Why Some States Participate in UN Peace Missions While Others Do Not: An Analysis of Civil-Military Relations and Its Effects on Latin America's Contributions to Peacekeeping Operations

Why do some states deploy troops to support UN missions while others do not? Although short from war, peacekeeping entails a military dimension of foreign policy in which uniformed personnel is deployed to accomplish diplomatic and political means. As such, decisions to commit troops to UN operations must have the implicit support of the armed forces in order to take place. Yet, military backing for peacekeeping participation is not universal; some military institutions are more willing to join such missions than others. This article accounts for variations in terms of peacekeeping commitments by focusing on security doctrines and the degree of integration between military and foreign policy roles. It hypothesizes that countries with externally oriented doctrines and integrated foreign and defense policies are more likely to commit troops to the UN than countries with national security doctrines and segregated military and foreign policy roles. Using evidence from the Latin American region, the paper suggests that the decision to engage in UN operations is the result of doctrinal policies and bureaucratic infighting.     

Reevaluating Peacekeeping Effectiveness: Does Gender Neutrality Inhibit Progress?

Since the adoption of UNSCR 1325, more female peacekeepers are participating in peacekeeping missions than ever before. Nevertheless, the current literature on peacekeeping effectiveness is largely gender neutral, discounting the unique role female peacekeepers may play in peacekeeping operations. This article addresses this missing piece in the literature by assessing how female peacekeepers and locals view the role of women in peacekeeping operations. Using interviews and focus groups conducted with peacekeepers in the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) and original surveys conducted in Liberian communities, it finds that there is an “access gap” that prevents female peacekeepers from fully contributing to the mission’s operations and therefore prevents the peacekeeping mission from reaching its full potential. The findings have broader implications for how to improve peacekeeping missions’ effectiveness moving forward.     

A Silver-Lining: President Johnson and the U.N. Peacekeeping Budget Crisis of 1964–1965 1

Despite the revival of UN peacekeeping after the Cold War, many questions regarding peacekeeping operations remain unanswered. Some of the most complex questions involve the extent to which peacekeeping should be applied, who should pay, and with what privileges, if any. These questions are not new, but also surfaced during the 1960 UN budget crisis ever peacekeeping between the United States and the Soviet Union. President Johnson decided to uphold Kennedy’s promise to apply Article 19 and deprive a state of its General Assembly vote if it did not pay its assessed peacekeeping dues. In the end, however, Johnson retreated on Article 19 in the face of Soviet refusal to pay anything toward peacekeeping. The crisis subsided along with a missed opportunity to deal more conclusively with some of the questions surrounding peacekeeping.     

A Silver-Lining: President Johnson and the U.N. Peacekeeping Budget Crisis of 1964-19651

Despite the revival of UN peacekeeping after the Cold War, many questions regarding peacekeeping operations remain unanswered. Some of the most complex questions involve the extent to which peacekeeping should be applied, who should pay, and with what privileges, if any. These questions are not new, but also surfaced during the 1960 UN budget crisis ever peacekeeping between the United States and the Soviet Union. President Johnson decided to uphold Kennedy's promise to apply Article 19 and deprive a state of its General Assembly vote if it did not pay its assessed peacekeeping dues. In the end, however, Johnson retreated on Article 19 in the face of Soviet refusal to pay anything toward peacekeeping. The crisis subsided along with a missed opportunity to deal more conclusively with some of the questions surrounding peacekeeping.     

Deciding to Keep Peace: An Analysis of International Influences on the Establishment of Third-Party Peacekeeping Missions

Since the end of World War II, and particularly since the end of the Cold War, there has been an expansion in the number of third-party peacekeeping missions established throughout the world. Most of the expansion in peacekeeping missions in the past decade or so has occurred in states experiencing intrastate or civil conflicts. The questions addressed in this study are under what conditions do third-party actors either decide to establish or decide not to establish peacekeeping missions in intrastate disputes, and specifically, what effect do international-level factors have on the likelihood that third-party peacekeeping personnel will be deployed in an intrastate dispute? The previous literature on third-party peacekeeping and interventions is used to derive a set of theoretical arguments and hypotheses regarding the establishment of peacekeeping missions by third-party actors (the United Nations, regional organizations, and ad hoc groups of states) during the post-World War II period. Specifically, I argue that several factors originating at the level of the international system influence the occurrence of third-party peacekeeping missions. The results of statistical analyses of the hypotheses largely support the notion that a set of international-level factors significantly influences the decisions of third-party actors to establish or not establish third-party peacekeeping missions, that international-level factors are more important than state-level factors, that these factors often have different effects on the likelihood of different types of third-party peacekeeping.     

