B.K. Greener

UNPOL: UN police as peacekeepers

There have been momentous shifts underway in the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations. The UN Police Division, long back the ‘poor cousin’ of the military side of the house, has been elevated to a new status. In the new institutional environment, the Division is now embedded within a rule of law and security institutions pillar, with its own Assistant Secretary-General, and which is increasingly recognised as being central to the successful conduct of UN peacekeeping operations. This paper looks at the rise of the Police division within the UN family, and assesses some of the challenges currently facing the UNs unprecedented push to use police to a much greater and deeper extent in very challenging contemporary peace operations.

The Rise of Policing in Peace Operations

Civilian police have become such a sought-after commodity for use in peace support operations that the phrase ‘international police peacekeeping’ is now in common usage in the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations. The nomenclature is, however, rather misleading, as police personnel may now be tasked with peace enforcement and peacebuilding tasks in addition to more traditional peacekeeping roles. Police personnel bring new capabilities and skill sets to bear in peace operations, and operational difficulties regarding quantity, quality and standardization are beginning to be addressed. However, concerns over the relevance of current policing models to post-conflict settings suggest that future international policing efforts would benefit from a closer consideration of how to balance the demands of international and local policing norms.

The New International Policing

Although its roots can be traced back to Cyprus, Namibia, the move to reform in El Salvador and the use of executive powers in Cambodia and Haiti, the ‘new international policing’ truly arrived with the ambitious policing mandates undertaken in Kosovo and East Timor. It was then further consolidated by the deployments in the Pacific — particularly RAMSI — and its efficacy is currently being sorely tested in Iraq and Afghanistan. As far as operational considerations are concerned this new international policing involves the increased willingness, capability and ability of actors to police within others’ jurisdictions in certain situations, both in terms of the provision of temporary policing forces and in terms of longer-term developmental programmes. This operational shift has been sketched out in part by the previous chapters but is summarised in more thematic terms in the section below on the challenges that policing brings to international relations.

Revisiting the politics of post-conflict peacebuilding: reconciling the liberal agenda?

There is a growing body of literature dedicated to critiquing liberal peacebuilding. This paper revisits the current post-conflict peacebuilding agenda in light of these critiques, outlining how both proponents and opponents perceive three core principles, that is, democratisation, economic liberalisation and state-building. Drawing attention to the emergence of arguments for alternative approaches, this paper argues that recent developments provide some hope for reconciling proponents of the liberal agenda with their growing legion of critics.

Liberalism and the Use of Force: Core Themes and Conceptual Tensions

Since the mid-1980s, a number of authors have asserted that there is a special kind of relationship between democratic states; or that liberalism promotes peaceful relations between liberal states; or that there exists a hierarchy of states in international society with liberal states at the apex of that hierarchy. Many of these theories touch on issues of liberalism, liberal states, and the use of military force. Yet they still do not directly address the key question of: when, and for what ends, liberals believe that military force may be used. An implicit intimation is often made that there is a monolithic liberal approach to the use of force. In contrast, this article identifies a variety of contemporary liberal views on this topic and argues that these depend upon the priority given to values such as those of tolerance and consent versus progress and civility, or those of cosmopolitanism versus communitarianism. On this basis, the article examines the liberal options for the use of force that can be justified in different ways by these different values, from self-defense to the creation of liberal entities, depending upon which liberal values predominate.

International Policing and International Relations

The idea of creating an international police force (IPF) was first mooted by Lord David Davies in the 1930s. In 1963 U Thant, Secretary General of the United Nations, then claimed that he had ‘no doubt that the world should eventually have an international police force’. Yet our international system has been and continues to be based on states, their sovereignty and a correlative ‘inside/outside’ distinction: a distinction which is resistant to this idea of some form of systematic international policing writ large. Instead of the establishment of an IPF, a new form of international policing has emerged through the unprecedented use of police abroad and the potential consolidation of more specific operational policing norms. This is a phenomenon that may not be as permanent nor as wide ranging as earlier conceptualisations that concerned themselves with a more structured management of interstate behaviour, but, nonetheless, it increases the possibilities for achieving an international order based on the rule of law.

Popperian Peacebuilding, Policing and the Liberal Peace

Abstract In light of the quarrelling between advocates and critics of the liberal peacebuilding agenda, this article calls for the adoption of a ‘Popperian’ approach. This approach would be one that seeks to identify and address the greatest evils to fundamental liberal principles rather than undertaking swift and sweeping liberalization projects. Tolerance is therefore advocated in all matters that fall outside of this remit in order to temper the current zeal displayed by the liberal peacebuilding agenda. The article then considers how Popperian approaches and the ideal of tolerance were lacking in the case of peacebuilding in the security sector in Timor-Leste. In failing to ensure a clear separation of police and military forces that are apolitical, loyal to the state and professional in serving the liberal democratic polity, for example, international actors inadvertently allowed a ‘great evil’ to emerge. Rather than being distracted and diluted by a sweeping range of goals, international actors should seek to work from these fundamental concepts and be prepared to negotiate on less urgent matters.

The diplomacy of international policing: A case study of the New Zealand experience

International policing is a phenomenon on the rise. Encompassing a range of activities such as transnational police liaison, response to disasters and post-conflict peace-building, such seemingly technical practices can have significant political implications. A consideration of New Zealand’s recent experiences provides an opportunity to examine some of the sites of promise and difficulty at play in the practice of international policing. Focusing on how international policing activities contribute to New Zealand’s national foreign policy objectives, this article also provides a useful lens through which to consider some of the broader sites of contention in this field.

The Tripartite Formula and Peacebuilding in the Asia-Pacific

This chapter investigates the liberal peacebuilding agenda’s tripartite formula of statebuilding, democracy promotion and economic liberalisation. It considers how these phenomena have fared in two countries in the Asia-Pacific before noting two alternative (and somewhat opposing) approaches that may help to reconceptualise future peacebuilding efforts. In doing so, this chapter speaks to the broad themes outlined in the introduction. In particular, it draws attention to the limits of a contingent approach to peacebuilding and further opens the door for a focus on considering how inherency might provide more nuanced initiatives.

Internal security and statebuilding : aligning agencies and functions

1. Introduction 2. The Evolution of Internal Security 3. Manufacturing Internal Security 4. Afghanistan 5. Timor-Leste 6. Solomon Islands 7. Prioritising Internal Security 8. Fit for Function