Peace Operations

Paul F. Diehl, Alexandru Balas

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780745671819, 9780745671802
• eBook ISBN: 9780745684192
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Peace & Global Development
• Index: Politics & International Relations

As peace operations become the primary mechanism of conflict management used by the UN and regional organizations, understanding their problems and potential is essential for a more secure world. In this revised and updated second edition, Paul Diehl and Alexandru Balas provide a cutting-edge analysis of the central issues surrounding the development, operation, and effectiveness of peace operations. Among many features, the book:

• Traces the historical development of peace operations from their origins in the early 20th century through the development of modern peacebuilding missions and multiple simultaneous peace operations.
• Tracks changes over time in the size, mission and organization of peace operations.
• Analyses different organizational, financial, and troop provisions for peace operations, as well as assessing alternatives.
• Lays out criteria for evaluating peace operations and details the conditions under which such operations are successful.

Drawing on a wide range of examples from those between Israel and her neighbours to more recent operations in Bosnia, Somalia, Darfur, East Timor, and the Congo, this new edition brings together the body of scholarly research on peace operations to address those concerns. It will be an indispensable guide for students, practitioners and general readers wanting to broaden their knowledge of the possibilities and limits of peace operations today.

CHAPTER ONE

Introduction

Throughout most of the history of the modern state system (post 1648), and even before, the primary mechanisms to deal with violent conflict were limited. Diplomacy was always an option, albeit underutilized, and negotiated agreements between states occurred. Too often, however, diplomacy was more effective in ending a war than in preventing one. More commonly, coercive instruments were the primary mechanisms used by states to deal with threats to peace and security. Strategies based on deterrence, alliance formation, and the direct use of military force were how individual states sought to preserve their security and promote their interests.

In the twentieth century, diplomacy and coercion remained the most prominent tools for foreign policy decision-makers, but the rise of international organizations expanded the range and form of options. Among the most notable was the development of peacekeeping, a novel use of soldiers in non-traditional roles coordinated most often by international organizations rather than national governments. Peacekeeping has gradually evolved to encompass a broad range of different conflict management missions and techniques, which are incorporated under the term “peace operations.”¹

This book provides an overview of the central issues surrounding the development, operation, and effectiveness of peace operations. How did peace operations evolve out of more coercive uses of military forces? When did traditional peacekeeping missions give way to more expansive peace operations? Chapter 2 provides a historical narrative on peace operations, beginning in earlier centuries and, most importantly, noting the dramatic changes in conflict management with the creation of the League of Nations. The chapter also provides an overview of early peace operations – traditional peacekeeping during the Cold War and the panoply of missions since the early 1990s. Patterns across time and space are noted and explained. Peace operations are not deployed to all conflicts in the world. Accordingly, the latter part of this chapter summarizes the empirical findings on the conditions for when and where peace operations are deployed, as well as the factors that affect how long they last.

Who organizes peace operations, and how are they managed? Peace operations are now organized by different agencies and with a variety of operational arrangements. Chapter 3 describes the different kinds of organizational schemes. The discussion includes an analysis of the relative advantages and disadvantages of having a peace operation organized by the United Nations (UN), regional organizations, multinational groupings, and other institutional arrangements. Peace operations are generally organized on an ad hoc basis, and the process for supplying personnel and funding the operations is also discussed. Few analysts would argue that such arrangements are optimal, but political and other constraints necessitate this system. Special attention is given to so-called multiple simultaneous peace operations, or MSPOs, in which more than one agent is involved in a given peace operation or set of operations (Balas 2011a). The chapter also provides a description and assessment of various alternatives to the present methods of organization and financing.

What does it mean for peace operations to be successful, and what conditions are associated with such success? Chapter 4 discusses different criteria and operational indicators according to different stakeholders in the conflict – the disputants, the local population, the organizing agency, and the international community. The bulk of the chapter is devoted to summarizing research on peace operation effectiveness, dividing the causal factors into operational (e.g., mandate), contextual (e.g., civil vs. interstate conflict), and behavioral (e.g., behavior of third parties) influences.

What is the future of peace operations? They have evolved over the last almost seventy years in large part as a result of changing conflict conditions and as decision-makers have learned from past mistakes. The concluding chapter looks at the emerging conflict trends and identifies ten challenges for peace operations in the twenty-first century, with special attention to their implications and the possible policy choices to address them.

Before addressing these questions, it is necessary to define the scope of this study. The term “peace operations” may seem obvious, and most people will have the shared image of a blue-helmeted soldier in mind when they hear the term. Yet peace operations encompass a variety of different phenomena, and such distinctions may be critical for the kind of policy choices that the international community must make.

