Peacekeeping and critical theory

Abstract

A deconstruction of the role of peace support operations suggests that they sustain a particular order of world politics that privileges the rich and powerful states in their efforts to control or isolate unruly parts of the world. As a management device it has grown in significance as the strategic imperatives of the post-industrialized, capitalist world have neutered the universal pretensions of the United Nations. Drawing on the work of Robert Cox and Mark Duffield, this essay adopts a critical theory perspective to argue that peace support operations serve a narrow, problem-solving purpose – to doctor the dysfunctions of the global political economy within a framework of liberal imperialism. Two dynamics in world politics might be exploited to mobilize a counter-hegemonic transformation in global governance. First, a radical change in the global trade system and its problematic institutions will create opportunities to emancipate the weak from economic hegemony. Second, future network wars are likely to require increasingly subtle and flexible teams, similar to disaster relief experts, to supply preventive action, economic aid and civilian protection. This might only be achieved by releasing peace support operations from the state-centric control system, and making them answerable to more transparent, more democratic and accountable multinational institutions.

Acknowledgement

Some parts of this essay appeared in David Held and Anthony McGrew (eds.), Governing Globalization: Power, Authority and Global Governance, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2002 and are reproduced by permission.

Notes

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Nicholas J. Wheeler, Saving Strangers: Humanitarian Intervention in International Society, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000; Oliver Ramsbotham and Tom Woodhouse, Humanitarian Intervention in Contemporary Conflict: A Reconceptualization, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996.

Examples include: John Gerard Ruggie ‘The UN and the Collective Use of Force’, in Michael Pugh (ed.), The UN Peace and Force, London: Frank Cass, 1997, pp.1–20; Dominick Donald, ‘Neutrality, Impartiality and UN Peacekeeping at the Beginning of the 21st Century, International Peacekeeping, Vol.9, No.4, winter 2002, pp.21–38.

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John MacKinlay, Globalisation and Insurgency, Adelphi Paper 352, Oxford: Oxford University Press for the International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2002.

Stephen Kinloch, Between Ideal and Reality: The United Nations and the Idea of an International Permanent Military Volunteer Force (1945–1995), London: Frank Cass (forthcoming, 2004).

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Roland Paris, At War's End: Building Peace After Civil Conflict, Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press (forthcoming, 2004).

François Debrix, Re-Envisioning Peacekeeping: The United Nations and the Mobilization of Ideology, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press (Borderlines series No.13), 1999.

This is not to imply that these two founts of inspiration would themselves seek to be bracketed together intellectually. Cox has a background in international political economy, and Duffield in international public policy, but to this author their ideas are complementary.

For Cox's conception of critical theory in International Relations, extending the knowledge-society nexus elaborated by Max Horkheimer, Jürgen Habermas and the Frankfurt school, see: Michael G. Schechter, ‘Critiques of Coxian Theory: Background to a Conversation’, in Robert W. Cox with Schechter, The Political Economy of a Plural World: Critical Reflections on Power, Morals and Civilization, London: Routledge (RIPE series), 2002, pp.1–25.

Cox, ‘Social Forces, States and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory’, Millennium, Vol.10, No.2, 1981, pp.128–9.

Note, however, that Burton is also critical of peacekeeping as an approach that fails to deal with underlying issues; John W. Burton, Violence Explained, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997, p.75.

Mark Duffield, Global Governance and the New Wars: The Merging of Development and Security, London: Zed Books, 2001. See also, Herfried Münkler, ‘The Wars of the 21st Century’, International Review of the Red Cross, Vol.85, No.849, March 2003, pp.7–22.

Duffield (n.15 above).

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See, e.g., Frederick H. Fleitz, Jr., Peacekeeping Fiascoes of the 1990s: Causes, Solutions, and U.S. Interests, Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002.

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Duffield (n.15 above), p.3.

