The Politics of Peacebuilding

Emerging Actors and Security Sector Reform in Conflict-affected States

Safal Ghimire

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780429952180
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Asian History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book examines and compares the diverging security approaches of the UK, China and India in peacebuilding settings, with a specific focus on the case of Nepal.

Rising powers such as China and India dissent from traditional templates of peacebuilding and apply their own methods to respond to security issues. This book fills a gap in the literature by examining how emerging actors (China and India) engage with security and development and how their approaches differ from those of a traditional actor (the UK).

In the light of democratic peace and regional security complex theories, the book interprets interview data to compare and contrast the engagement of these three actors with post-war Nepal, and the implications for security sector governance and peacebuilding. It contends that the UK helped to peacefully manage transition but that the institutional changes were merely ceremonial. China and India, by contrast, were more effective in advancing mutual security agendas through elite-level interactions. However, the 'hardware' of security, for example material and infrastructure support, gained more consideration than the 'software' of security, such as meritocratic governance and institution building.

This book will be of much interest to students of peacebuilding, development studies, Asian politics, security studies and International Relations in general.

1 Introduction

Peacebuilding and security today include staggering financial costs. The United Nations Peacebuilding Fund received commitments worth United States dollar (US$) 533,920,532 over the last decade (2006–2015); US$12,315,271 alone for 2015.¹ As of June 2017, the United Nations has formed 71 peacekeeping operations since 1948, with 16 currently under way and a budget of about US$7.87 billion for the period July 2016–June 2017.² This amount is 96 times greater than the current annual budget of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and – not surprisingly – the DRC consumes the highest of all peacekeeping operational costs. The approved budget (July 2014–June 2015) of the United Nations Organisation Stabilisation Mission in the DRC (MONUSCO) is US$1,398,475,300 which is itself 19 times higher than the annual budget of the DRC (approximately US$73,134,425).³ Security remains a cardinal component in many such programmes. Together with contributions from the European Union (EU) and a number of Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) actors, reforming security during peacebuilding has been a multinational enterprise in many war-torn countries. Their post-war recovery processes are becoming ever more complex because of changing regional power structures and the rise of emerging actors such as Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Turkey and South Africa. Intimacy of these new powers with conflict-affected states and dissension of most of them towards traditional models of peacebuilding, make an analysis of this phenomenon an academic imperative.

This book concentrates on the reforming of security sector governance as a peacebuilding agenda and compares the outcomes of the engagement of an established power (the United Kingdom/UK) and emerging powers (China and India) in a post-war country (Nepal). It assesses the trends of their interactions at field levels and the implications for the host country’s recovery process. The aim is to compare the drivers and nature of the engagement of established and emerging actors. This comparison helps us understand how rising and great powers cooperate or contest and to what political effects. It also helps explain three dimensions: the implications of the interactions between rising powers (India and China) themselves and between them and a great power (the UK), the emerging trends in peacebuilding and security, and immediate and long-term consequences in Nepal’s peacebuilding and post-war recovery. To set out the background for the book, we begin by discussing how the interconnection between security and post-war development evolved.

The emergence of the idea of the security–development nexus

Strategic ambitions and a ‘rescuer’ mindset were at the roots of the ideas of the ‘security–development nexus’ when influential countries began extending security aid to unstable countries. The US-led Marshall Plan in Europe in the late 1940s is regarded as the dawn of programme-based aid for post-war recovery. War-torn Western Europe and several US allies in Asia obtained assistance following this Plan. Though the 1960s saw success in rebuilding efforts, Development Assistance Committee (DAC) reports published in the 1970s reflect ‘donor fatigue’ (Lancaster, 2008: 40). Donors then considered security as a prerequisite for progress, prosperity and aid delivery (Faleg, 2012), which gave birth to the idea of the ‘security–development nexus’. In the 1990s, the US assistance to the newly liberated former Soviet satellites (CBO, 1994: xi) and international efforts in ‘peacebuilding’, ‘post-war reconstruction’, ‘accord implementation’ and ‘post-conflict recovery’ adopted this idea. For example, the 1991 Paris Peace Agreement paved way for a US$3 billion assistance package for Cambodia, the 1993 Oslo Accord attracted US$4 billion for the Palestinians and the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement unlocked US$5 billion for Bosnia. About three dozen war-torn countries were offered more than US$100 billion in that decade (Boyce, 2002: 8).

