There is an inevitable tension between the need to create conditions of stability through peace-building interventions and longer-term developmental needs. These tensions include focusing immediate attention and spending on local militaries, militias, and powerbrokers, for example, rather than on longer-term governance imperatives and the foundations for sustainable job creation, or put alternatively, on short-term humanitarian assistance (often involving the delivery of food) rather than development. Three central questions emerge: Should we balance the powerbroker versus good governance imperative and if so, how? How can we get the politics right—or better? How can foreign interventions best assist private sector growth? Dealing with this “stabilization dilemma” is problematic and involves political trade-offs, yet is not only possible but necessary. This is a special quandary for donors and other external agents as they seek to change the incentive structure that contributed to conflict in the first instance.