In this iteration of Financial Justice Ireland's guest blog series, we're delighted to introduce a timely piece from Nela Porobić Isaković that shines a light on the political economy of peace-building, with a particular focus on the role that financialisation and asset managers play in shaping the lives of those attempting to recover from conflict.
Nela Porobić Isaković is a feminist from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Among other things she works on the political economy of war and peace. She focuses on social, political, and economic consequences of (post)conflict interventions framed within a neoliberal understanding of peace. As part of her work Nela also explores different feminist alternatives to capitalism, and is part of the Sarajevo-based Feminist Anti-Militarist Collective.
The financial system is heavily militarised. Financial institutions, banks, insurance companies, asset managers, investment funds etc. sustain militarism through loans, investments and other financial tools, enabling wars, genocide, human rights abuses and the destruction of this planet. Simultaneously as the financial system sustains destruction it uses the same set of tools to profit from peace – as there is profit to be made both from destruction and reconstruction of countries.
In February this year I was invited to take part in the event “Demilitarising Finance day of reflection and knowledge sharing” organised by Financial Justice Ireland and AFRI Action. I travelled from Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, where I live, to talk about my work on the neoliberal peacebuilding model through which local, regional and global capital has been making profit off war-torn societies for decades now. Lately, we are seeing unprecedented levels of financialisation of this approach.
The neoliberal peacebuilding model
The neoliberal peace building model has been an important part of the mainstream approach to peace among key international actors, including individual states, multilateral bodies and financial institutions. The central idea of this model is that if countries coming out of war and conflict implement adequate reforms aiming at ensuring necessary freedoms for market forces then the recovering countries will experience economic growth. Economic growth will lead to development and stabilisation of internal and external relationships and markets, which in turn will lead to more growth. According to this doctrine these freedoms are achieved through elimination of state influence in the economy by among other things cutting public investments, privatisation, lowering taxes, slashing of public salaries and benefits, deregulating labour laws and so on. Under the guise of building peace these neoliberal policies have repeatedly been used on countries recovering from war, with devastating consequences for everyone but the capitalists.
This is where the focus of my work has been in the last 10 years or more. I have been looking at the political economy of post-conflict interventions framed within a neoliberal understanding of peace. In my work I have drawn a lot from my experience of living in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a country that has been on the receiving end of neoliberal interventions for three decades now. After the war ended in 1995 the international actors involved in overseeing the implementation of our peace agreement pushed hard to transform Bosnia’s political economy and to integrate the country into the global capitalist market. This seemed to be of far more importance for the international actors than dealing with the consequences of war.
As part of peace building efforts the international actors focused on reforms such as rapid and massive privatisation of socially owned enterprises and infrastructure, reforms of taxation laws and introduction of banking system and business-related laws to better align them with the global capital and interests of those investing in peace. Post-war transition translated into increased poverty, dispossession, disempowerment, disillusionment, and more anxiety, sadness, and bitterness for most people. The recovery became an elusive concept available only for the privileged few, those that managed to cash in on both destruction and reconstruction.
Financialisation of the recovery process
International actors, led by international financial institutions, have been advocating for this approach for a long time now. This recipe was applied not just to Bosnia and Herzegovina, but also to Palestine (Oslo Accords from 1993), Northern Ireland, Iraq, Afghanistan to name a few examples, but nowhere as vigorously as in Ukraine today. The extent of the commodification of people’s suffering and the involvement of financial institutions, banks, insurance companies, hedge funds etc., in financing Ukraine’s reconstruction efforts are unprecedented.
The government of Ukraine has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the global investment fund, BlackRock. While we don’t know much about the content of this Memorandum, we do know that the activities of BlackRock in other contexts are well documented and are not without their controversies. Due to its track record in driving climate catastrophe, human rights abuses, and its investments in weapons production, BlackRock was in 2022 put on the global campaign’s Corporate Accountability Corporate Hall of Shame.
