Understanding Peacekeeping. Alex J. Bellamy

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and exacerbate some of the problems. It is imperative that students, analysts and practitioners alike have a sophisticated understanding of peacekeeping – its key concepts and theories, its contested histories, its place in global politics, its different variants and its contemporary and likely future challenges. That is the purpose of this book.

      Peace operations are shaped by the international order from which they emerged. The international order that was constructed from the ashes of the Second World War in the mid-1940s consisted of a series of rules and institutions based on the United Nations system designed to manage great power relations and thereby avoid a third world war. The Cold War struggle prevented these institutions and rules from functioning smoothly for over four decades and also ensured that there was never a complete consensus about the roles that peace operations should play. At the macro-level, a struggle persists between those who see the role of peace operations in global politics in mainly ‘Westphalian’ terms and those who see it in more ambitious, ‘post-Westphalian’ terms.

      In the former view, the primary function of peace operations is to assist the peaceful settlement of disputes between states. From this perspective, the conduct, ideological persuasion and political organization of states, as well as the relationship between state and society, should not concern peacekeepers, so long as states subscribe to the Westphalian norms of sovereign autonomy and non-interference in the domestic affairs of other states. In its most extreme form, this perspective suggests that human suffering within states, no matter how grotesque, should not concern peacekeepers unless it directly threatens international order and the maintenance of peace and security between states.

      In many respects, the ongoing struggle between Westphalian and post-Westphalian conceptions of peace operations reflects a tension in the UN Charter over when the security of states or the security of human beings should be prioritized. In addition, the struggle reflects different concerns about the legitimacy of peace operations and the scope of multilateral authority vis-à-vis sovereign authority more generally. It also reveals different ideas about how best to promote rather than simply maintain international peace and security.

      Until the end of the Cold War, the Westphalian conception of peace operations was usually privileged within debates in the United Nations, with supporters coming from across the globe, but particularly from post-colonial states in Asia and Africa, as well as the USSR/Russia and China on the Security Council (e.g. UN 2000). In comparison, after the Cold War the international debate tilted heavily in favour of the post-Westphalian conception and saw the majority of peace operations deploy to civil war settings. Initially, its most vocal supporters were found in Western states and humanitarian NGOs. Its vision was arguably reflected most intensely in the UN-run transitional administrations established in Bosnia, Kosovo and East Timor in the late 1990s. However, particularly after the introspection generated by the timid response to the 1994 Rwandan genocide, in the early 2000s the new African Union also advanced a distinctly post-Westphalian approach and a new set of frameworks for what it called ‘peace support operations’ (de Coning et al. 2016a). Another important symbolic moment came in late 2005, when over 150 UN member states acknowledged their ‘responsibility to protect’ their populations from genocide and mass atrocities and promised to take steps to prevent such crimes, including through the use of peace operations (Hunt and Bellamy 2011).

      These pressures are promoting a new Westphalian concept of peacekeeping focused on helping states impose their authority across their territory but without necessarily reforming their governments to make them more legitimate, effective or democratic. At the same time, peacekeepers are tasked with mitigating some of the worst effects of civil wars on civilian populations without tackling the underlying causes. The word most commonly used to describe this approach is ‘stabilization’.

      These contemporary political developments do not signal the end of peace operations. Indeed, the relative spike in armed conflicts worldwide since 2011 suggests a continued demand for peace operations to help manage their endings and aftermaths. Moreover, near record numbers of peacekeepers remain deployed across some of the world’s most protracted war zones. As we seek to explain and understand these dynamics, it is worth briefly highlighting four enduring themes that continue to shape contemporary peace operations and thus lie at the heart of this book.

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