The Instability of Peace  We live in a world in which certain situations are stable and others are not. A coin on the table is stable facing Heads, and just as stable facing Tails, but completely unstable standing on its edge. Peace seems as unstable as a coin on its edge: precarious, easily toppled, its fall a matter not of “if” but “when”. A few, sowing seeds of discord and strife, can polarize the many and set them against each other. I have felt for a long time that the hard question to confront about peace is not how to get there, but how to make peace a more stable situation. In one sense it seems unconfrontable: getting to peace is daunting enough, but staying there?

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