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Jacob Bergeron

POS 280

UN Peacekeeping

The Inherent Need for a Peaceful World

In a world comprised of billions of people with cultures, beliefs and ways of life that span

a spectrum as diverse as the imagination can allow, whose interests are mutual at best and starkly

adversarial at worst, it becomes clear relatively quickly through the lens of common sense that it

is of paramount importance that the peoples of the world interact peacefully with one another.

We often mark our history by times of war and conflict, as a global community we are all too

familiar with the gruesome images, the enormous emotional and physical sacrifices, and the

significant human and monetary costs that are demanded and consumed by times of conflict.

These periods of unrest have drastically shaped the history of nations, their relationships with

other states, and the quality of life of the citizenries. Hence why peacekeeping is an essential

pillar of the United Nations, it is an element that harkens back to a core principle of the

organization as is established in the very first section of the Charter of the United Nations in

which pertains to the fundamental purposes of the international organization where it reads “to

maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures

for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of

aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in

conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of

international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace” (UN Charter).

Any war or conflict, whether it is interstate or intrastate combatants involved, is a result

of the breakdown of complex and layered circumstances and environments that foster the

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passion and resolve to commit to all out fighting and bloodshed. Disputes in one part of the

world may be based on ethnic or tribal conflict, in another it may be religious intolerance and

persecution, and in another it may be a clash of economic and ideological interests, or as often

the case it is a combination of many deteriorating factors that make sustained peace a fragile and

unrealistic reality. If anything is more obvious than the inherent necessity and global benefit of

peace it is the complexities of the dire circumstances that foster conflict and destruction and just

how daunting of a task it is to craft sustainable peace resolutions and reconstruct post-conflict

societies. The Weiss and Daws Oxford Handbook on the United Nations characterizes this in

stating, “Through several years of trial and error, the practice of post-conflict peace building has

become more sophisticated, but it remains an uncertain science, prone to catastrophic failure. It

is—and perhaps will always be—any enormous and ambitious experiment in social

rehabilitation” (Weiss and Daws p.404).

One might consider something characterized as an “enormous” and “ambitious”

experiment as an endeavor that may not be sensible to embark on, something that will consume

considerable effort and demand equally weighted sacrifices, all the while having an uncertain

outcome with objectives that remain elusive and incredibly challenging to achieve throughout the

engagement. However failure or lack of genuine attempts to bring about meaningful and lasting

peace in turmoil rampant regions is not a viable option, and is understood by the international

community to be a recipe for disaster of global proportions. Weis and Daws underscore the

critical importance of UN peacekeeping efforts in saying “Yet it is also an indispensible

experiment, given the consequences of failing to address the problem of civil violence and

collapsing states in many parts of the world. Research has shown that intrastate wars tend to

destabilize neighboring countries, produce humanitarian crises and mass refugee flows, spread

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infectious diseases like malaria and HIV/AIDS, facilitate the production and international

trafficking of illegal narcotics, and attract international criminal syndicates and terrorist groups”

(Weiss and Daws p.404).

Peacekeeping through the Decades

The United Nations Peacekeeping operations at the immediate conclusion of the cold war

is the time period of operations referred to by scholars as the “first generation” of peacekeeping.

In which UN Peacekeepers were deployed to monitor cease fire and peace agreements, as well as

border disputes in order to ensure compliance with the established agreements. This was ordered

under a mandate by the Security Council and the authority granted to them in chapter seven of

the UN Charter. During these engagements the UN forces operated with the distinction of being

a strictly neutral and unbiased force whose mission directives and orders were framed in a way

as not to interfere or become entangled in domestic issues and assume domestically sighted

responsibilities. The “second generation” of peacekeeping was comprised of efforts more

ambitious and comprehensive than the previous engagements in which the UN forces engaged in

activities previously thought to be “within the scope of domestic jurisdiction” (Weiss and Daws

p.325). Second generation peacekeeping is marked by the UN performing operations that

required their involvement in domestic affairs such as the monitoring and facilitation of

elections. The “third generation” of UN Peacekeeping is comprised of engagements that are even

more ambitious and comprehensive in their nature than those undertaken in the previous

generations. These engagements had been undertaken in circumstances in which there wasn’t an

established or mutually obtainable agreement and differing from other engagements the UN was

not necessarily present at the request of the parties involved, rather they played the role of an

undeterred and unwavering force. Reinforcing a mission that they were going to execute multi-

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laterally if possible, however opposition of various parties wasn’t going to bring the peace

process to a standstill as the UN forces were far more aggressive in muting non-agreeable

factions and their counterproductive actions.

