Peace processes are always excruciatingly complex, in part because peacemaking is rarely just a matter of making peace. Power politics almost always gets in the way.
Two particularly difficult cases that currently loom over international politics are heading in strikingly different directions. Multilateral efforts to end the Syrian war are grotesquely stalled. North and South Korea, by contrast, are hurtling toward peace with an almost indecent haste.
The two cases offer very different visions of the future of major power cooperation and conflict, and above all the continuing role of America as a global peacemaker.