The scale of international investment in peace-building in Bosnia has been unprecedented. However, despite the massive international commitment in time,resources and effort, a decade and a half later Bosnias peace is at best paralysed. Christopher Bennett argues that the failure of peace-building is the failure of the liberal peace model. Policy-makers have focused on what should be in terms of trying to reproduce Western liberal democracy, rather than what is in Bosnia, where ethno-national security concerns remain critically important to most people.