As the conditions in which the UN seeks to cultivate and sustain peace are ever evolving

and developing so have the approaches and tactics deployed to bring about peace and stability. In

a 1992 report entitled An Agenda for Peace, Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali laid out

four symbiotic roles he wished to see the UN preform in its efforts to bring peace and

stabilization to volatile regions. These are peace-enforcement, peacemaking, peacekeeping, and

post-conflict reconstruction. Each element is intended to overlap with the next to craft fertile

conditions for peace to come about and remain viable for the long term. Peace-enforcement is

“the authorization of the UN to act with or without the consent of the parties in order to ensure

compliance with a cease-fire mandated by the Security Council…these forces are heavily armed

national forces operating under the direction of the Secretary-General” (Weis and Daws p. 324).

Peacemaking is “designed to bring hostile parties to agreement through peaceful means…

drawing upon judicial settlement, mediation, and other forms of negotiation, UN peacemaking

initiatives would seek to persuade parties to arrive at a peaceful settlement of their differences”

(Weiss and Daws p.324). Peacekeeping, in the most specific usage of the term, is “established to

deploy a United Nations presence in the field, hitherto with the consent of all the parties

concerned, as a confidence-building measure to monitor a truce between the parties while

diplomats strive to negotiate a comprehensive peace or officials seek to implement an agreed

peace” (Weiss and Daws p.324). Finally post-conflict reconstruction is the far sighted element of

the UN efforts and is “organized to foster economic and social cooperation with the purpose of

building confidence among previously warring parties, developing the social, political, and

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economic infrastructure to prevent future violence, and laying the foundation for a durable

peace” (Weiss and Daws p.324).

Peacekeeping Redefined: Evolution of UN Operations

An Agenda for Peace is an excellent synopsis of the evolution of UN peacekeeping

doctrine and illustrates the generational and operational shifts in how the international

organization seeks to obtain its peace and stability objectives. Each generation becoming more

expansive and encompassing more elements thought to foster durable peace that would last long

after the last UN soldier had left the region. In today’s reality, conflicts are far less likely to be

interstate and are far more likely to be intrastate or fractional conflicts whereas the parties

involved in the civil wars are not easily identifiable and few would be considered reliable parties

who possess the potential to negotiate in good faith. Contemporary peace operations therefore

intrude heavily into most all aspects of domestic sovereignty, a happening that at the founding of

the UN and conception of operations of this kind was thought to be well beyond the scope of UN

jurisdiction and activity. To underscore this significant shift consider that “since from 1900 to

1941, 80 percent of all wars were interstate and fought by professional armies…but from 1945 to

1976, 85 percent of all wars were on the territory of one state and internally oriented—of course

with proxies” (Weiss and Daws p. 325).

It was during this time that UN Peacekeeping began to gain more and more traction,

between 1987 and 1994 “the UN’s role in the protection of world order and in the promotion of

basis human rights in countries that until recently had been torn by costly civil wars…the

Security Council quadrupled the number of resolutions it issued, tripled the peacekeeping

operations it authorized, and multiplied by seven the number of economic sanctions it imposed

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per year. Military forces deployed in peacekeeping operations increased from fewer than 10,000

to more than 70,000. The annual peacekeeping budget correspondingly skyrocketed from $230

million to $3.6 billion in the same period, thus reaching to about three times the UN’s regular

operating budget of $1.2 billion” (Weiss and Daws p. 333). This surge brought about great

successes in many places across the globe including Namibia, Cambodia, El Salvador, and

Mozambique amongst several others. It is true that the UN is credited with tens if not hundreds

of thousands of lives saved in Somalia and Yugoslavia alone.

However with great expansion there is also significant extension and subsequently the

opportunity to fall short and commit failures of considerable mass and magnitude. In much of the

early 1990’s the robust third generation peacekeeping efforts demonstrated many of the problems

imperial interventionists faced in the past as they encountered what Weiss and Daws characterize

as “fresh problems peculiar to the UN’s global character” (Weiss and Daws p.333). Bosnia and

Somalia become entrenched conflicts in which conditions of progress were quickly deteriorating,

subsiding to unsavory conditions and turmoil, while the missions rapidly where slipping away

from the UN and compelled the international to community to contemplate and reassess when

and where the UN should become involved. In the 1995 Supplement to an Agenda for Peace

Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali “called for a retrenchment of an over-extended UN

commitment to peacekeeping” (Weiss and Daws p. 334). President Clinton in his address to the

general assembly stated that it ‘needed to know when to say no’.

