With approximately 100,000 peacekeepers engaged in 14 different operations, the United Nations spends nearly $7 billion annually in attempting to create a lasting end to conflicts around the world. But those conflicts have evolved in ways that has made the work of the peacekeepers far more difficult and dangerous and greatly diminished their chances for success. This book will explain why that is the case.
In the first edition of this book, which came out in the late 1990s, the focus was on the difference between the successful peacekeeping mission in Mozambique and the failure of the one in Angola . The principal conclusion reached was that there were three main factors that determined the success of peacekeeping following the civil wars in those two former Portuguese colonies. The first, and most important, was the resources of the country and whether they were easily converted to cash. If those resources, like oil and diamonds in the case of Angola, generated huge revenues, they provided both the means and the motivation for the fighting to continue.
The second was the involvement of the countryās neighbors, the regional and major powers and whether their interests were served by peace or by continued war. And finally, the political leadership within the country and whether they really wanted peace or cared more about their own political power than ending the war for good.
Because the UN could not control those three factors, what it was able to do by inserting peacekeepers really only mattered in a marginal way. The UN could have an influence on them three, but could not control them enough to ensure success. And even that limited influence would be used only if the UN bureaucracy and member states had the political will to do so.
Today, peacekeeping and the conflicts that it tries to end have both changed greatly. At the risk of having to issue a spoiler alert, here are the major conclusions of this edition. The main reason the most recently launched peacekeeping missions will fail is because peacekeeping has become a way for rich countries to send the soldiers of poor countries off to deal with wars the rich countries do not care all that much about. The fundamental problem is that there is no peace to keep in these conflicts and the soldiers being sent as peacekeepers are incapable of achieving the goals that are being assigned to them.
In order to explain why this is so, this chapter will address what has changed and why those changes have made peacekeeping more difficult. It will also conclude with a brief outline of the rest of the book. Before describing what has changed, it is necessary to begin with a consideration of the terms that are used to describe peacekeeping and how a lack of clarity about them contributes to its failure.
Nowhere in the over 8900 words and 19 chapters of the Charter of the United Nations does the word āpeacekeepingā appear. Since the organization was created at the end of World War II specifically to help peacefully resolve conflicts between nations, it did not take long for the UN to become deeply involved in peacekeeping efforts. The UN was only three years old when it began its first peacekeeping operation (PKO) in 1948 in Jerusalem. For reasons that will be explained that operation continues until this day, even though it is making no real contribution to peace.
Since 1948, the UN has launched over 70 more PKOs. Despite the noble and peaceful purpose of these missions, they have had their ups and downs. One of the most positive moments was in 1988 when UN peacekeepers were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
One of the lowest came at the end of 2017 when 14 Tanzanian peacekeepers were killed. They died in a protracted gun battle when a group calling itself the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) attacked their base in the Democratic Republic of the Congo . 1 Their deaths added to the over 3700 peacekeepers who have lost their lives while engaged in the UNās peacekeeping missions over the last 70 years. 2
The attack by the ADF was labeled a war crime by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres . 3 In a news conference, however, the Under-Secretary-General for PKOs, Jean-Pierre Lacroix , acknowledged that the soldiers who had been killed were not typical peacekeepers, but were part of the āForce Intervention Brigade ā or FIB for short. He pointed out that the members of the FIB differ from ordinary peacekeepers in that they had much more aggressive rules of engagement. They were authorized to shoot first without having to wait to fire only in self-defense. 4
When the FIB was initiated in 2013, it was described as the first time the UN had created an āoffensiveā combat force. 5 It was ordered to āneutralize and disarmā Congolese rebels and foreign armed groups in the eastern part of the country and it was allowed to carry out offensive operations independently or jointly with the Congolese armed forces. The FIB was described as an āintervention brigadeā because it was supposed to operate in āa robust, highly mobile and versatile manner to disrupt the activities of the rebels and other armed groups.ā 6
When it established the FIB , the UN Security Council emphasized it was being created on an exceptional basis and was neither a precedent nor prejudicial to the agreed principles of peacekeeping. That prompted some countries to express concern nonetheless about the impact creating an offensive combat force tasked with imposing a peace would have on peacekeeping.