At present, well-off countries in North America, Western Europe, oil-producing countries in the Middle East, Japan and dozens of multilateral organisations disburse security aid. Middle-income countries such as South Korea, Thailand and Turkey and countries such as China and India provide aid to poorer counterparts. There is at least one instance in peacebuilding where even a rich country provided aid to another rich country (the US to the UK in the case of Northern Ireland) (Lancaster, 2008: 2). It was only after 2000 that better-off countries placed emphasis on the ‘quality of lives’ in poorer countries.

Agencies such as the United Nations Development Programme, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund bolstered the ideas of the security–development nexus through their conditional aid. In 1998, the UK propagated the security sector reform (SSR) concept, which the European Security Strategy, European Security and Defence Policy, the DAC of the OECD and most liberal countries seconded. This concept formally consolidated the link between security and post-war development through programme-based interventions. The supply or financing of military equipment or services and use of military personnel to control civil disobedience were not reportable as overseas development assistance (ODA) (OECD, 2005). But the OECD later classified SSR to be under ODA if it were aimed at improving ‘democratic governance and civilian control’ (OECD, 2005). The Cold War approach used to see development and strategic objectives at odds, however – to quote Hendrickson (1999) – SSR thus gradually reversed that legacy. Chapter 2 will later elaborate how SSR fared in post-war countries. Understanding how liberal integrationists strived to ‘democratise’ peace and how new regional powers intensified security roles in their peripheries is essential before analysing their role in conflict-affected states.

From the early days of programmed peacebuilding interventions, traditional donors have been attaching ‘democracy’ conditionality to their aid. This idea of ‘democratic peace’ is considered to promote liberal values through security interventions and democratisation efforts. The Kantian idea of democratic peace also assumes that public opposition to waging expensive wars and accountability towards people, make democracies more likely to be in a peaceful relationship with one another (Kant, 1983). It means that shared ideologies, not political and military capabilities, shape the conduct of political units in international relations. Analysts in the English School of Security affirm this thesis despite realists’ disagreement that democracy and peace have fragile causal relations (see Layne 1994 and Rosato, 2003). The latter assert that democracies may not always cooperate with fellow democracies when their interests clash and survival and security are at risk. However, the idea of the democratisation of peace has long guided liberal democratic countries’ international peacebuilding interventions. Chapter 3 in this book will explain in detail the practical implications of this theory (see also Ghimire, 2018).

The rise of regional powers has re-drawn the cartography of international order, but their security and ambitions have been increasingly interdependent with adjacent states. The degree of such security interdependence, Buzan and Wæver (2003) assert, is more intense between the countries within a region (a security complex), than it is between the countries inside and outside of it. Adherents of the Copenhagen School of Security claim that regional powers are militarily, politically, societally, economically and environmentally interdependent with neighbouring states. Such security interconnections make rising powers conflict or selectively cooperate with great powers in international peacebuilding interventions in their region. Interesting in this interaction is that not all rising powers endorse ‘democratic ideas in peacebuilding’ but great powers such as the US, the UK and the European Union attempt to ‘democratise’ (or ‘liberalise’) peacebuilding. However, all of them second the ideas of the security–development nexus, which acknowledge the inseparability between security provisions and recovery goals in conflict-affected environments. This consensus has helped place security in the central space of peacebuilding interventions.