Refining the Terms of Engagement

It was this contemplative moment, this time of assessment and self-reflection, which lead

to calls for a “fourth generation” of peacekeeping, one with its strongest emphasis on strategy

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and approach, crafted by applying many of the lessons of the 90’s. In what is called the No Exit

without Strategy report the Secretary-General responded to the Security Council’s pleas for a

comprehensive strategy to achieving a lasting and sustainable peace. The report, which drew

heavily off of the Security Council’s deliberations on the matter, “made the case for an

ambitious, comprehensive, three-pronged strategy: ‘consolidating internal and external security,

strengthening political institutions and good governance, and promoting economic and social

rehabilitation and transformation” (Weiss and Daws p.334). In essence the new focus, the

modern doctrine of peacekeeping operations became and largely still is based on strategically

matching missions to known, developed, and time tested UN capabilities. This modern fourth

generation approach essentially is designed to minimize shortcomings and deficiency and is

intended to maximize applied UN skillsets and the impact they can wield in conditions that the

international organization is well suited to install and cultivate a sustainable peace.

A Mixed Record

When analyzing peacekeeping engagements it proves to be challenging to reach concise

judgments as to the success or failure of operations, as developing an objective universally

applicable barometer is nearly impossible. Mission goals and conditional circumstance are

consistently evolving and often are inherently elusive to accurately pinpoint and calculate in a

measurably conveyable manner. Success in itself is relatively objective and can manifest itself in

varying degrees. The absence of a return to utter chaos and outward violence is by almost any

standard a positive and progressive happening; however a valid argument can be made that such

a low standard of success is merely the bare bones in constructing an equation to determine

mission validity and comprehensive success. The destructive and tangible elements of

operational failure make deeming peacekeeping efforts as failures a far easier endeavor. A clear

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return to violence and chaos, severe suppression of political opposition, grave human rights

violations, and the crumbling of public institutions, all have potential to be the epicenters of

disastrous ripple effects, in which from an observational standpoint, circumstances rapidly

become apparent that justify the characterization of failure. UN peacekeeping operations have

resulted in circumstances that undoubtedly span this spectrum, from obvious disasters to

decipherable successes and innumerable variances in between. The plethora of UN peace

missions provide ample opportunity to extract lessons and insights into what has comprised

successful operations and what most certainly has not worked and has lead to continued

instability and turmoil.

Clear Failures

Roland Paris authored a chapter in the Weiss and Daws Oxford Handbook on the United

Nations, entitled Post-Conflict Peacebuilding, which focuses on the UN peace efforts

specifically associated with the modern generation of international peace efforts. As previously

noted peacebuilding is an inclusive and all-encompassing approach to international

peacebuilding, in which the widest variety of contributing variables plays a role in the

development of what is perceived to be the most viable solution and path towards realizable and

sustainable peace. Paris analyzes both failures and relative successes in order to illustrate the

commonly accepted sentiment that the record thus far is mixed. For Paris, Angola and Rwanda

are exemplary examples of utter failure whereas major shortcomings are measured in lives lost

and little progress made. In the case of Angola the UN was tasked with overseeing the

implementation of a peace agreement which brought about the elections of 1992 amongst other

benchmarks. Paris criticizes the international efforts as deeply flawed through the haste in which

they were conducted citing that the UN sought to facilitate the elections “without first

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demobilizing or disarming the parties or establishing mechanisms to enforce the results of the

election. Before the elections were completed, one of the two major candidates and leaders of the

formerly warring parties, Jonas Savimbi, concluded that he would lose and resumed fighting”

(Weiss and Daws pg. 415). In this instance the UN and its partners failed to take the proper

approach and allocate the necessary time and resources needed to properly seize the pre-election

time period to do what was necessary to create an environment that would be amicable to the

election process with tangible measures in place to enforce the outcome and underscore the

legitimacy of the democratic exercise. As a result of this fumbling, the two years of conflict and

war that followed claimed the lives of an estimated 300,000 people, surely a bold testament to

the high stakes and life and death implications on the grandest of scales in which these

peacebuilding efforts are deployed into with the aim to stop and reverse the devastating courses.