Despite the reservations, the Councilās members voted unanimously in favor of the resolution creating the FIB . In recognition of the doubts about its impact, the resolution required the FIB to have a clear exit strategy and expressed the hope it would quickly restore order in the region. Five years later and counting, as indicated by the attack that killed the 14 Tanzanian soldiers, the FIB was taking heavy casualties and appeared to be bogged down in a fight it was not winning. And there was no exit strategy in sight.
So how did the UNās peacekeepers go from being Nobel Peace Prize laureates to combatants battling militant extremists? And if they are now engaged in armed conflict in order to impose a peace, can they win? The answers to those questions have to be addressed by considering how peacekeeping and war have both evolved since the UNās creation and how the international community uses the UN in dealing with those changes. To do that requires beginning with some definitions as it will help in understanding the challenges that those changes have created for the peacekeepers.
A Few Necessary Definitions
When it comes to constructing a definition , the word āpeacekeepingā is a bit like the word āglobalization.ā Everyone thinks they know what they mean since they appear frequently in the media. But if you ask people to define either of them in a single sentence, the answers will be all over the map. They are also linked in another way. Globalization is creating greater demands for peacekeeping and, at the same time, making it more difficult. Having a clear definition of both helps explain why.
Defining globalization is difficult because its effects are, well, so global. Thanks to the impact of technology, events that would have been deemed distant and inconsequential now have a far greater effect on more people, more rapidly, more often, and in more ways than at any time in the past. Because of that, globalization creates winners and losers and people think they know into which of those two categories they fall. Those who feel harmed, or even just threatened, by globalization see it as a negative force in their lives. Those who gain from it view it as a positive phenomenon. Because of this, there is a growing library of books on globalization that take a stand for or against it based on the authorās assessment its impact.
To avoid the issue of who wins and who loses due to globalization, here is a one-sentence definition of it is that makes no judgment about its effects: globalization is people, things, and ideas crossing national boundaries with greater speed, frequency, impact, and reach; usually driven by technological change it is neither new nor reversible. There are many ways to criticize such a definition, including the fact that it should really be two sentences, but for purposes of this book, it will suffice.
Definitions of peacekeeping are less contested than those for globalization. Few people, outside of those in countries with conflicts, feel directly affected by peacekeeping, and therefore, they have only vague and weak opinions about it. Peacekeeping is generally viewed in a positive light since it seemingly contributes to ending wars and preserving peace. There are not infrequent articles in the media about misbehavior or the failure of peacekeepers, but this is usually seen as the exception rather than the rule.
The reason for considering the definition of globalization together with peacekeeping is because the former has forced the evolution of the latter and that has placed new demands on peacekeepers. The many effects of globalization have added greatly to the challenges faced by them and, at the same time, created more situations where their work is needed.
One example of globalization and its impact on peacekeeping are people crossing national borders in greater numbers than ever before. If they are forced to leave their homes, but not their nations, they are considered internally displaced and are not automatically an international problem. If they cross a national boundary into another country, then they are refugees and by definition an international problem that the UN has to address.
Today there are more displaced people in the world than at any time since the UN was created. 7 One person out of every 113 people on the planet has been forced to leave home and over 21 million of them, about a third of the total, have become refugees. 8 In other words, people are crossing national borders as refugees in numbers that are unprecedented since World War II.
While some are economic migrants seeking to escape poverty, many of them undertook their journeys because of conflicts in their countries. The awareness that safety may lie just beyond the nearest border is increasingly widespread thanks to information and ideas crossing borders. In addition, helping refugees move on has become such an industry that people smuggling is the third largest criminal activity in the world after arms and drug trafficking. The head of the International Organization of Migration, which is the leading inter-governmental group dealing with migration and was founded in 1951, claimed in a 2017 report that human trafficking amounted to $35 billion in the Mediterranean area alone. 9 That may be an overestimate, but it is clearly a huge, illicit industry.
Another criminal activity that adds to the demands for peacekeeping is the trafficking of illicit arms, which may be in third place in the list of worldwide illegal activities after trafficking in people and drugs. 10 The availability of light weapons makes starting and sustaining an insurgency or terrorist group much easier. Following the breakup of the Soviet Union , many of the countries that had belonged to it needed products to export. The weapons they no longer needed provided a source of revenue and helped create an international arms market where anyone wi...