Peace Operations and Global Order

Alex J. Bellamy, Paul Williams

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780415463836
• eBook ISBN: 9781317994732
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

Peacekeeping in Global Politics investigates the changing role of peacekeeping and competing perspectives about what that role should be. It begins by addressing broad issues connected with the transition from a Westphalian to post-Westphalian international society, the ethical and legal dilemmas provoked by armed intervention, and the alternative ways of conceptualising the role that peacekeeping plays. It goes on to critically chart the development of 'traditional' peacekeeping before outlining how the role of force in peacekeeping operations has changed and the close links between peacekeeping, conflict prevention and conflict resolution. The final part of the volume focuses specifically on globalization and the effects that this has had on peacekeeping practices. In particular, it focuses on the changing conflict environment, the growing tendency towards subcontracting peacekeeping duties, and the development of regional peacekeeping capabilities. Overall, this volume makes two contributions to the way we think about peacekeeping: first it demonstrates that the theory and practice of peacekeeping is embedded in global politics and second it shows that there an on-going debate about what peacekeeping is for.

The ‘Next Stage’ in Peace Operations Theory?

Alex J. Bellamy

Writing in 1990, Alan James observed that ‘the fullest perspective on peacekeeping… is one which places it firmly in the context of international politics’. ¹ More than a decade on, however, there remains remarkably little work on the role that peace operations play in global politics. In particular, the relationship between peace operations and international theory remains unexplored. Whilst there has been an explosion of literature on the strengths, weaknesses, and experiences of peacekeepers and peace operations per se, there has been very little reflection about what this tells us about global politics or the functions that peace operations fulfil within it. During the 1990s, two discrete literatures developed exploring what was often incorrectly characterized as an explosion of internal or ethnic conflict and international responses to it. On the one hand, there is a sizable body of literature on peace-keeping, peacebuilding, peacemaking and conflict resolution practices themselves. By and large, these works are concerned with identifying the causes and nature of conflict and assessing – in instrumenta terms – the efficacy of alternative strategies for peace and the experiences of particular operations. ² At the same time, scholars within International Relations and international law have studied the legality and legitimacy of intervention, the justifications offered by intervening states, the relationship between peace operations and national interests and the development of new norms and concepts governing responsible sovereignty and human rights. ³

However, such approaches offer limited and partial analyses of peace operations. The problem is not that studies of peace operations are devoid of theory, but that ‘the literature on peace operations is too limited in the scope of its inquiry and devotes too much attention to ‘policy relevance’, or the goal of offering advice and recommendations to policy makers’. ⁴

These different approaches to peace operations have tended not to place the evolving practices and conceptions of peace operations within a global context and have not reflected on the theories and concepts that guide the questions we ask and the way we attempt to answer them. For example, students of peace operations rarely raise their eyes much higher than the Security Council, whereas students of International Relations seldom question the impact that the practices of the states and international organizations they study has on the peace operations environment, the self-images of peacekeeping, and the ‘techniques’ that are considered most appropriate. This essay aims to provide an opening for such a discussion. It begins by identifying two types of theoretical approach to peace operations, based on Robert Cox’s classification of ‘problem-solving’ and ‘critical’ theories. ⁵ In relation to peace operations, these two types of theory can be differentiated according to their position on three key issues:

• Purpose: problem-solving theories are predominantly instrumental and predicated on implicit normative assumptions whilst critical theories have an explicit normative agenda.

• The nature of the social world: problem-solving theories have an objectivist world-view that treats problems as pre-given and interventions as discrete acts while critical theories maintain that the social world and the problems that peace operations address are socially constructed.

• The relationship between theory and practice: problem-solving theories do not reflect on this relationship whereas critical theories uncover the ideological preferences of dominant theories and practices, and seek alternatives.

Although problem-solving theories fulfil an important function by identifying lessons that ought to be learned, proposing new strategies and offering practical advice to policy-makers they have also limited the breadth and depth of thought about peace operations and immanent possibilities for reform. By failing to question the ideological preferences of interveners, for instance, problem-solving theories are unable to evaluate the extent to which dominant peacekeeping or peacemaking practices may actually help reproduce the social structures that cause violent conflict in the first place. This essay suggests that ‘critical’ approaches to peace operations open up the possibility of thinking about the ‘next stage’ of peace operations theory. ⁶

Instrumental and Normative Theories

The first key difference between problem-solving and critical theories of peace operations are that problem-solving theories are concerned with establishing instrumental practices to address pre-existing problems, whereas critical theories are premised on an explicitly normative agenda. The vast majority of theoretical or conceptual work on peace operations is an attempt to improve the utility of such operations by identifying their key characteristics, assessing how their guiding principles might be adapted to better suit particular circumstances, and considering how they may contribute to wider processes of conflict resolution or ‘preventive diplomacy’. Instrumental approaches are predicated on significant normative assumptions that are left unexplored. They are: international peace and security is a moral good in itself; violent conflict represents a ‘breakdown’ of normal social relations; ⁷ the great majority of people prefer peace to war and need only be presented with ‘paths’ to peace; there is a direct link between international peace and good governance at the domestic level; and ‘good’ governance equates to Western-style statehood, democratization, neo-liberal economics and the existence of an active civil society. These assumptions constitute a hidden normative (liberal) agenda that provides the foundation for instrumentalist approaches that tend to portray themselves as ‘value free’. ⁸

One of the earliest attempts to think conceptually about peace operations began by identifying the roles that peacekeepers ought to fulfil before moving on to show how they might fulfil those roles more effectively. Indar Jit Rikhye insisted that peace operations fulfilled three key roles.

