The questions and propositions raised above cannot be addressed without situating peacemaking within the wider process of international intervention and conflict resolution. International peacemaking efforts are usually accompanied by peacekeeping missions in the field, and in the
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post-Cold War era these interventions have been usually followed or supplemented with peacebuilding, and less frequently by statebuilding interventions. The combination of peacemaking and peacekeeping, however, may come with complications of its own, as peacekeeping can become either a political asset or a liability for the third party peacemakers. As will be discussed in the case study chapters, the UN’s involvements in Bosnia and Cyprus are prime examples of such entanglements. Although peacebuilding is widely conceptualised as a post- conflict intervention, it can be practiced along peacemaking (as it has been in Cyprus), and it is often a continuation of a peacemaking intervention, which is the case in Bosnia. Given all these interlinkages, an overview of the conceptual developments in the broader framework of international intervention is necessary for underpinning the discussion in the following chapters.
Peacebuilding and statebuilding have emerged as dominant discourses and practices of international intervention and have increasingly supplemented peacemaking and peacekeeping in the post-Cold War era. Although a distinct line has never been drawn between the first and the second generations of peacekeeping by the United Nations itself, the increasing number of deployments of the UN peacekeepers in civil war countries, mostly even before hostilities ended, in the early 1990s, is regarded as the beginning of the second generation of UN peacekeeping.27 The first generation of United Nations peacekeeping, which was during the period of the Cold War, essentially entailed interposing peacekeepers between the conflicting parties and hoping for a resolution that would come through negotiations between the conflicting parties. It was based on three core principles: impartiality (of the UN involvement), consent (of the conflicting parties) and minimum use of force (by the UN peacekeepers). Most first generation missions were deployed in interstate conflicts but there were exceptions like Cyprus and Lebanon (Ramsbotham, Woodhouse and Miall 2005, 134-135). Bertram (1995) has identified four main substantial differences of the second generation from the first generation peacekeeping: (i) they mostly dealt with domestic conflicts, (ii) the government of host country was one of the parties to the conflict, (iii) the aim of the missions was either development or implementation of a political transition that comes after or during an end to military conflict, and (iv) the reform or establishment of basic state institutions constituted a central objective of the missions. Although there was a decline after the mid-1990s in the number of missions and troops deployed, which marked the end of high point of the second
27 The increasing number of civil conflicts in the early 1990s is mostly attributed to the end of Cold War, which resulted in the diminishing support of the great powers to some client regimes that were previously sustained either by the US or the USSR due to geopolitical concerns. And this led to an era of what many have called “United Nations interventionism”, see, for example, Mayall (2007, 1-31); and Doyle and Sambanis (2006, 6-18).
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generation operations, these four characteristics were largely present in most of the peace operations throughout the 1990s.
The changes in peacekeeping were essentially due to a conceptual shift in how the international community, and particularly the UN, sought to get involved deeper into conflict resolution. In addition to UN’s traditional modes of intervention, which were preventive diplomacy, peacemaking and peacekeeping, the Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali, in 1992, suggested “post-conflict peace-building” as a new component of UN peace operations. According to the Secretary-General, peacebuilding would seek to “… identify and support structures which will tend to strengthen and solidify peace in order to avoid a relapse into conflict”.28 Although this has become the most widely used and cited definition of peacebuilding, some weaknesses and limitations of the UN’s definition have also been pointed out. Lederach (1997, 20), for instance, has provided his own much broader and comprehensive definition that emphasises the continuity of the peacebuilding process before and after any formal peace process:
Peacebuilding is a comprehensive concept that encompasses, generates and sustains the full array of processes and approaches, and stages needed to transform conflict towards more sustainable, peaceful relationships. The term thus involves a wide range of activities that both precede and follow formal peace accords. Metaphorically, peace is seen not merely as a stage in time or condition. It is a dynamic social construct.
There has been also advocacy for democratisation as a means of peacebuilding. The Secretary-General Ghali noted this as follows:
The entire range of United Nations assistance, from support for a culture of democracy to assistance in institution-building for democratization, may well be understood as a key component of peace-building.29
Kofi A. Annan (2002), the immediate successor of Boutros-Ghali, also posited that democratisation should be the focus of international intervention, and underlined the essential need for dealing with issues relating the control of state and its power in civil conflicts.
