I want to thank Roger Mac Ginty for his thoughtful review of our book. Let me clarify several points that emerge from it. First, the experiences reflected in the open border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland do not necessary contrast or contradict, but rather complement, the realities of peaceful borders and illicit transnational flows analyzed in our book (we could think about possible similar examples of open borders such as the Canadian-US or Argentine-Uruguayan borders).

Second, we do not offer a “dystopian version of the democratic peace.” Levels of governance, rather than types of political regimes, are relevant here. Unfortunately, there is nothing dystopic about the argument that globalization and peaceful borders enable (not cause) the proliferation of illicit transnational flows, in the form of arms, drug, and human smuggling and trafficking. Ultimately, the links between peaceful borders and illicit transnational flows are a function of the type of borders and border regimes, the level of governance and willingness of neighboring countries to control their borderlands, and the prevailing socioeconomic conditions across the border.

Third, in the formal terms of international relations, the Americas (North America, Central America, and South America) are indeed a continental zone of international peace since the end of the civil and “intermestic” wars in Central America in the 1980s and 1990s. There is also a formal “triangle of peace” in the relations among Israel and Egypt (since 1979) and Israel and Jordan (since 1994). Whereas in the Americas that international peace has been “upgraded” in some cases in the direction of stable peace and a pluralistic security community (i.e., Argentina and Brazil or Argentina and Chile since the mid-1980s), in the Middle East it is just a “negative” peace characterized by the mere absence of war. In any case, because conflicts might persist (though managed and resolved peacefully), we are far away from Galtung’s version of “positive peace,” which brings us close to harmony, though it is less frequent in international and even domestic politics.

Fourth, I agree with Mac Ginty that licit flows (for instance, legal arms trade) across peaceful borders “can do much more harm to citizenry than the illicit flows.” But that is a subject for further research; moreover, we argue in our book that occasionally the actions of the violent nonstate actors responsible for these illicit flows might fulfill positive governance functions when the state is absent.

Fifth and finally, I share with him the need, both in theoretical and in empirical terms, to adopt a pluralistic and multiscalar perspective about peace, rather than a Manichean and simplistic approach of either war or peace. Just as there are different types of war, so there are also different shades of peace. Where Mac Ginty emphasizes the “everyday peace” at the micro-level, adopting a bottom-up perspective, ours is a top-down, more traditional analysis of peace. It is precisely this critical and constructive dialogue and the joint contribution of our two books on peace that reveal the complexities and paradoxes of peace, which should be preferred, in normative terms, to its alternative, armed conflict. We all wish we could walk freely and happily across peaceful borders.