David Chandler, Bosnia: Faking Democracy after Dayton. London: Pluto Press, 1999; Michael Pugh and Neil Cooper with Jonathan Goodhand, War Economies in a Regional Context: Challenges of Transformation, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2003, ch.5; Jens Sörensen, ‘Balkanism and the New Radical Interventionism: A Structural Critique’, International Peacekeeping, Vol.9, No.1, 2002, pp.1–22.

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Duffield (n.15 above), p.37.

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Paris, ‘Echoes of the mission civiliatrice: Peacekeeping in the post-cold war era’, in Newman and Richmond (n.25 above); Pugh and Cooper (see n.30 above).

Duffield (n.15 above), p.38.

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Schmidl (see n.17 above), pp.18, n.1 and 20, n.31; Peter Viggo Jakobsen, Western Use of Coercive Diplomacy After the Cold War: A Challenge for Theory and Practice. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998.

Tony Blair, cited in ‘A New Generation Draws the Line’, Newsweek, 19 April 1999.

Cox (see n.12 above), p.33.

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Ibid.

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Duffield (n.15 above).

Roland Paris, ‘Echoes of the mission civiliatrice: Peacekeeping in the post-cold war era’, in Newman and Richmond (eds) (see n.25 above), pp.100–118.

James Mayall, ‘The Concept of Humanitarian Intervention Revisited’, in Albrecht Schnabel and Ramesh Thakur (eds.), Kosovo and the Challenge of Humanitarian Intervention: Selective Indignation, Collective Action and International Citizenship, Tokyo: UN University Press, 2000, p.326; David N. Gibbs, ‘Realpolitik and Humanitarian Intervention: The Case of Somalia’, International Politics, Vol.37, No.1, March 200, pp.41–55; Chomsky (n.47 above), ch.3.

Keith Krause and Andrew Latham, ‘Constructing Non-Prolferation and Arms Control: The Norms of Western Practice’, in Krause (ed.), Culture and Security: Multilateralism, Arms Control and Security Building, London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 1998, pp.23–54.

D. Bryer, Comment in World Disasters Report, Geneva: International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, 1995, p.25.

Jakobsen, ‘National Interest, Humanitarianism or CNN: What Triggers UN Peace Enforcement after the Cold War?’ Journal of Peace Research, Vol.33, No.2, 1996, pp.44–76.

Duffield, ‘NGO Relief in War Zones: Towards an Analysis of the New Aid Paradigm’, Third World Quarterly, Vol.18, No.3, 1999, pp.527–42.

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Laura Neack, ‘UN Peace-keeping: In the Interest of Community or Self?’ Journal of Peace Research, Vol.32, No.2, 1995, pp.81–96.

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Wheeler (n.3 above), pp.8–10, and ‘Humanitarian Intervention after Kosovo: Emergent Norm, Moral Duty or the Coming Anarchy?’, International Affairs, Vol.77, No.1, 2001, pp.113–28.

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Kofi Annan, ‘Annual Report of the Secretary-General’, UN Doc. SG/SM7136 GA/9596, 20 September 1999; Wheeler (n.3 above), pp.12–13.

Cox (n.12 above), p.36.

Zygmunt Bauman, Globalisation: The Human Consequences, Cambridge: Polity, 1998.

Cox (n.12 above), pp.40, 186ff.

See, for example, ‘A Citizens' Agenda for Reform of the Global Economic System’, drawn up by the US Friends of the Earth, Third World Network and US Institute for Policy Studies, December 1998; The Earth Charter Initiative, ‘The Earth Charter’, Costa Rica, March 2000, para.10c, accessed at www.earthcharter.org/draft/charter.htm.

George Monbiot, The Age of Consent, London: Flamingo, 2003.

Kinloch (see n.7 above).

Cox (n.12 above), p. 86.

Paul Rogers, Losing Control: Global Security in the Twenty-First Century, London: Pluto Press, 2000.

Cox (n.12 above), pp.39–40.