For international peace to grow, democracy must be restored where it has been broken down, or cultivated where it has yet to take root. These activities have much to do with the domestic affairs of states, and especially with the resolution or prevention of internal conflict … At the centre of virtually every civil war is the issue of the state and its power –
28 UN Security Council (1992a), “An Agenda for Peace: Preventive Diplomacy, Peacemaking and Peace- keeping - Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to the statement adopted by the Summit Meeting of the Security Council on 31 January 1992”, paragraph no. 21, http://www.unrol.org/doc.aspx?n=A_47_277.pdf
(accessed 28/8/2012). 29
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who controls it, and how it is used. No armed conflict can be resolved without responding to those questions (Annan 2002, 137-8).
Peacebuilding through democratisation has thus become a major aspect of the international intervention framework.30 In the early 1990s, there was also a widespread optimism about results of UN peace operations and the international community was willing to initiate such missions.31 The optimism, however, would disintegrate because of a set of tragic failures. The unexpected and humiliating losses suffered by the US troops who were acting under UN authorisation in Mogadishu in 1993, the Rwandan Genocide in 1994, and the Srebrenica Massacre in Bosnia in 1995, as well as mixed results of the other missions initiated in the same period, led the international community to recognise certain weaknesses of UN operations, as the basic principles which they are built on such as impartiality and consent of all the parties to the mandate became questionable. According to Doyle and Sambanis (2006, 15-18), what subsequently emerged was the third generation, which would seek peace enforcement, with its defining characteristic being the lack of consent from one or more of the parties to the mandate of UN operation. The third generation operations would include an even broader array of tasks which would vary from the enforcement of ceasefires to the reconstruction of failed states. Moreover, the third generation operations were increasingly undertaken by regional security organisations and outside UN aegis, e.g. NATO (Ramsbotham, Woodhouse and Miall 2005, 155-158). In the so- called Brahimi Report of the ad hoc UN panel on peace operations convened by the Secretary- General Annan, it was underscored that UN peacekeeping forces should be provided with capabilities and logistical support matching the requirements of their mandates, which would enable them to take sides where necessary. The report also advocated “a doctrinal shift in the use of civilian police, other rule of law elements and human rights experts in complex peace operations to reflect an increased focus on strengthening rule of law institutions (my emphasis) and improving respect for human rights in post-conflict environments”.32 This particular recommendation on institution building, in fact, summed up a new and highly intrusive mode of international intervention, which would soon become known as statebuilding.
The statebuilding recommendation was underlined with the attacks of 9/11; the attacks were widely interpreted as a testimony to the fact that failed states, whether due to civil conflict
30
This point will be elaborated below in the section on the liberal peace.
31 Mayall (2007, 11) note that this optimism was shared by the Security Council as well, and that there was only confidence expressed regarding UN peacemaking and peacekeeping, particularly in January 1992 meeting of the Council at the level of heads of government.
32 UN Security Council (2000), “Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations” (Brahimi Report), paragraph no. 47, http://www.unrol.org/doc.aspx?n=brahimi+report+peacekeeping.pdf (accessed 1/8/12).
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or not, were now the main threat to international security. The repercussions of failed states were thought to be generating insecurity both at domestic and international levels; the transnational effects of the domestic conflicts such as terrorism, drug trafficking and organised violence were specifically pointed out.33 It was also argued that strengthening of state institutions should take precedence over democratisation in international peacebuilding missions (Paris 2004; 2006).34 Statebuilding has thus become increasingly considered as the core task of international intervention. A prominent former UN diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi (2007, 5) underscores this conceptual shift succinctly:
The concept of statebuilding is becoming more and more accepted within the international community and is actually far more apt as a description of exactly what it is that we should be trying to do in postconflict countries – building effective systems and institutions of government.
In summary, international intervention has evolved from a limited model of peacemaking and peacekeeping, which was prevalent during the Cold War, towards an essentially intrusive peacebuilding and statebuilding framework. Doyle and Sambanis (2006, 63-68) suggest that to what extent such peace operations are a domestic or international endeavour is determined by the capabilities and willingness of the international community and the domestic capabilities of the post-conflict society at the time of intervention, thus where there are very limited capabilities of the host-society, the international community is to have the opportunity to maximise its influence. This explanatory model seems to explain why international intervention has even taken the form of transitional administration by United Nations in some places, such as in East Timor and Kosovo.35 However, the intrusive nature of international intervention in the post-Cold War era has also been often critiqued, and it is pointed out that it is conceptually underpinned by a certain understanding of peace - i.e. the liberal peace.