Concepts

Discussions of peace operations are notorious for their conceptual muddles. It is common for the terms “peacekeeping,” “peacebuilding,” “peace enforcement,” “peacemaking,” and a host of other terms to be used interchangeably. NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, General John Craddock, expressed it well: “Peacekeeping is a very ambiguous term.”² Indeed, the United Nations labels a broad set of operations over time as “peacekeeping,” implying similar attributes when in fact there are dramatic differences among the operations covered under this umbrella.

Elucidating the conceptual distinctions between different kinds of peace operations is essential for understanding how these have changed over time, and ultimately for the practical limits to the success of those operations. A good starting point is using what might be called “traditional” peacekeeping (also referred to as “Cold War” peacekeeping) as a baseline category; most other forms of peace operations developed from this original conception. In defining traditional peacekeeping operations, a comparison with standard military operations is enlightening for indicating not only what traditional peacekeeping is, but also what it is not.

Traditional Peacekeeping

Traditional peacekeeping forces are deployed to a war-torn area in order to achieve several purposes. Most notably, they seek to limit the violent conflict that occurs in the area. The primary mechanism for this is the deployment of troops as an interposition or buffer force that separates the combatants following a ceasefire. These troops are multinational, coming usually from at least a dozen or more countries, and generally deploy under the leadership of the United Nations. As noted below, the size, rules of engagement, and military capacity of a peacekeeping force are insufficient to stop a determined party from attacking its opponent; Israeli forces quickly broke through peacekeeping lines (UNIFIL) in southern Lebanon during the 1982 invasion. How, then, do peacekeeping forces promote peace? By separating combatants at a physical distance, peacekeepers prevent the accidental engagement of opposing armies, thereby inhibiting small incidents that could escalate to renewed war. They also prevent deliberate cheating on ceasefire agreements, as violations can be more easily detected. The physical separation of the protagonists provides early warning of any attack and thereby decreases the tactical advantages that stem from a surprise attack. Renewed warfare in which the aggressor can be identified by the peacekeepers and in which peacekeepers are partly the target of that aggression is also likely to produce international condemnation. The costs in international reputation and possible sanctions, combined with the decreased likelihood of quick success, are designed to be sufficient to deter any attack (Fortna 2008).

Traditional peacekeeping is also predicated, at least in part, on promoting an environment suitable for conflict resolution. Peacekeepers do not engage in diplomatic initiatives themselves, although other personnel from the sponsoring organizations (e.g., the UN) may do so. Rather, they are thought to create the conditions conducive to the hostile parties resolving their differences (a claim that is evaluated in chapter 4). There are several rationales why intense conflict is deleterious to mediation and negotiation, and why a ceasefire promotes the conditions under which mediators can facilitate an agreement between the opposing sides. First, a cooling-off period, evidenced by a ceasefire, can lessen hostilities and build some trust between the protagonists. In times of armed conflict, leaders and domestic audiences become both habituated and psychologically committed to the conflict, and some segments of the population profit politically and economically from the fighting. Before diplomatic efforts can be successful, this process must be broken or interrupted, something in which peacekeepers can assist by maintaining a ceasefire.

Second, intense conflict puts domestic political constraints on leaders who might otherwise be inclined to sign a peace agreement. Negotiating with the enemy may have significant political costs during active hostilities. Calls for ceasefires or pauses in bombing attacks in order to promote negotiations and diplomatic efforts are consistent with this underlying logic. Of course, this presumes that hostilities harden bargaining positions and attitudes rather than leading to concessions by parties suffering significant costs. Third, and from a somewhat different vantage point, active conflict leads decision-makers to concentrate on those ongoing hostilities (a short-term concern), and therefore they will not place settlement issues (a longer-term concern) high on their agendas. That is, during heightened armed conflict, political and diplomatic attention will be devoted to the conduct of the fighting and, at best, to immediate conflict management issues such as securing a ceasefire. Fourth, that peacekeepers have been provided may signal to the disputants the willingness of the international community to commit additional resources to any settlement that would follow their deployment.

Table 1.1 Traditional peacekeeping vs. military operations
Dimension	Traditional peacekeeping	Military operations
Host state consent	Yes	No
Impartiality	Yes	No
Use of force	Self-defense	Offensive
Size	Small	Very large
Equipment	Lightly armed	Heavily armed

Differences with Military Operations As is evident from the strategy of traditional peacekeeping, such operations are significantly different from military ones. Yet peacekeeping and military missions differ on a number of other dimensions as well, as summarized in table 1.1.

Traditional peacekeeping operations are based on the so-called holy trinity: host-state consent, impartiality, and minimum use of force (Bellamy, Williams, and Griffin 2010). The first requirement is that peacekeeping forces must have the permission of the state on whose territory they will be deployed. Such permission can also be withdrawn, and peacekeepers must leave accordingly, as was the case with UN troops in the Sinai (UNEF I) just before the 1967 Arab– Israeli War when Egypt withdrew its permission. The idea that military forces in war would need the permission of the state against which they are fighting is, of course, absurd. Yet traditional peacekeeping forces rely on host-state consent, just as they rely on the cooperation of the combatants to maintain peace.

