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, where he serves as the co-director of Princeton’s Scholars in the Nation’s Service Initiatives and Ullman Fellowships.

He has served as an American ambassador to the United Nations and the Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees at the U.N., and was the first Assistant Secretary of State for Conflict and Stabilization Operations under President Obama. He has led conflict management initiatives in crisis zones across the globe, in countries as diverse as Haiti, Iraq, Nigeria, and Turkey. Barton has published in The New York Times,The Washington Post, Politico, The Boston Globe, and numerous other international outlets. He has been a frequent guest on news shows ranging from NPR to The O’Reilly Factor.

More about: Peace Works: America’s Unifying Role in a Turbulent World

Bosnia, Rwanda, Haiti, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria – a quarter-century of stumbles in America’s pursuit of a more peaceful and just world. American military interventions have cost thousands of lives and billions of dollars, yet we rarely manage to enact positive and sustainable change. In Peace Works: America’s Unifying Role in a Turbulent World, ambassador and global conflict leader Rick Barton uses a mix of stories, history, and analysis for a transformative approach to foreign affairs and offers concrete and attainable solutions for the future.

Drawing on his lifetime of experience as a diplomat, foreign policy expert, and State Department advisor, Rick Barton grapples with the fact that the U.S. is strategically positioned and morally obligated to defuse international conflicts, but often inadvertently escalates conflicts instead. Guided by the need to find solutions that will yield tangible results, Barton does a deep analysis of our last several interventions and discusses why they failed and how they could have succeeded. He outlines a few key directives in his foreign policy strategy: remain transparent with the American public, act as a catalyzing (not colonizing!) force, and engage local partners. But above all else, he insists that the U.S. must maintain a focus on people. Since a country’s greatest resource is often the ingenuity of its local citizens, it is counterproductive to ignore them while planning an intervention. By anchoring each chapter to a story from a specific conflict zone, Barton is able to discuss opportunities pursued and missed, areas for improvement, and policy recommendations. This balance between storytelling and concrete policy suggestions both humanizes distant stories of foreign crises, and provides going-forward solutions for desperate situations. The book begins and ends in Syria – the ultimate failure of our current approach to foreign policy, and with devastating consequences.

Event Date: 

Wed, 05/22/2019 - 5:30pm to 7:00pm

Event Location: 

Boothbay Harbor Memorial Library