Beyond rwanda and kosovo: The interactive dynamics of international peacekeeping and Ethnic Mobilisation

Within the past few decades there has been a significant increase in multilateral interventions in ethnic conflicts in the name of peacekeeping. Most hope that these operations will assist in conflict resolution and reduce violence. However, recent examples indicate that this may not always be the case. This paper explores why international efforts to contain, curtail and resolve ethnic conflicts may not prove successful and even backfire. This enquiry is addressed by employing a cross-national comparative analysis of the involvement of peacekeeping operations in two recent ethnic conflict situations. A sociological model of mobilisation is systematically applied to the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) in Rwanda (1994) and NATO's Kosovo Force (KFOR) in Kosovo (1999) to determine whether international actors addressed the primary components that led to mobilisation of the contentious parties. This work argues that the key to successful peacekeeping is to address the primary components of violence. The paper synthesises conflict studies with work on social mobilisation theory and research on peacekeeping, offering both theoretical and policy-relevant contributions to understanding the nexus between effective peacekeeping and factors leading to violent mobilisation.     

UN Troop Deployment and Preventing Violence Against Civilians in Darfur

ABSTRACT

Does the presence of UN peacekeeping force lower civilian fatalities at the local level? If it does, is it because of their coercive military capacity or for other reasons such as their roles in monitoring and reporting violent atrocities? To explore these questions, I study the deployment of peacekeeping units in Darfur and its impact on violence against civilians. Using original geocoded data of UN deployments before and after the intervention, I examine what aspects of such deployments impact one-sided civilian killings by government and rebel groups. Results indicate that deploying UN peacekeepers in an area restrains belligerent from targeting civilians. However, the military capacity of peacekeepers is not a significant predictor of violence against civilians. While their ability to defend themselves is extremely important for peacekeepers, these findings caution against the militarization trend in UN peacekeeping and seek to reshift focus on other substantive aspects of peacekeeping.     

Shaping the future of UN peace operations: is there a doctrine in the house?

In the face of an unprecedented surge in United Nations (UN) peacekeeping activity over the past three years—with now almost 100,000 military, police and civilian personnel deployed on four continents in 18 operations—there is a need for the UN to develop a comprehensive doctrine that better defines what modern UN peacekeeping has become and that covers the full range of civilian peacebuilding activities that are now a standard feature of Security Council mandates. This paper serves as a primer and proposes an agenda for debate on such a doctrine. It summarises evolutions in thinking and practice over the past 15 years. It also highlights key conceptual challenges and political fault lines to be reconciled in order for a new comprehensive doctrine to enjoy broad support of the UN's 192 Member States, while still providing relevant guidance to thousands of personnel on the front-lines of the effort to help rebuild war-torn states.     

Cross-Cultural Considerations in Complex Peace Operations

Peace operations create the potential for culturally"based problems in interactions among different organizational actors and with local populations. Because it is impossible to catalog all of the different groups and cultures that may participate in peace operations, it is necessary to develop a general approach to culture and peacekeeping. The author presents a view of culture as a model for understanding and action, and describes some ways in which cultural models are manifest. Specific cultural differences between military and humanitarian participants in peace operations are discussed, as are areas of ptential cultural concern for interaction with local populations. Suggestions about approaching these cross"cultural considerations are offered.     

Performance under ambiguity: International organization performance in UN peacekeeping

This article argues that ambiguity—indeterminacy between alternative interpretations of a phenomenon—is inherent in the peace operations field, and makes defining and assessing the UN’s performance problematic. Applying Gutner and Thompson’s framework for international organization performance (IOP) research to UN peacekeeping, it argues further that the relationship between process performance and outcomes in peacekeeping is irreducibly ambiguous, and that ambiguity has significant implications for efforts to measure and improve peacekeeping performance. To demonstrate this, the article reviews methods employed by the UN to measure its peacekeeping performance, arguing that the primary method employed—results-based budgeting (RBB)—is inherently unable to cope with the challenges of performance ambiguity. Its adoption and continued use despite its evident shortcomings are due to RBB’s legitimacy in the wider organizational field of international public management in which the UN Secretariat, and UN peacekeeping, perform. Finally, the article considers recent efforts to improve process performance in UN peacekeeping, and discuss the ways in which so-called ‘integration’ reforms central to such efforts are a means of reducing and managing the ambiguity inherent in peacekeeping.     

