Tom Woodhouse

Cosmopolitan peacekeeping and the globalization of security

UN peacekeeping is once again undergoing a period of intense critical scrutiny. Having passed through three major phases of development, from first (classical or traditional) to second (multidimensional) generation configurations, to a third phase in the mid- and late 1990s when peace support operations emerged, it currently faces another period of transition. This article speculates about the possible configuration of peacekeeping and its role in global politics. Debates about the role of peacekeeping in the international system should bring to the forefront a conception and practice of cosmopolitan peacekeeping, involving a capacity to protect civilians from violent conflict (the negative peace dimension) and a the capacity to address the human security agenda adopted by the UN in recent years.

Hawks and Doves: Peacekeeping and Conflict Resolution

Since the end of the Cold War both the concept and practice of United Nation (UN) peacekeeping have undergone substantial changes. While deployments during the Cold War generally operated under the principles of impartial, non-forcible intervention with the consent of the conflict parties and the precondition of an agreed peace, more recent peacekeeping missions have, increasingly, been undertaken in the context of internal wars. As a consequence, these principles have come under an ever-increasing strain and the UN’s performance in recent missions has made it subject to severe criticism. It has variously been accused of doing too little, as in Bosnia, or too much, as in Somalia. In response to these criticisms, new thinking about peacekeeping has evolved on both the national and international (UN) levels. The caution about peacekeeping, which arose especially after the experience in Somalia, has been reviewed, favouring new doctrines that seek to combine a more robust approach with an increased capacity for peacebuilding.

Cosmopolitan peacekeeping and peacebuilding in Sierra Leone: what can Africa contribute?

The article is organized into two main parts. First, it presents the termination of the conflict in Sierra Leone as a case-study to examine the degree to which cosmopolitan values connecting peacekeeping and peacebuilding are (or are not) evident. The case-study looks at the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) as a model of successful peacekeeping in the sense that everyday security was provided for the people of Sierra Leone through the deployment of a robust peacekeeping mission. This assessment needs to be qualified in relation to serious deficits still to be addressed in post-conflict peacebuilding, yet the success of this mission does provide encouragement for those who see the construction of a cosmopolitan security architecture for Africa as both desirable and achievable. Second, it explores the degree to which an appropriate model of cosmopolitan peacekeeping might emerge at regional and continental levels in Africa through the development of the African Standby Force (ASF). What the case-study presented here and the survey of the African Union (AU)/ASF in the second part of the article have in common is that taken together, they provide some evidence to suggest that, however fragile, the AU is beginning to define an agenda that represents a continent wide and, in that sense at least, a cosmopolitan response to African security issues.

The gentle hand of peace? British peacekeeping and conflict resolution in complex political emergencies

A framework for a new doctrine of peacekeeping is emerging which presents a model of peacekeeping more robust than the classical model, but which retains the crucial distinction between peacekeeping and war fighting or peace enforcement. This article explores issues relating to the perception of security in the global environment in the years ahead, which will define the contexts in which peacekeeping will have to operate and the range of problems to which it may be called upon to respond. The evolution of British doctrine is described and evaluated as further definitions and refinements of doctrine have emerged, particularly in the light of experiences in Bosnia. Peacekeeping, it is concluded, is crucial to the effective management of international conflict in the years ahead, but it is uncomfortably placed between the need to find the right level of force to deploy, and the need to integrate with humanitarian and political agendas which seek to secure conflict resolution and development objectives in wa...

UNPROFOR: Some observations from a conflict resolution perspective

This discussion of UN operations in the former Yugoslavia follows on from the conceptual analysis of peacekeeping in International Peacekeeping, Vol.1, No.1. It considers the ways in which peacekeeping and conflict resolution are mutually relevant in the light of the UNPROFOR experience, through to the end of 1993. It shows, first, how the mandate for UN operations became increasingly extended as the situation in Croatia and Bosnia‐Hercegovina deteriorated. Increased complexity led to severe demands on the conflict management skills of UNPROFOR at all levels. The second part of the article outlines how some of the insights and applied skills of conflict resolution analysis might usefully inform the theory and practice of peacekeeping and peace support operations of the kind undertaken in former Yugoslavia.

Peacekeeping, Peace Culture and Conflict Resolution

This article presents an overview of the relationships between peacekeeping, peacebuilding and conflict resolution with an emphasis on the way in which culture and cultural analysis might be used to develop more effective and sustainable peacekeeping interventions. The article comments on the conceptualization of the role of culture in conflict resolution theory and how this has been used in attempts to address cultural barriers to effective peacekeeping in so-called first-, second- and third-generation missions. While culture has generally been defined as important in theory and practice in terms of understanding differences between actors in conflict environments, the main new argument advanced in the article is that culture, redefined specifically as peace culture, can have a more proactive role in terms of mobilizing energies for sustainable peacebuilding at different stages of the conflict spectrum. More speculatively, the article explores the idea of culture as a contributory factor in the emergence of new forms of cosmopolitan peacekeeping.

Commentary: negotiating a new millennium? prospects for African conflict resolution

The disastrous US and UN interventions in Somalia provoked an equally unhappy failure to intervene in Rwanda. This, in turn, has now produced a reassessment of the role of the United Nations and the international community in the resolution of internal crises. A number of writers have turned to the insights of writing on conflict resolution to seek remedies for the inadequacies of development theory and international relations. Although this new interest has its own problems, not least because states tend to make little use of conflict analysis once crises ensue, it has sought strategies that do not depend on ‘quick fix’ military strikes. In the process, it has advanced an important debate about the need for local and national initiatives and institutions in resolving conflicts and about the issue of collective intervention for humanitarian purposes.

Peacekeeping and Humanitarian Intervention in post-Cold War Conflict

The credibility of the UN and of peacekeeping as one of its main instruments of conflict management and of humanitarian intervention to relieve suffering in conflict zones has recently come under increasing attack. This is largely the result of the perceived inadequacy of the organization to deal with the enormous human suffering associated with the post-Cold War conflicts which erupted from 1991, especially those in Somalia, Bosnia and Rwanda.