ANNUAL REVIEW OF GLOBAL PEACE OPERATIONS 2007

Center on International Cooperation

Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2007. 391pp, US$25.00 paper (ISBN 9781588265098)

The world is a better place because of the United Nations: because it exists, because of what it does, and

A hundred years ago, war was an accepted institution with distinctive rules, etiquette, norms, and stable patterns of practices. In that Hobbesian world, the only protection against aggression was countervailing power that increased both the cost of victory and the risk of failure. Since 1945, the United Nations has spawned a corpus of law to stigmatize aggression and create a robust norm against it. Now there are significant restrictions on the authority of states to use force either domestically or internationally.

The trend towards narrowing the permissible range of unilateral resort to force by nation-states has been matched by the movement to broaden the range of international instruments available to settle their disputes by peaceful means. The United Nations incorporated the League proscription on the use of force for national objectives, but inserted the additional--and in theory mandatory--prescription to use force in support of international, that is UN, authority. This is integral to organizing a system of collective security. However, efforts to devise an operational collective security system proved a nonstarter. Instead, the instrument of choice by the United Nations for engaging with the characteristic types of contemporary conflicts is peacekeeping, which evolved in the grey zone between pacific settlement and military enforcement.

Traditional or classical international peacekeeping forces could never keep world peace, for they lacked both the mandated authority and the operational capability to do so. Yet even while failing to bring about world peace, UN forces successfully stabilized several potentially dangerous situations. The number of UN operations increased dramatically after the end of the Cold War as the United Nations was placed centre-stage in efforts to resolve outstanding conflicts.

Traditional peacekeeping aimed to contain and stabilize volatile regions and interstate conflicts until such time as negotiations produced lasting peace agreements. By contrast, the newer generation of peacekeeping saw UN missions being mounted as part of package deals of peace agreements--for example in Namibia and Cambodia--that aimed to complete the peace settlement by providing third-party international military reinforcement for the peace process. Reflecting the changing nature of modern armed conflict, UN operations expanded not just in numbers but also in the nature and scope of their missions.

The volume under review is the second in a new series that establishes a partnership between the Center on International Cooperation of New York University and the best practices unit of the UN department of peacekeeping operations. The goal presumably is to combine the authoritative presentation of the most reliable and current data held inside the UN secretariat with the analytical capability and editorial independence of a major university. The result is quite a splendid anthology of facts and figures cleverly and attractively presented.

The United Nations has long been vulnerable to bias towards American--and especially east coast--universities. There are of course many practical advantages to working with good universities that, because of geographic proximity, are that much more accessible. The series makes a deliberate effort to overcome the tyranny of proximity in two ways. First, its advisory board of distinguished personalities is broad-based. Second, it works in partnership with individuals and institutions elsewhere. In the case of this review, collaboration with the African Unions commission for peace and security and with the Institute for Strategic Studies in Pretoria is especially notable.

The format is commendable. A strategic summary of developments in 2006 is followed by an analytical "think piece" by lead author Ian Johnstone and an essay on Sudan by Alhaji M.S. Bah and Johnstone. The latter's lead essay applies his useful concept of the deliberative process to "peace consolidation." Then there are seven "mission reviews" of a few pages each, followed by 19 even shorter "mission notes." The second half of the book moves on to presenting a series of statistics on UN missions globally, non-UN missions under the auspices of the African Union (AU), European Union (EU), NATO, and mission-by-mission for UN and non-UN peace operations.

I would like to see one more chapter in each annual volume, a sort of in-house contrarian argument. What were the main shortcomings, problems, and failures in specific operations as well as globally? How do we explain them? And how might we overcome them? After all, the series was begun in response to the belief that there are critics of UN peace operations out there in the real world; they are not few in number or confined to crank circles; and they are not all ill-intentioned polemicists. If they had no ground for their criticisms, there would be no need for a response. Simply getting the nuance right is not a major advance on the core narrative. Better to address and respond to concerns genuinely held, even by well-wishers, than simply pretend that all is well.

I too hope that the project directors will continue to resist the temptation and pressures to expand the annual review from a succinct and useful overview to a comprehensive compilation that is of little interest to anyone else.

The need for UN peacekeeping remains and will continue. In November 2007 there were around 100,000 personnel from 119 countries serving in 17 UN peace operations around the world, at an annual cost of $7 billion dollars (July 2007-June 2008). The older certitudes of traditional peacekeeping no longer apply when peacekeepers find themselves operating with the executive authority of transitional administrators inside societies characterized by criminality, corruption, political instability, and armed power struggles. They have to ensure their own security in an environment in which, far from being an emblem of safety, the blue helmet can be a target. They must learn to use modern information and communications tools to their advantage while being conscious of hostile elements also exploiting the newer opportunities to maximize mayhem. All this and more must be done in harmony with professional colleagues in a truly multinational, multicultural, and multilingual effort operating in highly localized theatres.

Over time, the chief threats to international security have come from violent eruptions of crises within states, while the goals of promoting human rights and democratic governance, protecting civilian victims of humanitarian atrocities, and punishing governmental perpetrators of mass crimes have become more important. As a major consequence of the changing nature of victims of armed conflict from soldiers to civilians, including through excess deaths caused by conflict-related disease and starvation, the need for clarity, consistency, and reliability in the use of armed force for civilian protection lies at the heart of the UN's credibility in the maintenance of peace and security. Perhaps next year's review could explore this theme in its lead essay: How might the responsibility to protect be operationalized in the field for military peacekeepers and humanitarian actors?

The UN record on peace operations shows a surprising capacity for policy innovation, conceptual advances, institutional adaptation, and organizational learning. As noted in the strategic summary, "the UN has found itself at the nexus of new institutional arrangements with both the AU and the EU, suggesting that it may be more adaptable than its critics generally maintain" (9-10). As for cost effectiveness, the total cost of all 63 UN operations to date (1948-June 2007) is $47 billion, compared to $1.5 trillion for the Iraq War. Perhaps we should talk of the peacekeeping dividend.

Peacekeeping is a circuit breaker in a spiralling cycle of violence. The problem with traditional peacekeeping was that it could at best localize the impact of conflicts and then freeze them. Contemporary peace operations are more integrally linked to efforts at peace consolidation. The United Nations can do the job, but only if given the tools: uniformed soldiers and police officers from industrial and developing countries, specialized military support services from countries with modern military forces, financial resources, strategic force reserves, political support in the security council, and sustained commitment. The last requires time and patience. The community of states must be willing to work with local partners and institutions to create enduring structures of security, good governance (including economic governance), the rule of law, market economy, and civil society.

Ramesh Thakur/CIGI and University of Waterloo