Bruno Charbonneau

Fighting for Liberal Peace in Mali? The Limits of International Military Intervention

The January 2013 French military intervention in Mali exposed the rising threat of ‘terrorist’ and illicit networks in the Sahel, but more importantly the intertwined limits of Malian politics and of the international politics of African conflict management. While much has been written about the ‘liberal peace’, this article argues that what is at stake in this debate is the consistency of the ‘liberal peace’ ideological form and what governance requirements it imposes. Such an ideology necessarily intersects with ongoing Malian peace-, nation- and statebuilding dynamics and competing normative orders that transcend state borders and nationalist projects.

What Is So Special about the European Union? EU–UN Cooperation in Crisis Management in Africa

This article analyses the ways in which rapidly emerging narratives of EU–UN cooperation in military crisis management are rewriting and re-authorizing European practices of military intervention in Africa. By problematizing the underlying assumptions, this article points to the increasing significance of uncertainties about the location of contemporary political life, the location of ‘crisis management’, and thus to the diverse effects of a crisis management approach to African conflicts. Hence, this article problematizes and challenges a range of powerful normative claims about ‘EU crisis management’. The emerging narratives are practices of knowledge and space that shape EU–Africa relations and that create new spaces of intervention, thus establishing and enabling relations of authority and control. Last, the article discusses briefly how such practices worked in the case of EUFOR Tchad/RCA (European Forces in Chad and the Central African Republic).

Introduction: peace operations and francophone spaces

This introductory article presents the history of francophone spaces to critically assess their specificity, and to situate them in academic debates on peace operations. It argues that the specificity is the inescapable a priori context of peace missions, even if this context is rapidly evolving and in interaction with non-francophone spaces. The specificity is nevertheless increasingly difficult to identify, as new practices and conditions emerge and as the lines between different francophone spaces and between francophone and non-francophone spaces are increasingly fluid. The article explores the range of possibilities that emerge from such interrogations, and emphasizes that to add the experiences of ‘francophone spaces’ to analyses of peace operations is to confront the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion already expressed by the terms ‘francophone’ and francophonie. This approach points to where and how hegemonic practices move and change between locations and different contexts, and where and how the organization or reorganization of power is negotiated, imposed and/or resisted across ‘francophone’ and ‘non-francophone’ spaces.

Faire la guerre pour un Mali démocratique : l'intervention militaire française et la gestion des possibilités politiques contestées

On 11 January 2013, French president Francois Hollande justified a military intervention in Mali on the basis of the possible collapse of the Malian state, which faced an armed rebellion in the north of the country. Thus, the war was authorized and explained by the inability of the Malian government to respond to the threat. However, explanations and analyses that focus on security hide more than they reveal, including the ontological aims of the war and its identity stakes. To uncover these aspects, this article articulates the interaction between, on the one hand, the deployment of international violence, and, on the other, the construction of the state and the political imagination in Mali. This article concludes that peace in Mali was sought through the militarization of democratic governance, effectively reinforcing the prewar governance model. Unlike analyses focused on security, this article demonstrates that the boundaries and limits of the Malian conflict are not only territorial but also ideological and identity-based.

The Politics of Peacekeeping Interventions in Africa

the peace agreements, it presents no substantial consideration of the different reasoning behind various actors’ actions. Moreover it offers a limited account of how UN missions, and those telling their stories, engage with the complexity of the local contexts where their actions unfold. Second, it seems to imply a counterfactual scenario where, if the local actors complied with what was expected, MINUGUA would have been able to fulfil its mandate and, consequently, to build peace. The author does not question whether the peace agreements the UN helped to broker and on which other international institutions advised (the socio-economic agreement specifically) addressed the inequality that fuelled and continues to fuel and define politics in Guatemala or whether they provided the grounds for the inclusion of indigenous identities in the peace project beyond the partial recognition of their cultural rights. Ultimately, the book fulfils its purpose: it tells us the story of MINUGUA and the challenges it faced in a complex context as an underpowered mission. Furthermore, it offers a comprehensive point of departure to reflect on the UN commitment to peace in Guatemala and on crucial aspects of peace operations shared by other missions. However, it lacks a deeper insight and reflection on the peace project contained in the agreements, which is crucial to understanding peacebuilding efforts and reflecting on the role the UN can and should assume. Nevertheless, this absence, rather than limiting our reflection, forces the reader to pose unexpected questions, regarding the Guatemalan peacebuilding process and the UN’s role in it. Stanley’s book is thus simultaneously relevant both for its content and for the silences it invites the reader to explore.

Legions of Peace: UN Peacekeepers from the Global South

Philip Cunliffes Legions of Peace begins with two observations. The first is that ‘UN peacekeeping is the most widely spread application of military power in international affairs today’ (1). The ...

Intervention in Mali: building peace between peacekeeping and counterterrorism

ABSTRACT This article examines the effects of UN peacekeeping and international counterterrorism operations upon the possibilities of peace in Mali. Following the January 2013 French operation Serval, the international intervention was divided between two military missions: UN peacekeeping in Mali and French-led counterterrorism. The article explores what it means to distinguish between peacekeeping and counterterrorism for international conflict management and Malian conflict resolution dynamics. It is argued that the binaries of war and peace, and of intervention and sovereignty, are no longer opposites, but blurred into an emerging ‘new normal’ of permanent military intervention. The construction of a regional counterterrorism governance or militarisation is shown to circumvent the fundamental questions about Malian peace, state sovereignty, and nationhood. The article points to how the international ‘division of labour’ between peacekeeping and counterterrorism defines the possibilities of peace in Mali in relation to the perceived necessities of the ‘global war on terror’.