Paris characterizes the efforts that lead to the unfolding of events in Rwanda, like the

missteps of Angola, as “overly-optimistic and underprepared”; referring to the ‘spasm’ of killing

that ended the Rwandan peace process in 1994. “A peace settlement between the Hutu-led

regime and the Tutsi opposition, negotiated under the international auspices in Arusha, Tanzania

in 1993, led to the deployment of a small UN force to oversee elections. Hard-line elements of

the Hutu regime, determined to scuttle the peace agreement and destroy their ethnic adversaries,

launched a genocide in April 1994 that left international peacebuilders helpless on the sidelines”

(Weiss and Daws pg. 415). Paris argues that the minute size of the UN force seemed

‘unrealistic, at best’ given the nation’s past experience with waves of mass killings, it seems in

hindsight quite the blunder to have not ensured a significant enough force to be available to

address likely problems that were all but certain to arise.

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Meager Progress

Undoubtedly not all peacebuilding efforts have garnered such dire outcomes as the

horrors of missions like Angola and Rwanda where circumstances slipped back into abominable

conflict. Other missions have showed muddled progress while others can point to a whole host of

tangible improvements due to the international peacebuilding presence. Paris points to the

operations in both Bosnia and Kosovo as examples that demonstrate relative progress. Paris

acknowledges that although the prospects for ‘lasting’ and ‘self-sustained’ peace do encompass a

degree of uncertainty, generally speaking much progress has been made. In both regions the

mass killings have ceased due to a significant NATO presence that was tens of thousands of

peacebuilding troops strong, certainly a formidable force matched equally with their daunting

mandates. Paris points out that ultimately “in Bosnia, there has been little reconciliation or

remixing of the Croat, Muslim, and Serbian communities, and the Bosnian government has done

little to overcome these divisions” and in Kosovo “there are…uncertainties around the ultimate

status of the territory, with the overwhelming majority of ethnic Albanians supporting outright

independence for the territory, and a rump Serbian community, under perpetual protection of

NATO, wanting Kosovo to remain formally part of Yugoslavia” (Weis and Daws pg. 415).

However the overwhelming theme and takeaway here is the undeniable fact that innumerous

lives have been saved by ending the mass killings and although geopolitical and cultural rifts still

abound there has been significant progress and improvement of conditions on the ground and

that is a moderate measure of success unto itself.

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Tangible Successes

For Paris the peacebuilding operations in Namibia, Mozambique, and Croatia, when

examined through the comprehensive lens of peacebuilding, standout as examples of clear

successes. In these engagements the international peace presence has brought about the

conditions for ‘durable peace’, a critically important benchmark in the peacebuilding success

equation. After the hosting of UN-supervised elections in 1989, Namibia “has emerged as one of

the most peaceful societies in Africa” (Weiss and Daws pg. 415). Significant economic

development and relative peace are the indicators Paris points to in illuminating the success of

Mozambique, certainly unattainable and perhaps even unfathomable happenings prior to the

peacebuilding effort. In the instance of Croatia we see an example of the far-reaching extent

international forces will go to in order to secure conditions that are amicable to lasting and self-

sustaining peace that will stand the test of time. The “peacebuilding mission beginning in 1995

that temporarily administered the government of its Eastern Slavonia region, as part of the

implementation of the Dayton Peace Accords, and oversaw regional and local elections in 1997

before returning the territory to Croatian control” (Weiss and Daws pg. 415). In all three

examples the critical component in determining total success lies is the fact that a return to

conflict and degradation of circumstances remains ‘remote’ even after a significant passage of

time.

Overarching Lessons: The Fruit of Experience and Time

Given this brief outline of past endeavors that demonstrate varying degrees of

accomplishment or lack thereof, it is clear that the lessons and valuable insights derived from

decades of international peacebuilding operations have not become known without considerable

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cost and sacrifice. Often they have come at grave costs as they are the fruits of a compilation of

trial and error endeavors tested in environments of the highest stakes. What are some of the most

critical lessons learned from past shortcomings and successes? First and foremost one of the

most prevalent lessons is to fully realize the sheer time commitment these efforts demand, the in

and out ‘quick and dirty’ approach to peacebuilding has proven time and time again to be futile

at best and tremendously disastrous at worst. Paris underscores this critical component in

pointing to Bosnia, “Amazingly, in hindsight- the mission was supposed to be over in twelve

months, by the end of 1996. But it soon became apparent that this quick and dirty approach to

peacebuilding was problematic. Humanitarian aid could be distributed in weeks, and elections

held within months to a few years, but establishing the institutional foundations for peace—the

rule of law, effective security forces, functioning legislatures and at least a rudimentary legal

system, including the legal foundation for a market economy—would require several years or

longer” (Weiss and Daws pg.417). Missions today must be designed and launched with the in-

depth understanding of how long these efforts genuinely take, it is vital to attach benchmark

goals that are realistic, especially when considering the short term.

