The ‘next stage’ in peace operations theory?

Abstract

To date, peace operations have been under-theorized. Where they have been studied conceptually, this essay argues, peace operations have been viewed through the lens of problem-solving theory. Although such approaches are useful and important, particularly because they help to guide future action, they provide only partial explanations and limit the scope of creative thinking and practice. This essay calls for a new stage of theoretical thought informed by critical perspectives. It argues that problem-solving and critical approaches to peace operations can be distinguished along three lines: their purpose, their understanding of the social world and their position on the relationship between theory and practice. It argues that only a broadening and deepening of the study of peace operations can move the study and practice of peace operations beyond its current, problematic, state.

Acknowledgements

This essay is partly based on a paper entitled ‘Peacekeeping in Global Politics’ presented at the annual BISA conference held at the LSE in December 2002. Sections of the essay are based on research conducted for Alex J. Bellamy, Paul Williams and Stuart Griffin, Understanding Peacekeeping (Cambridge: Polity, 2004). I would like to thank Paul Williams, Roland Bleiker and Mike Pugh for their helpful comments.

Notes

Alan James, Peacekeeping in International Politics, Basingstoke: Macmillan, for the IISS, 1990, pp.13–14.

See for instance Jocelyn Coulon, Soldiers of Diplomacy: The United Nations, Peacekeeping and the New World Order, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998; Paul Diehl, International Peacekeeping, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994; and Luc Reychler and Thania Puffenholz (eds.), Peacebuilding: A Field Guide, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2001.

See for instance, Nicholas J. Wheeler, Saving Strangers: Humanitarian Intervention in International Society, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000; Christine Gray, International Law and the Use of Force, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000: Simon Chesterman, Just War or Just Peace? Humanitarian Intervention and International Law, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001; and Danesh Sarooshi, The United Nations and the Development of Collective Security, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Roland Paris, ‘Broadening the Study of Peace Operations’, International Studies Review, Vol.2, No.3, 2000, p.27.

Robert Cox, ‘Social Forces, States and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory’, Millennium, Vol.10, No.2, 1981, pp.126–55.

The idea of a ‘next stage’ is borrowed from Andrew Linklater, ‘The Question of the Next Stage in International Relations Theory: A Critical-Theoretical Point of View’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol.21, No.1, 1992. Taking its lead from the currently disparate ‘critical’ literature on peace operations, this essay tends to focus on the Frankfurt School variant, with its interest in the pursuit of emancipation. Nevertheless, it is important to bear in mind that there are alternative ‘critical’ approaches that for one reason or another do not share this commitment. I am grateful to Roland Bleiker for pointing this out to me.

See David Keen, ‘War and Peace: What's the Difference?’, in A. Adebajo and C.L. Sriram (eds.), Managing Armed Conflicts in the Twenty-First Century, London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 2001, pp.1–22.

The liberal basis of instrumentalism is discussed further below. It is laid out in more detail in Roland Paris, ‘International Peacebuilding and the “Mission Civilisatrice”’, Review of International Studies, Vol.28, No.4, 2002.

Indar Jit Rikhye, The Theory and Practice of Peacekeeping, London: Hurst, 1984, pp.221, 234, and 245.

A theme that Rikhye had developed earlier in Indar Jit Rikhye, Michael Harbottle and Bjorn Egge, The Thin Blue Line: International Peacekeeping and its Future, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1974.

Boutros Boutros-Ghali, An Agenda for Peace, New York: UN, 1992, p.5.

See for instance, James Allan, Peacekeeping: Outspoken Observations by a Field Officer, Westport, CT: Praeger, 1996, and John Mackinlay, ‘Beyond the Logjam: A Doctrine for Complex Emergencies’, Small Wars and Insurgencies, Vol.9, 1, 1998, pp.114–31 and ‘Mission Failure’, The World Today, Vol.56, No.11, 2000, pp.9–11.

James (see n.1 above), pp.1–8.

Paul Diehl, Daniel Druckman and James Wall, ‘International Peacekeeping and Conflict Resolution: A Taxonomic Analysis with Implications’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol.42, No.1, 1998, pp.35–55.

Andrei Demurenko and Alexander Nikitin, ‘Basic Terminology and Concepts in International Peacekeeping Operations: An Analytic Review’, Low Intensity Conflict and Law Enforcement, Vol.6, No.1, 1997, pp.111–26.