The second component, impartiality, indicates that the peacekeepers are not intended to favor one combatant over another; there is no designated aggressor, and the peacekeeping forces are to implement their mandate without discrimination. In contrast, military interventions are usually biased, as soldiers and equipment are sent to alter the balance of power in the conflict by supporting one actor against another. The third leg of the trinity, minimum use of force, refers to the rules of engagement permitted to peacekeeping soldiers. Peacekeepers are usually constrained to use military force only in self-defense. In contrast, military forces regularly employ offensive military tactics, and the level of force is theoretically constrained only by necessity and the rules of international humanitarian law.

Traditional peacekeeping operations are also noticeably different in their appearance from military ones. Peacekeeping forces are relatively small, with an average of fewer than 10,000 troops during the Cold War era. Military actions, such as the 500,000 troops in the first Persian Gulf War and the 150,000 American troops during the occupation of Iraq, are much larger. Consistent with differences in size, purpose, and rules of engagement, traditional peacekeeping units are lightly armed, typically with only rifles or side arms. Military units, especially those of the major powers, are equipped with advanced technology, including armored vehicles, missiles, and precision guided weapons.

For the Cold War period, the overwhelming majority of operations fitted the profile of traditional peacekeeping (see the development of peace operations in chapter 2). An example is the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP), in place since 1964. This changed with the end of the Cold War in the late 1980s and the proliferation of new peace operations. With this, host-state consent, impartiality, and the use of force became less defining features than variables along continuums. So too did the terminology change, as what was covered under peacekeeping became quite expansive. Most prominent in the post-Cold War era has been peacebuilding.

Peacebuilding

There is not necessarily agreement among scholars and practitioners on the conceptual components of peacebuilding, and therefore it is impossible to specify a single, universally agreed upon definition. Nevertheless, there is some inter-subjective consensus on some of the relevant dimensions of peacebuilding operations. A useful place to begin is the definition put forward by then UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali (1995),³ the baseline conceptualization of all peacekeeping-related definitions used by scholars and poli-cymakers.⁴ Boutros-Ghali speaks of “peacebuilding” as the “creation of a new environment,” not merely the cessation of hostilities facilitated by traditional peacekeeping. His analysis and the analyses of other scholars seem to suggest a series of characteristics or dimensions by which peacebuilding can be compared with other concepts.

The first dimension concerns the goal(s) of peacebuilding. There is general agreement that, minimally, the purpose of peacebuilding is to prevent the recurrence of conflict. Yet there is some disagreement over whether this idea of “negative peace” (the absence of violent conflict) should be extended to encompass elements of “positive peace,” including reconciliation, value transformation, and justice concerns. This distinction is critical, because virtually all differences in conceptualizations of peacebuilding can be traced back to disagreements on this point.

The second dimension of peacebuilding involves the strategies and accompanying activities designed to achieve the goal(s). Not surprisingly, these vary somewhat according to whether or not one pursues goals broader than preventing conflict recurrence. A minimalist strategy of preventing conflict recurrence adopts strategies consistent with conflict management. That is, peacebuilding is concerned partly with decreasing the opportunity to resort to violence, consistent with the purposes of traditional peacekeeping. Yet, some peacebuilding activities go beyond traditional peacekeeping, including disarming warring parties, destroying weapons, and training indigenous security personnel. Some peacebuilding conceptions are also dedicated to creating mechanisms whereby conflicts can be managed peacefully rather than through violence. Thus, facilitating elections, repatriating refugees, and strengthening government institutions are peacebuilding activities consistent with this strategy.

A broader conception of peacebuilding leads to somewhat different strategies and sets of activities. Some see peacebuilding as addressing the “root causes of conflict.” Minimalist conceptions expect conflict to occur but desire to manage it peacefully. In contrast, the maximalist strategy promotes not merely management but conflict resolution – that is, eliminating the “willingness” of parties to use violence. Accordingly, many peacebuilding activities are designed for attitudinal changes by disputants and their constituents. These include programs to promote economic development and human rights protection.

A third dimension concerns the timing of such activities. Most conceptions of peacebuilding envision its activities to occur following some type of peace settlement between warring parties. This is in contrast to other forms of conflict management. Preventive diplomacy and its accompanying actions are supposed to be put in place before significant levels of violence occur. Coercive military inter...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• 1 cIntroduction
• 2 The Historical Evolution and Record of Peace Operations
• 3 The Organization of Peace Operations
• 4 The Success and Failure of Peace Operations
• 5 Ten Challenges for Future Peace Operations
• Appendix: Peace Operations 1948–2012
• Notes
• References and Suggested Readings
• Index