Another critical lesson in which harkens back to the debacles in Rwanda and Angola is

what Paris refers to as “the importance of security”. Essentially recognizing that although the

ultimate aim is peace and stability it is critically important to have a bold and capable enough

force in place on the ground so that if the need to deter through intimidation or suppress by force

should arise, it is a viable reality to tamper and decimate all activity that is counterproductive to

the prospects of peace and/or violates the cease-fire agreements. “Disarmament and

demobilization of former combatants are a top priority, and should generally be completed prior

to holding elections. Planning should assume the worst, not the best—including the possibility

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that local spoilers might actively seek to reverse the peace process through organized violence”

(Weiss and Daws pg.417).

In elaborating on the earlier point of giving careful consideration to time and the realities

that comprise measures of determining necessary time commitments, it is also almost as

important to note that timing, in the chronological sense, is a critical component in the success

equation in regards to the introduction and implementation of measures that foster peace and

stability. Developing robust economic and political spheres is undoubtedly a positive goal in

achieving a durable peace, however experience has shown that if these measures are rushed and

imposed in an artificial sense than they indeed escalate and fan the flames of turmoil and

instability rather than the desired opposite effect. Conventional structural economic adjustment

measures, characterized by Paris as “immediate privatization, deregulation, and reductions in

public expenditures for macroeconomic balancing” (Weiss and Daws 418), traditionally have

been imposed hastily and in a stringent manner, with variables and conditions on the ground

playing a meager role in the process. This lack of consideration and due process in evaluating

environmental conditions has proven to be a sure recipe for disaster as efforts introduced in an

ill-suited environment often crumble rapidly and are counterproductive. Likewise, political

development which most often refers to a degree of democratization is a critical key in achieving

a durable peace, but like its economic counterpart, it cannot be rushed or artificially imposed.

The creation and growth of a civil society and measures that incentivizes cross-factional

coalitions are critical pillars in supporting fertile grounds for legitimate debate, elections, and the

upholding of the results. “Elections are moments of intensified political competition that can

create incentives for candidates to exploit inter-communal hatreds and fan the flames of

intolerance and hostility” (Weiss and Daws 418), is how Paris succinctly characterizes the

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potential for harm and self-inflected injury if efforts that are proven to lead to a durable peace are

imposed in a rushed manner that is desensitize to conditions on the ground. The key for success

largely lies in the timing of political and economic efforts rather than the fact that they simply

must be imposed and implemented, without any regard to other factors, which traditionally has

been a significant shortcoming and catalyst for failure in peacekeeping engagements.

In Review

This essay is by no means comprehensive in its nature as volumes of scholarly literature

have been and continue to be produced on Peacekeeping and the subtopics that are interrelated

with the field. Fundamentally however this essay outlines the inherent need for peaceful

interactions between the peoples of the world and thus why Peacekeeping efforts are a critical

element in restoring peace to regions dominated by turmoil. In addition this essay has provided

an outline of how these efforts have evolved both in their specific nature and within the larger

evolutions of the United Nations as a whole. This essay uses specific engagement case studies to

illustrate the large spectrum of results from utter devastation and failure to meager gains and to

cases characterized as clear and comprehensive successes. Most importantly this essay presents

and examines the overwhelming lessons for success that have been the fruits of dozens of

peacekeeping engagements. Finally this essay, using scholarly work to reinforce the conclusions,

provides an analytical survey of the case studies in order to decipher the most important of the

many acquired lessons and present them in a descriptive fashion while providing a degree of

original perspective and insight. Peacekeeping undoubtedly has a daunting yet critically

important mission, it has had an incredibly mixed record, and it has evolved in its own right and

within the larger international institution. Although these engagements will always remain an

uncertain science, perhaps most importantly the UN has used time given lessons to bolster their

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endeavors, crafting them to be as effective and utilitarian as possible. Success in establishing

lasting and durable peace in tumultuous regions is never guaranteed, however it is genuinely the

case, that present the political will to do so, the international community is much more well

equipped to cultivate such conditions today than it has been throughout much of its history,

which is perhaps the most important lesson derived from this survey into UN Peacekeeping.

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Sources Cited

Ghali, Boutros. An Agenda for Peace, 1995. 2nd ed. New York: United Nations, 1995.

United Nations Charter. Melbourne: United Nations Association, 1955

Weiss, Thomas George, and Roland Paris. The Oxford Handbook on the United Nations.

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007