Peace operations – before and after the Cold-War

The legal basis for UN peace operations (Chapter VI, VII and VIII of the UN Charter) evolved from the conflict management mechanisms that were created by the League of Nations (Kenkel, 2013). In the seven decades of UN existence, peace operations have gone through major transformations. According to Kenkel, UN peace operations can be divided into five different generations, which are divided on the basis of the operations’ level of force, the type and depth of tasks, and what has been the case of the last generation; increased cooperation between the UN and regional organizations (ibid.) In addition, the nature of conflict matters for understanding the different generations of peace operations. The first generation of peace operations is characterized as traditional peacekeeping operations (observing ceasefires and forcing separation after an interstate conflict) that were legitimized by Chapter VI of the UN Charter. The peacekeeping operations during the Cold War often involved light armed forces that were operating under strict rules of engagement. The focus was mainly on negative peace in which the main objective was to avoid the possibility of a nuclear exchange between the two ideological blocs (ibid).

The shift from the first generation to the second generation took place in the end of the Cold War, both because of an increased demand for peace operations due to the change in the nature

29 of conflicts (from interstate conflicts to intrastate conflicts) and because of an increased supply from the UN (ibid.) The end of the rivalry between the Soviet Union and the U.S. after the Cold War lifted the blockade in the UNSC, and the UN was, in theory, finally ready to act effectively.

The UN response to post-Cold War peace operations was codified in in Boutros-Ghali’s An Agenda for Peace and marks a shift of focus from negative to positive peace (ibid.) In the Agenda for Peace, four overarching tasks for the UN and their allies to undertake were identified and are still relevant today. The different types of UN peace operations are preventive diplomacy, peacemaking, peacekeeping, and peace-building (UN, 1992, para. 6). Preventive diplomacy or conflict prevention is about finding the structural sources in an intrastate or interstate tension and dispute and trying to reinforce the foundations in the society that are falling apart, often trough diplomatic initiatives (ibid., para. 15). It can include setting up early warning systems, information gathering, and conducting analysis. Peacemaking operations are addressing an on-going conflict and is defined as “action[s] to bring hostile parties to agreement, essentially through peaceful means” (ibid., para. 20). Peacekeeping is a strategy deployed in a conflict that has already escalated into a more serious level and can be defined as

“the use of military, police and civilian personnel to lay the foundations for sustainable peace”

(Bellamy, Williams and Griffin, 2010, p. 15). In peacekeeping mission, military force should only be used as a measure of last resort, and if used, it should be a minimum of force necessary to achieve the wanted effect. Peacekeeping is often confused with peace enforcement;

however, the concepts must not be used interchangeably. Peace enforcement can be defined as

“the use of military and other measures to enforce the will of the UN Security Council (ibid., p. 15). In different to peace enforcement, peacekeeping missions require the consent of the host nation and/or the main parties of the conflict. Also, whereby peace enforcement is defined under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, peacekeeping is not to be found in the UN Charter. The term was for the first time used after the UN armed intervention under the tensions over the Suez Chanel in 1956. The then UN Secretary-General, Dag Hammarskjöld jokingly called it “chapter six and a half” because he meant that this kind of UN operations fell between chapter six and seven of the UN Charter (Clark, 1997). Finally, peacebuilding are activities undertaken in a conflict-prone or post-conflict country. The term peace-building emerged through the work of Galtung and was introduced as an official UN strategy in the Agenda for Peace. Boutros-Ghali defined peace-building as “action to prevent disputes from arising between parties, to prevent existing disputes from escalating into conflicts and to limit the spread of the latter when they occur” (UN, 1992, para. 21). It includes a range of activities with an overall aim of

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strengthening national capabilities at all levels through social and economic development.

Contemporary peace-building is often described as liberal peace-building because the principal aim of peacebuilders is to build liberal democracies, which are seen as the most peaceful political structure. Liberal peace theory is coined with Michael Doyle’s empirical study from 1983 that concluded that no liberal democracies had ever gone to war against each other (Miklian, 2014). The idea that liberal democracies are more peaceful in their international relations can furthermore be traced back to the democratic peace theory which is rooted in Kant’s concept of ‘perpetual peace’. The liberal peace theory is based on the ideological assertions of liberalism. The fundamental assumption is that liberal values such as individual freedom, human rights, social justice, and the free market is guaranteed and promoted in a liberal democracy through a constitution that ensures the rule of law and limit the power of the government. Because a liberal democracy promotes social justice, the core idea is that it will lead to long-term peace (Fischer, 2000). Another fundamental assumption is that economic interdependence between liberal democracies creates transnational ties that encourage peaceful relations rather that war. This reasoning is also used to explain why liberal democracies are likely to go to war with autocracies but not with other liberal democracies (ibid.) Finally, a third fundamental assumption is that developed states have the duty to assist vulnerable or failed states to achieve liberal peace (Miklian, 2014).

The first series of liberal peace-building operations to help peace settlement in post-conflict countries were launched in Namibia and Nicaragua in 1989, and soon developed into some sort of a “growth industry” in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War. Between 1989 and 1999, fourteen major peace-building operations were deployed (Paris, 2004, p. 3). In the beginning, the new UN peace-building agenda was greeted with a worldwide optimism which was characterized by inter alia a growing belief in multilateralism. However, as pointed out by Bendaña (2005, p. 6); “optimism began to give way to skepticism when, in the wake of the events in the Balkans and elsewhere, the notion of peacebuilding began to encompass peacekeeping operations”. Non-violent interventions, which is and should be a core element in liberal peace-building, were hardly given a chance and was instead substituted with military interventions labelled as humanitarian interventions (ibid.) This notion was used to legitimize the use of force against a state with the intention of ending violations of human rights. The violent military interventions were often met with counterinsurgency which in turn undermined the efforts to sustain peace. In addition, the peace-building strategies that were employed often consisted of rapid liberalization strategies such as hasty efforts of holding elections and

31 economic reforms that did not address the direct source of the conflict. In some cases, the strategies even produced destabilizing results (Paris, 2011, p. 34).