Marrack Goulding, ‘The Evolution of United Nations Peacekeeping’, International Affairs, Vol.69, No.3, 1993, pp.451–65; David Segal, ‘Five Phases of United Nations Peacekeeping: An Evolutionary Typology’, Journal of Political and Military Sociology, Vol.22, No.2, 1995, pp.65–79; John Mackinlay and Jarat Chopra, ‘Second Generation Multinational Operations’, Washington Quarterly, Vol.15, No.1, 1992, pp.113–131; and Steven Ratner, The New UN Peacekeeping: Building Peace in Lands of Conflict After the Cold War, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996.

See Georges Abi-Saab, The United Nations Operation in the Congo 1960–1964, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978.

Alex J. Bellamy, Paul Williams and Stuart Griffin, Understanding Peacekeeping, Cambridge: Polity, 2004.

This is one of the key arguments of Bellamy, Williams and Griffin, Understanding Peacekeeping.

A.B. Featherston, ‘Peacekeeping, Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding: A Reconsideration of Theoretical Frameworks’, in Tom Woodhouse and Oliver Ramsbotham (eds.), Peacekeeping and Conflict Resolution, London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 2000, pp.190–218; A.B. Featherston, Towards a Theory of United Nations Peacekeeping, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995: A.B. Featherston, ‘Putting the Peace Back into Peacekeeping: Theory Must Inform Practice’, International Peacekeeping, Vol.1, No.1, 1994, pp.3–29.

Stephen Ryan, ‘United Nations Peacekeeping: A Matter of Principles’, in Woodhouse and Ramsbotham (eds.), Peacekeeping and Conflict Resolution, pp.27–47.

See John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, ‘An Unnecessary War’, Foreign Policy, issue 134, 2003, pp.51–61.

Michael Mandelbaum, ‘Foreign Policy as Social Work’, Foreign Affairs, Vol.75, No.1, 1996, pp.16–32 and Henry Kissinger, ‘Humanitarian Intervention has its Hazards’, International Herald Tribune, 14 Dec. 1992.

Stephen John Stedman, ‘The New Interventionists’, Foreign Affairs, Vol.72, No.1, 1993, pp.1–16.

Edward Luttwak, ‘Give War a Chance’, Foreign Affairs, Vol.78, No.4, 1999, pp.36–45.

See for example, Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, and Martha Finnemore, National Interests in International Society, London: Cornell University Press, 1996.

That the preservation of order can be in the interests of great powers was raised by Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics, London: Macmillan, 1977.

Caroline Thomas, ‘Introduction’, in Caroline Thomas and Peter Wilkin (eds.), Globalization, Human Security and the African Experience, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1999, p.3.

United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 1994, New York: Oxford University Press, 1994, p.23.

Jurgen Habermas, ‘Bestiality and Humanity: A War on the Border between Law and Morality’, in William Joseph Buckley (ed.), Kosovo: Contending Voices on Balkan Interventions, Grand Rapids, MICH: William B. Eerdmans, 2000, p.313.

See Ken Booth, ‘Security and Emancipation’, Review of International Studies, Vol.17, No.4, 1991, pp.313–26; Ken Booth, ‘Security and Self: Reflections of a Fallen Realist’, in Keith Krause and Michael C. Williams (eds.), Critical Security Studies: Concepts and Cases, London: UCL Press, 1997, pp.83–119; and Richard Wyn Jones, Security, Strategy and Critical Theory, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1999.

The meaning and emancipatory potential of ‘human security’ is highly contested. For an account of human security that diminishes its emancipatory potential by framing it in traditionalist terms see Nicholas Thomas and William Tow, ‘The Utility of Human Security: Sovereignty and Humanitarian Intervention’, Security Dialogue, Vol.33, No.2, 2002. For a response from a ‘critical’ perspective see Alex J. Bellamy and Matt McDonald, ‘“The Utility of Human Security”: Which Humans? What Security? A Reply to Thomas and Tow’, Security Dialogue, Vol.33, No.3, 2002.

Ken Booth, ‘Three Tyrannies’, in Tim Dunne and Nicholas J. Wheeler (eds.), Human Rights in Global Politics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, p.43.

This term is John Vasquez's. See John Vasquez, ‘The Post-Positivist Debate: Reconstructing Scientific Enquiry and International Relations Theory after Enlightenment's Fall’, in Ken Booth and Steve Smith (ed.), International Relations Theory Today, Cambridge: Polity, 1995, p.226.