Despite all of this, Blackrock has been tasked with guiding the Ukrainian government in accessing and managing private capital and investments as part of the recovery process. The influence of BlackRock in Ukraine is visible everywhere. Under the advice of BlackRock, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, President of Ukraine, has been marketing Ukraine to the global capital. As an example, his statement at the New York Stock Exchange painted the reconstruction process in Ukraine as an opportunity for corporations to invest in projects worth hundreds of billions of dollars and the online platform - Advantage Ukraine - promises that Ukraine is “The greatest opportunity in Europe since World War II”.
This platform was created as an invitation to global capital to invest in hundreds of projects. In return, Ukraine, among other things, offers deregulations and financial stimulations, up to ten years exemption from corporate income tax, and up to 500 permits for public business services. On the investment menu is the military industry, natural resources, energy sector, logistics and infrastructure, agro-industrial complex, power industry and much more. The EU Commission, European Bank for Reconstruction and Recovery and European Investment Bank, the self-named “Team Europe”, are some of the strongest advocates for private capital. Ukraine’s recovery is knit together with the country’s EU accession approach and a closer look at the various strategies and discussions at the EU level clearly show that the “solidarity” that is often referred to by the EU officials is centred around the idea that it is the private capital that will save Ukraine.
The flagship of EU’s support to Ukraine, the Ukraine Facility, has stated objectives like “Mobilise investments in private sector for fast economic recovery and reconstruction”, and the 33 billion EUR worth of loans and grants planned to be disbursed by 2027 will be raised on the financial market. Ukraine has suffered and continues to suffer greatly from Russia’s continuous imperialist aggression, and the country needs massive amounts of financial support. It is estimated that as of December 2025 Ukraine will need 587.7 billion USD over the next decade. But the reliance on the market forces and the level of influence awarded to private capital means that profit will be put ahead of the interests of the people in their journey towards recovery. The simple logic of capitalism is that for any capital investments to make sense an expectation of profit must exist. And if we factor in the financialisation of the recovery then we see that most of the profit is not expected to come from production (which at the very least could create job opportunities for the Ukrainian people) but from owning assets.
That means that people’s needs for decent jobs, accessible and effective health care, including psychosocial support, quality education etc. – all vital needs of people recovering from the trauma of war – will remain at the periphery of investments, or will be focused only if they can be turned into assets. This means private hospitals, private pharmacies, private child and elderly care, high value apartments and luxury compounds, privatised public transport, utilities, etc. Money will not be invested to meet people’s needs or build sustainable and just peace, but to make more money. BlackRock’s engagement in Ukraine announced a new phase of neoliberal peace building, where financialisation of recovery processes is no longer just one part of the model but its driving force. It has shifted the focus away from peace and the needs of those affected by violence towards the interests of investors, banks, investment funds, companies, lenders, shareholders, asset managers. The genocide in Gaza is a stark example of this development. Donald Trump has described Gaza as a real estate opportunity, and then of course there is Trump’s “historical” peace deal between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda. The most important part of the Joint Declaration signed by the two countries isn’t their affirmation of their commitment to peace but the signing of the Regional Economic Integration Framework, which according to the White House is, “a groundbreaking bilateral initiative that unlocks the vast economic potential of the Great Lakes region and creates opportunities for the U.S. private sector”.
Building something new
For the same reasons why we need to demilitarise finances we also need to stop the financialisation of peace. Capitalism puts profit over people and wars are good for profit. It is as simple as that. Which is why demilitarisation necessitates demolishing of capitalism and replacing it with something that centres around a commitment to build and nurture life, all life, not to destroy it. We must commit not just to demilitarise but also to build something new. This requires conversations about what kind of societies we want to have, how we want them to be organised, how we see our demands for fairness, solidarity and equality shaping the political economy, how we see justice, peace, accountability, and sustainability materialising in our relationship to each other. As we demilitarise, we need to know what it is we are building instead.
Further reading
- Nela Porobic Isakovic and Gorana Mlinarevic “The Peace That is Not. 25 years of experimenting with the peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Feminist Critique of Neoliberal Approaches to Peacebuilding” WILPF, 2021
https://www.wilpf.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/WILPF_The-Peace-That-is-Not_final.pdf
- Nela Porobic Isakovic “Profiting from destruction and reconstruction” EUROZINE, 2025
https://www.eurozine.com/profiting-from-destruction-and-reconstruction/