Military Cultures and Force Employment in Peace Operations

Although hundreds of thousands of soldiers from different national contingents are deployed every year in multinational peace operations, no previous study has examined differences in peacekeeping practices along national lines. This paper first documents systematically differences in the way national contingents behave during peace operations in their respective area of operation. In a second step, it argues that these differences in behavior are largely consistent with the most important traits of each army's military culture. Based on extensive fieldwork conducted between 2007 and 2014 in Lebanon and Afghanistan, the paper shows how, within each mission, Italian soldiers prioritized humanitarian activities, while the French engaged in more patrolling activities, despite being both contingents deployed under similar conditions. These variations in behavior are consistent with the way French and Italian soldiers perceive the mission and context in which they deployed. And both the differences in behavior and perception are in line with the respective armies' military cultures. This paper contributes to the debate on the role of ideational factors in international politics and in particular to the ongoing discussion on strategic and military cultures.     

EU member state participation in military operations: a configurational comparative analysis

Contrary to what the EU’s image as a civilian power suggests, the EU member states have had 50,000–100,000 troops deployed outside their home countries for most of the post-Cold-War period. Although the vast majority of these troops were active in operations with a strong European presence, the member states’ patterns of military engagement differ significantly. This study provides a systematic analysis of the member states’ contributions to military operations. More specifically, it examines which (combinations of) conditions consistently led to participation in EUFOR Congo, UNIFIL II, EUFOR Chad, the 2011 military intervention in Libya and the air strikes against the Islamic State. Methodologically, it builds on most different similar outcome/most similar different outcome and qualitative comparative analysis. The results of the analysis show that four conditions account for the bulk of the member states’ patterns of military engagements: military resources, competing deployments, UN peacekeeping tradition and regional trade.     

印度与冷战后联合国维和行动

参与联合国维和已成为多年来印度外交政策的重要组成部分。冷战后,随着国际格局的变化以及印度外交政策调整,印度参与联合国维和行动力度进一步加大并出现新的趋向。印度通过参加维和在一定程度上促进了冲突地区的和平与稳定。不过,印度参与联合国维和也有着较为明显的战略利益诉求,印度希望通过此保障自身地缘政治利益、促进与他国的政治联系、遏制巴基斯坦以及争当联合国安理会常任理事国。     

Which type of international organizations can settle civil wars?

International organizations (IOs) take on an increasing share of civil war mediation around the world. The determinants of IO mediation effectiveness remain poorly understood, partly because prior research has not adequately captured the institutional heterogeneity of peace-brokering IOs. To explore how mediation effectiveness depends on institutional variation, I combine newly gathered data on the design of 13 peace-brokering IOs with existing data on 109 civil war mediation episodes in the 1975-2004 period. I find that IOs with institutionalized capabilities to deploy field missions, such as peacekeeping operations, outperform other IOs as mediators of civil wars, whereas information-gathering capacity does not yield a significant advantage. The results suggest that IO enforcement assistance has a forward-looking effect: the ability to credibly signal, ex ante, that peacekeeping or monitoring forces will be deployed to enforce an agreement, helps IOs shape negotiations long before forces are actually deployed. Reaffirming the credible commitment theory of conflict resolution, the study demonstrates that there is considerable variation among external guarantors, which explains why some IOs can shift civil war disputants away from violent bargaining strategies whereas other cannot.     

The association between Ugandan adolescents’ viewing of specific television genres and sex-related normative beliefs and behaviours

Growing evidence in Western nations indicates that exposure to high levels of sexual media content influences adolescents’ sexual attitudes and behaviours in those countries. Although media in many sub-Saharan markets contain increasingly higher levels of sexual content, little research has investigated the effects of that content on adolescents’ HIV-related risk and protective behaviours. This project used cultivation theory to examine Ugandan adolescents’ media use, and to test the relationship between their exposure to specific television genres and their sex-related normative beliefs and behaviours. Three hundred and sixty secondary school students from four purposively sampled schools filled out a questionnaire about their television viewing, their beliefs about the prevalence of sexual intercourse among their peers, and their own sexual behaviours. Preliminary evidence of relationships between watching comedy and cartoon programming, and high estimates of the proportion of adolescents who engage in sexual intercourse, were observed. Watching comedy programming and non- African programming was associated with the higher likelihood to have ever had sexual intercourse.     