R.J. Vincent, Nonintervention and International Order, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974, p.13.

There are notable exceptions, in particular: Susan Woodward, Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution After the Cold War, Washington DC: The Brookings Institution, 1995.

Raimo Väyrynen, ‘Preventive Action: Failure in Yugoslavia’, in Michael Pugh (ed.), The UN, Peace and Force, London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 1997, pp.21–42.

See the chapters on the Yugoslav wars in: Lori Fisler Damrosch (ed.), Enforcing Restraint: Collective Intervention in Internal Conflicts, New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1993; William Shawcross, Deliver Us From Evil: Warlords and Peacekeepers in a World of Endless Conflict, London: Bloomsbury, 2000; Thomas Weiss, Military–Civilian Interactions: Intervening in Humanitarian Crises, Lanham: Rowman and Littlefied, 1999; and William J. Durch (ed.), UN Peacekeeping, American Policy and the Uncivil Wars of the 1990s, London: Macmillan, 1997.

See for instance, Kori Schake, ‘NATO Chronicle: New World Disorder’, Joint Forces Quarterly, Spring 1999, pp.18–25 and Robert Kaplan, Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History, New York: Vintage Books, 1984.

Kaldor, New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999.

See Paul Williams, ‘Indifference and Intervention: International Society and Human Rights in Africa’, International Journal of Human Rights, Vol.5, No.2, 2001, pp.140–53.

Rita Abrahamsen, Disciplining Democracy: Development Discourse and Good Governance in Africa, London: Zed Books, 2000.

Vesna Bojicic and Mark Kaldor, ‘The “Abnormal” Economy of Bosnia-Herzegovina’, in Carl Ulrik-Schierup (ed.), Scramble for the Balkans: Nationalism, Globalism, and the Political Economy of Reconstruction, London: Macmillan, 1999, p.98.

Paris (see n.4 above), p.30.

Cited by Robert C. Solomon, ‘Nietzsche ad hominem: Perspectivism, Personality and Ressentiment’ in Bernd Magnus and Kathleen M. Higgins (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, p.185.

See for instance, Oliver Richmond, ‘A Genealogy of Peacemaking: The Creation and Re-Creation of Order’, Alternatives, Vol.26, No.3, 2001, pp.317–48; Roland Paris (see n.8 above), pp.637–56; and Mark Duffield, Global Governance and the New Wars: The Merging of Development and Security, London: Zed Books, 2001.

Richmond (see n.46 above), p.326.

Mark Duffield, ‘NGO Relief in War Zones: Towards an Analysis of the New Aid Paradigm’, Third World Quarterly, Vol.18, No.3, 1997, pp.527–42.

Duffield (see n.46 above), p.16.

See for instance, the World Bank, The State in a Changing World: The World Development Report 1997, Washington DC: World Bank, 1997; World Bank, A Framework for World Bank Involvement in Post-Conflict Reconstruction, Washington DC: World Bank, 1997; Alex J. Bellamy, ‘Security Sector Reform: Problems and Prospects’, Pacifica Review, Vol.15, No.1, 2003 forthcoming; Nicole Ball, Spreading Good Practices in Security Sector Reform: Policy Options for the British Government, London: Saferworld, 1998; and Neil Cooper and Michael Pugh, Security Sector Transformation in Post-Conflict Societies, London: CDS Working Papers, 2002.

Paris (see n.8 above), p.637.

Ibid. p.638.

Christopher Clapham, ‘Rwanda: The Perils of Peacemaking’, Journal of Peace Research, Vol.35, No.2, 1998, pp.193–210.

This is already partially underway. See Clapham, ‘Rwanda’ and Roland Paris, ‘Peacebuilding in Central America: Reproducing the Sources of Conflict?’, International Peacekeeping, Vol.9, No.4, 2002, pp.39–68.

Richmond, ‘A Genealogy of Peacemaking’, pp.327–36.

Ibid. p.335.

This line of reasoning is discussed in much more detail in Alex J. Bellamy, ‘Pragmatic Solidarism and the Dilemmas of Humanitarian Intervention’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol.31, No.3, 2002, pp.473–98.

Oliver Richmond has also attempted to create a ‘critical’ approach to peace, which he labels ‘fourth generation’. See Oliver P. Richmond, Maintaining Order, Making Peace, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.