U.N. Peacekeeping: The New Blue

Brendan Brady, Cedric de Coning, Matt Armstrong, Richard Gowan | World Politics Review | 2010-05-19

The U.N.'s peacekeeping debacles of the 1990s led to a thorough examination of the guiding principles of such deployments. What followed was a decade of ambitious missions that has moved the U.N. beyond peacekeeping to peace-building operations. Now, with missions often facing increasingly complex political situations on the ground and heightened scrutiny from afar, a new set of challenges faces U.N. peacekeeping operations.

The Tragedy of 21st Century U.N. Peacekeeping

By Richard Gowan
Over the last decade, the Security Council has mandated a series of increasingly ambitious peace operations. The U.N. now commands just more than 100,000 troops and police worldwide. Yet as its operational reach has grown, it has found itself trapped in situations in which it has been forced to sacrifice principles for the sake of political pragmatism, and to support a range of undemocratic and unpleasant regimes.

U.N. Peacekeeping as Public Diplomacy

By Matt Armstrong
A subtle evolution of United Nations peacekeeping operations is underway. If the first of these missions kept an agreed-upon peace, and later missions sought to make peace, several countries now use these operations to advance their foreign and economic policy agendas, and raise their global profile. This shift may raise the standard of conduct in U.N. peacekeeping operations, but there are significant downsides to this approach.

Civil-Military Relations and U.N. Peacekeeping Operations

By Cedric de Coning
It is now widely recognized that managing conflict requires a multidimensional, comprehensive, whole-of-government or integrated approach, with the African Union, the European Union, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the United Nations each having developed their own specific approaches aimed at fostering greater coherence. But while all convey the understanding that operations must be coordinated among the various actors involved, each of these four organizations has a different understanding of what this means in practice.

An Interview with Timor-Leste's President José Ramos-Horta

By Brendan Brady
Timor-Leste's President José Ramos-Horta has often emphasized the value of moving beyond the past. But in an interview with World Politics Review, Ramos-Horta, who shared a Nobel Peace Prize in 1996 for his nonviolent work toward independence, reflects on the successes and failures of the U.N.'s 1999-2002 peacekeeping mission and of subsequent international aid in Timor-Leste.

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