First, they provided a mechanism for resolving conflict without the direct intervention of the Cold War superpowers, thereby reducing the risk of cataclysmic escalation.

Second, peace operations mobilized international society to make a commitment to the maintenance of peace.

Third, peacekeeping provided ‘a diplomatic key opening the way to further negotiations for a peaceful resolution of conflicts’. ⁹ Rikhye then went on to assess how effectively the UN fulfilled these roles, principally in the Middle East, and ways in which it might achieve its goals more effectively. ¹⁰

This instrumental approach to peace operations developed alongside the proliferation of peace operations in the 1990s. New approaches attempted to identify the ‘symptoms’ that peace operations ought to address, the concepts and tools that peacekeepers have at their disposal, and the most effective way and time to utilize them. The first task is to identify the characteristics, functions and types of different peace operations. Boutros Boutros-Ghali sparked a debate in An Agenda for Peace by referring to the interrelated concepts of peacekeeping, peacebuilding, peace-making and peace enforcement. The Secretary-General defined peacekeeping as ‘the deployment of a UN presence in the field hitherto with the consent of all parties concerned’. ¹¹ This definition sparked a significant instrumental debate about whether peace operations should always be conducted with the consent of the host parties and who – in so-called ‘new wars’ in particular – constituted a legitimate party from whom consent should be sought. ¹² Moreover, there was a significant debate between those who argued that the concepts of consent and impartiality should be narrowly interpreted and strictly adhered to and those who insisted that operational efficiency demanded that the concepts be interpreted broadly to permit, for example, the temporary loss of consent and the de-coupling of ‘impartiality’ from ‘neutrality’.

One way around this definitional problem is to classify peace operations in general terms according to their perceived role and objectives. One approach is to define types of peace operations according to their characteristics (size, mandate, functions). ¹³ In the 1990s, many writers attempted to further refine this approach by developing more specific taxonomies. Diehl, Druckman and Wall identified 12 different types of operation based on a significant number of variables and functions. ¹⁴ Demurenko and Nikitin used a less exhaustive list of functions in order to identify seven types of operation. ¹⁵ Another method that has been used to identify and classify the functions fulfilled by peace operations is to organize different types of operation chronologically. Marrack Goulding, for instance, identified ‘three generations’, David Segal identified ‘five phases’ while much of literature only distinguishes between the traditional peacekeeping of the Cold War and the ‘new’ peacekeeping of the post-Cold War era. ¹⁶

There are two principal problems with the classification of peace operations and construction of taxonomies. First, though there are different types of operation, their division into ‘generations’ is historically misleading. During the Cold War, there were missions that ran into many of the problems encountered by peacekeepers in post-Cold War conflicts. The ONUC mission in the Congo (1960–64) stands out in this regard: ONUC confronted warlords and mercenaries who were outside the command and control of states; the conflict itself was ongoing and ceasefires were impermanent; and the peacekeepers themselves were given several different mandates, which included peace enforcement. ¹⁷ Similarly, the question of the appropriate relationship between the UN and regional organizations in peace operations is also not a product of the post-Cold War world. That debate was first aired in the Security Council before, and during, a US-led OAS intervention into the Dominican Republic in 1965. Moreover, the majority of missions after 1989 reflected the goals and operating procedures of earlier types of operation. Even if we include missions such as UNMIK and UNBIH as ‘new types’ of operation (though they are civilian missions), of the 38 new UN missions created since 1989, 23 operations carried out functions that had been carried out in the majority of earlier peace operations (excluding ONUC) and only 15 were of a ‘new type’ of operation.

The second problem with this taxonomic approach to identifying the role of peace operations is that it is self-referential. It takes peacekeeping activities as its starting point and asks how they can be done better. Although they shed important light on how missions are put together and how they go about fulfilling their roles, they tell us little about the evolving role of peacekeeping in global politics or about the underlying rationale of the activities themselves. Although it is important to understand what peacekeepers actually do and to think instrumentally about how they might do it better, this should not constitute the limit of theoretical engagement with peace operations as it has tended to do in the past. It may well be the case, for example, that by maintaining and reproducing a particular type of world order, UN member states are partly responsible for creating the problems they are trying to resolve.

Alternatively, it may be that without dealing with the structural causes of violent conflict (in the global economy, for example) the reassessment of peacekeeping techniques might be as useful in the long-run as rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. Although it might also be the case that these two propositions are incorrect, the important point here is that the dominance of instrumentalism h...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: Thinking Anew about Peace Operations
• Part I: Exploring Conceptual Issues
• Part II: ‘Thinking Anew’ in Practice
• Digest of Operations (August–October 2003)
• Documentation Security Council Resolution 1497 (2003) Concerning the Situation in Liberia
• Index