Understanding Peacekeeping. Alex J. Bellamy
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similar vein, in the late 1990s, the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan provided a useful shorthand for this debate as a struggle between two conceptions of sovereignty, each of which protects certain values worth preserving. As Annan noted, the ‘old orthodoxy’ of Westphalian sovereignty
was never absolute. The Charter, after all, was issued in the name of ‘the peoples’, not the governments, of the United Nations. Its aim is not only to preserve international peace – vitally important though that is – but also ‘to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person’. The Charter protects the sovereignty of peoples. It was never meant as a licence for governments to trample on human rights and human dignity. Sovereignty implies responsibility, not just power …
Can we really afford to let each State be the judge of its own right, or duty, to intervene in another State’s internal conflict? If we do, will we not be forced to legitimize Hitler’s championship of the Sudeten Germans, or Soviet intervention in Afghanistan? (Annan 1998a)
This post-Westphalian understanding of international order viewed the state’s sovereign rights as contingent on fulfilling its responsibilities to its civilian population, most notably protecting them from atrocity crimes, civil wars, forced displacement, famine, gross human rights violations, and other ills. This implied a much broader set of roles for peace operations than that envisaged by a Westphalian view. In a post-Westphalian order, peace operations need to help build states and societies capable of fulfilling these responsibilities. Where host states prove unwilling or unable to do so, peace operations should be prepared to step in. The ongoing debate between advocates of Westphalian sovereignty and proponents of the post-Westphalian approach continues to underpin contemporary arguments about the purpose of peace operations (see SIPRI 2015). But it is not the only way of thinking about the roles of peace operations in global politics. There are other prominent theories and frameworks to which we now turn.
1.2 Theorizing peace operations in global politics
Students might ask why we need to think theoretically at all about peace operations as inherently practical activities. One good reason was summarized by Roland Paris when he noted that, for too long, the study of peace operations had suffered from a ‘cult of policy relevance’ whereby ‘students … neglected broader macrotheoretical questions about the nature and significance of [peace] operations for our understanding of international politics. This omission has stunted the intellectual development of the field and isolated the study of peace operations from other branches of international relations’ (2000: 44). We should, therefore, ask what gets missed from the study of peace operations if we refuse to acknowledge or reflect upon our theories about them. The short answer is an awful lot, not least because global contexts shape the causes and dynamics of armed conflicts, as well as how they end (Howard and Stark 2018).
All investigations of social phenomena are guided by theoretical assumptions, whether we recognize it or not. Theories such as realism, liberalism, constructivism, feminism, Marxism, etc., help us to make sense of complex and seemingly random social interactions. They tell us what to look for, what types of actors are important, and what counts as valid or valuable knowledge and expertise about particular phenomena. Theories inform the methods we use and the causal connections we draw, our values and our politics (Booth 2007: 182–208). It is therefore dishonest to claim to be working without theory when one studies political phenomena such as peace operations, for we cannot know about those phenomena without theories. Although there is no single theoretical or methodological framework that can pose or answer the myriad questions associated with peace operations, it is incumbent on analysts to be self-consciously theoretical and to ask basic questions about what we are looking at and why, as well as what is excluded when we look at something in a particular way.
This section therefore briefly sketches some of the more prominent ways of addressing these questions, first by considering the different levels and units of analysis that can be employed to study peace operations and then by assessing some significant frameworks for thinking about the roles peace operations play in global politics.
The question of what to study depends on ontology. Put simply, ontology refers to theoretical assumptions about the structures, actors and causal relations that constitute social reality. With regard to peace operations, this raises questions about identifying the most salient actors, whose perspectives should be taken into account, and how to understand the relationship between social structures, complex systems and human behaviour. Two of the most pressing ontological dilemmas relate to units of analysis and levels of analysis: the former concerns the type of actor whose behaviour we want to explain (individuals, ethnic groups, insurgencies, states, international organizations, etc.) and the latter deals wtih the level at which we want to study social outcomes (global, regional, national, sub-national, etc.) (Wight 2006: 102–8).
A first step, therefore, is to recognize that the study of peace operations can – and should – include a multiplicity of actors and levels. With regard to the actors, the most significant stakeholders might be:
Figure 1.1 Levels of analysis for studying peace operations
members of the peace operation, including senior leadership, senior managers and representatives of its T/PCCs;
national, regional and local authorities in the host state;
international and regional organizations, among them those authorizing the mission or engaged in its theatre of operations;
external partners of the mission, multilateral and bilateral;
neighbouring states;
local and international non-governmental organizations; and
local populations in the conflict-affected areas.
In relation to the appropriate levels of analysis, we suggest at least five are relevant for studying the general phenomenon of peace operations, individual missions and particular issues (see figure 1.1). A comprehensive theory of peace operations would need to account for each as well as the relationships between them. Practical limitations of time, resources and access, however, would mean such comprehensiveness is impossible to achieve.
Macro- or structural-level theories try to explain the deep structures that shape the way peace operations are understood and practised. These include factors such as ‘global culture’, the world economy, and forces of patriarchy or racial inequality. Global-level theories are interested in understanding decision-making in international organizations such as the UN or the international financial institutions. A focus might be on how ideas about legitimacy, norms and power politics shape political decisions or the way in which organizations develop their own bureaucratic pathologies and blindspots that influence how they interpret the world and interact with other actors. Regional-level analysis would focus on the same issues, but for regional arrangements, and help explain how states in geographic or functional regions might develop shared understandings about the role of peace operations which may differ from other regions. National-level studies have focused either on individual missions or the peacekeeping policies of particular countries. Studies focused on the local level have analysed a wide range of issues, from the impact of peace operations on ‘the peacekept’ (Clapham 1998) – the local populations on the receiving end of such missions – to studies of operational and tactical details about individual missions, such as the behaviour of particular contingents and mission components, specific mandated activities, or the psychology of peacekeepers themselves.
No single level is necessarily better or more accurate than the others, nor do they stand in isolation from the other levels. The important point to recognize is that, whether self-consciously or not, analysts prioritize levels and units of analysis; they are neither natural nor predetermined. In the chapters that follow, our analysis draws insights from each of the levels