Withering consent,but mutual dependency: UN peace operations and African assertiveness

Consent has always been a cornerstone of UN peacekeeping. However, consent in peace operations is often elusive, as recent events in a number of African countries, where the heads of state have explicitly requested the departure or the downsizing of UN missions, have demonstrated. This paper uses evidence from Côte d'Ivoire and Chad to explore the game of conflicting priorities and mutual dependency that underlines UN peacekeeping missions' relations with African host states. It argues that such a dynamic renders consent ambiguous and volatile. African leaders maximise possible benefits that they can obtain from a UN mission, while minimising the potential menace that ‘liberal peace’-style peace-building may pose to their rule. Withdrawal of consent may be facilitated when alternative ‘resources of extraversion’ become available, such as those provided by natural goods or by emerging commercial players. The current situation poses a difficult dilemma to the UN, balancing between keeping peacekeeping missions on the ground with limited or no consent, or leaving and risking breaking its implicit engagements with the civilian population.     

Female Peacekeepers and Gender Balancing: Token Gestures or Informed Policymaking?

Since the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 1325 (2000), which is referenced in most of the mandates for peacekeeping authorizations and renewals as of its adoption, UN peacekeeping forces have begun a process of gender balancing. While we have seen an increase in the numbers of female peacekeepers during the decade 2000–2010 and variation in the distribution patterns of female military personnel, we do not know if female military peacekeepers are deploying to areas that are safest or to areas with the greatest need for gender-balanced international involvement. Because the decision-making authority in the allocation of peacekeeping forces rests with the troop-contributing countries, which might not have bought into the gender balancing and mainstreaming initiatives mandated by the UN Security Council, we propose and find evidence that female military personnel tend to deploy to areas where there is least risk. They tend not to deploy where they may be most needed—where sexual violence and gender equity has been a major problem—and we find only a modest effect of having specific language in the mandates related to gender issues.     

The Peacekeeping–Peacemaking Dilemma

Peacekeeping has become an increasingly prominent tool for conflict management and there has been an accompanying explosion of scholarly studies on peacekeeping. Yet, such analyses typically ignore the process of getting a peace agreement itself, missing the potential impact that a peacekeeping force might have in facilitating a peace agreement between protagonists. In this paper, we explore among both enduring rivalries and civil wars whether the presence of a peacekeeping force enhances the prospects for gaining an agreement between protagonists. The academic literature suggests opposing logics: one suggesting the desirability of peacekeeping forces while the other implies that they may be counterproductive. We consider whether the presence of peacekeeping enhances or inhibits mediation and negotiation attempts. We also explore whether the success rates for international mediation and negotiation efforts in those conflicts are affected by the presence of peacekeeping forces. Our results suggest support for the pessimistic view of peacekeeping as it discourages diplomatic efforts and decreases the likelihood of achieving a settlement, although the results are clearer for interstate conflict than for civil wars.     

The peacekeeping capacities of African regional organisations

This paper assesses the various peace and security mechanisms that African regional organisations are establishing and other measures that they are taking to enhance their preparedness. In the mid-1990s, the United Nations (UN) Security Council responded to the widely perceived failures of several UN peacekeeping operations by encouraging regional arrangements and agencies to assume a greater role in the promotion of peace and security. As of December 2001, four African organisations had authorised 17 peacekeeping missions. Most of them have been beset by serious and sustained operational and political shortcomings. Recognising their limitations and the vacuum created by Security Council inaction, these and other organisations have undertaken various initiatives to improve on past performance and to prepare for future engagements. A review of their decision-making processes, staffing, mission planning and support, peacekeeping training and financial resources suggests that, while they have made some progress, most organisations are still far from being able to take on the responsibilities that the international community would like them to assume.     

China views the revised US-Japan Defense Guidelines: popping the cork?

This paper considers whether an alliance can have a reassuranceeffect on a third-party. It uses hypotheses derived from balance-of-powerrealism and a revised version of balance-of-threat theory calledbalance-of-malevolence theory. Using the revised 1997 US–JapanDefense Guidelines as a primary case, Chinese reactions arefound to provide greater support for balance-of-malevolencetheory. Side-evidence from Japan's decision in the early 1990sto begin deploying troops overseas to participate in humanitarianand UN peacekeeping operations, and its dispatch of naval shipsto the Indian Ocean in the wake of 9-11, confirm the centralityof Chinese concerns about Japan's disposition as a militarypower and the reassurance value of the US alliance and other‘containment frameworks’ such as UN peacekeeping.This also suggests that the demonstration effect of benign overseasdeployments can be effective in overcoming negative attributionsabout a state's disposition as a military power.