Reforming security as a peacebuilding task

States in a transition from war to negotiated settlement experience changes in legal instruments, agency roles and the authority delegated to their armed forces and overseeing bodies. These components determine the efficacy of any security sector and no peacebuilding process can set a foundation for recovery without an effective security sector. Security is therefore described as one of the principal pillars of peacebuilding and recovery programmes.⁴

In peacebuilding contexts, security can be defined as both a ‘process’ and an ‘outcome’ (Roe, 2012). Ineffective security mechanisms aggravate latent conflicts, helping them emerge, escalate and become a cause of civil wars. Strong security mechanisms ensure civilian control over armed forces, meritocratic governance and public participation in responding to security challenges. Post-war recovery therefore needs to go beyond merely re-establishing the pre-war status quo and include the restructuring of existing security frameworks and institutions, and creating new ones if required, so that it can reduce the possibility of relapsing into violence.

Security sector restructuring in peacebuilding processes attracts interests from a range of regional and global actors because of interdependent security issues. For example, after the fall of the USSR, democratisation of security agencies became a precondition for Eastern European and former Soviet Union countries to come under Western auspices. In some other places, the consensus among major donors on security-development nexus set a precondition of ‘SSR conditionality’ on development aids. Boyce (2002) contends that this ‘peace conditionality’ uses aid as a ‘carrot’ to encourage recipients and discourage leakage of aid to belligerent parties. But embedded in such slices of carrot is the Western-promoted imposition of ‘liberal peace’ – a set of measures designed to liberalise the economy, modernise society and introduce democratic governance (Duffield, 2001; Heathershaw, 2008; Paris, 1997).

There are increasing expectations of the UN and their pivotal role in recent security-led peacebuilding programmes. The UN Peacekeeping Operations (UNPKOs) have been assisting national authorities in policing, capacity building and integration of security structures. There have been 69 peacekeeping operations since 1948 and as of December 2014, 16 operations are undergoing.⁵ The United Nations report on SSR in 2013 (Security States and Societies: (UNSG, 2013: 7)) mentions that in contrast to 14 references to SSR in Security Council resolutions in 2008, the number rose to 37 in 2012. This reflects the UN support to SSR strategies in Burundi, Côte d’Ivoire, Somalia, South Sudan and Timor-Leste. Its Office for Disarmament Affairs helped develop strategies and operational guidelines for police in the Comoros. It is also undertaking works in corrections reform.

Regional and non-conventional donors have emerged in restructuring security as a form of south–south cooperation. Angola and South Africa are assisting DRC in SSR areas whereas Egypt, Rwanda and South Africa are supporting military training in Burundi (UNSG, 2008). So is the case in Nepal where China and India are active in supporting the modernisation of security agencies. Chapters 4, 5 and 6 will present detailed case studies about such involvement of rising and great powers. In what follows, we discuss why the characteristics of these external actors must be factored into the analysis of security reform measures in peacebuilding environments.

The missing lens in analysis

Several gaps in the conceptual discourse regarding security sector also encouraged the framing of this book. Perspectives on civil–military relations dominated earlier works involving the security–peace interface. Authors, for example Huntington (1957) and later Feaver (2003), focused on democratisation and civilian control of armed forces. Subsequent debates on the security–development nexus contributed to the emergence of SSR ideas. As will be discussed later in Chapter 2, the experiences in SSR and democratisation yielded mostly techno-bureaucratic reforms. Transformative concepts helped SSR stand as a statebuilding tool (Albrecht & Jackson, 2014; Ebo & Powell, 2010; Jackson, 2011), but its application showed mixed results (see Crossley-Frolick & Dursun-Ozkanca, 2012; Podder, 2013; Schnabel & Bron, 2011). Analysing security from merely ‘relations improvement’ or ‘agency restructuring’ perspectives was insufficient to address post-crisis challenges because these perspectives did not include proper analysis of the roles of external actors. Authors like Krahmann (2003) demanded a new theoretical perspective to understand the emer...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Seriestitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• PART I Concepts and practices
• PART II Case studies
• PART III Discussion and conclusions
• 7 Contrasting the engagement of China, India and the UK with Nepal
• 8 Synthesis and conclusions
• Index