Portugal: An Instrumental Approach to Peace Support Operations

Abstract

Until recently, in per capita terms, Portugal was one of the most significant European contributors to international United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations around the world. In the last few years, European Union and NATO missions and operations have topped deployment to UN operations. One can thus state that participation in peace support operations (PSO) has become a lodestar of Portuguese defence and foreign policies. The range of forces deployed, as well as the geographical diversity of deployment attest to the ambition and effort made by the Portuguese governments in becoming relevant in international affairs through PSO in the last 30 years. Given the limitations of a small power as Portugal, specialisation in the field of PSO is an asset for its positioning on the international scene, endowing it with a more active voice in matters of collective security and access to leadership positions.

Keywords::

• peace support operations
• Portugal
• peacekeeping
• armed forces
• United Nations
• NATO
• European Union

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to the EEG for providing me financial support and I am grateful to the reviewers of the manuscript for their thoughtful and detailed comments.

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14782804.2014.978746

Notes

¹ The concept of Peace Support Operations will be used here, because it is a more comprehensive and flexible concept, instead of the traditional concept of UN peacekeeping. PSO engage in organised multinational efforts and involve mainly military personnel—but also a broad range of civilians and NGO personnel—to contain conflict, redress the peace and create an environment to support reconciliation, rebuilding and facilitate the transition to legitimate governance. That is because, strictly speaking, according to the UN Capstone Doctrine, peacekeeping is a ‘technique designed to preserve the peace, however fragile, where fighting has been halted, and to assist in implementing agreements achieved by the peacemakers’ (DPKO, 2008, 18). Peacekeeping has also been used as a generic term, as for example within the UN itself. In the DPKO, peacekeeping embraces a broad spectrum of activities to maintain international peace and security. As Tardy explains: ‘Strictly speaking, “peacekeeping” refers to “traditional peacekeeping”, the deployment of neutral military forces between two armed factions to supervise a ceasefire in a non-coercive and consent-based way’ (Tardy 2004, 2). In peacekeeping operations, while the nature of the force is essentially military, it operates under the peacekeeping regimes principles of consent, impartiality and non-use of force developed especially during the launching of UNEF I (UN Emergency Force I). UN peacekeeping is based on the assumption that the management of violence, both in internal and international conflicts, can be achieved without resorting to the use of force or enforcement measures (Dombroski 2006, 23). In truth, peacekeeping no longer corresponds to that rather restrictive notion, since, as the same UN document reckons, it is no longer limited to the traditional functions of observing truces, ceasefires and separating warring parties, but it works, in a much broader sense, to ‘lay the foundations for sustainable peace’ (DPKO 2008, 18; see Findlay 2002). In this article, peacekeeping and PSO will be used interchangeably. The existing literature on Portugal's participation in international PSO is very limited and non-existent at international scholarly level. The exception is the most exhaustive study carried out so far under the direction of A. Moreira, Portugal e as Operações de Paz, 2010. See also Pinto (2014).

² To this date, Lisbon has deployed to 56 NATO missions, to 21 EU operations and missions and to 37 UN operations.

³ Although the participation of small states in PSO is not the scope of this article, more recent works on this subject are Heng (2012), Krishnasamy (2003) and Bin Ahmad (2002). On the Nordic PK, see, for instance, the entire issue of International Peacekeeping, 14(4), August 2007; Jakobsen (1998, 2006) and Bergman (2004).

⁴ It terminated a period of Cold War controversy over UN membership, allowing pro-U.S. countries to join along with several Soviet satellite countries.

⁵ Interviews with Nuno Pinheiro Torres (Head) and Henrique Castanheira of the Ministry of National Defence (DGPDN) and Gen. M. Branco, Lisbon, 16 October 2013. See also testimony of Portuguese officials and statesmen in EMGFA (n.d.).

⁶ The largest deployment of military forces abroad was during 2000/2001 with the simultaneous involvement of military units in three operations: SFOR/Bosnia, KFOR/Kosovo and UNTAET/East Timor.

⁷ Email interview with N. Pinheiro Torres, Head of DGPDN, Ministry of National Defence, 28 July 2014.

⁸ Amongst various officers, the most important was Major-Gen. Martins Branco's as Peacekeeping Affairs Officer in the period 2001–2002.