Process-tracing analysis reveals how diplomatic peacemaking is weaponized during conflict interventions in Syria, highlighting the strategic use of peace processes in hybrid warfare.
Peace processes increasingly appear to be instrumentalized to serve interveners’ geopolitical agendas, underscoring the need to reassess peace practices in an era of heightened global coopetition. This article introduces peacemongering – the use of peacemaking and peacebuilding as tools of hybrid and grey-zone warfare to control (post-)conflict orders and gain strategic advantage over rivals. Drawing on four years of multilingual content analysis, it employs inductive process-tracing of Russia’s intervention in Syria. The case reveals how coercive mediation, manipulation of multilateral mechanisms, and economic capture were used to advance Moscow’s global ambitions, weaponize peace, and challenge norms of conditional sovereignty and multilateralism.
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Kasia Houghton (2026) studied this question.
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