The Battle For Peace

Author Event: 

The Dole Institute of Politics will honor Juan Manuel Santos, former President of Colombia with the 2022 Dole Leadership Prize.

September 20 @ 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics

The Battle For Peace

The Long Road to Ending a War with the World's Oldest Guerrilla Army

By Juan Manuel Santos

This is the comprehensive account of the long and difficult road traveled to end the fifty-year armed conflict with the FARC, the oldest guerrilla army in the world; a long war that left more than eight million victims. The obstacles to peace were both large and dangerous. All previous attempts to negotiate with the FARC had failed, creating an environment where differences were irreconcilable and political will was scarce. The Battle for Peace is the story not only of the six years of negotiation and the peace process that transformed a country, its secret contacts, its international implications, and difficulties and achievements but also of the two previous decades in which Colombia oscillated between warlike confrontation and negotiated solution.

In The Battle for Peace Juan Manuel Santos shares the lessons he learned about war and peace and how to build a successful negotiation process in the context of a nation that had all but resigned itself to war and the complexities of twenty-first-century international law and diplomacy. While Santos is clear that there is no handbook for making peace, he offers conflict-tested guidance on the critical parameters, conditions, and principles as well as rich detail on the innovations that made it possible for his nation to find common ground and a just solution.

Hardback, 454 pages

About the Author

Juan Manuel Santos was president of Colombia from 2010 to 2018 and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2016. Prior to becoming president, Santos had a long career of public service in Colombia, including as minister of foreign trade, minister of finance and public credit, and minister of national defense. Santos prepared for these roles by attending the University of Kansas, through postgraduate studies at the London School of Economics and Harvard University, as a Fulbright Fellow at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and in the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. While out of government he was a journalist as deputy editor at the newspaper El Tiempo. He currently is founder and chairman of the board, Compaz Center of Resources for Peace, which works for the empowerment of victims, the consolidation of peace, the reduction of poverty and inequality, and the defense of the environment in Colombia and the planet.