November 04, 2010 // 3:30pm — 5:00pm
Imminent violence and war make news headlines, while longstanding peace and good inter-state relations hardly seem newsworthy. By contrast, Charles Kupchan's new book, How Enemies Become Friends: The Sources of Stable Peace, focuses on the origins of peace rather than war. While war is certainly big news, he posits that the bigger news is that the US-Canada border has been consistently peaceful for more than a century, or that only 68 years after France and Germany fought two world wars, people can now drive across the border as though it does not exist. His new book seeks to identify the dynamics that lead countries to achieve lasting peace.