Mateja Peter

Securitisation of the EU approach to the Western Balkans: from conflict transformation to crisis management.

This chapter analyses the EU’s crisis response in the Western Balkans through the lens of EULEX. By exploring how those immediately responsible for mandate execution and those directly affected by its outcomes perceive EULEX, we discover gaps that highlight the pitfalls of direct and ingrained political interference in the mission’s work. While EULEX has been seen as an important watchdog for preventing further human rights abuses, the EU’s approach to Kosovo and the region continues to be characterised by competing priorities: the EU’s broader political objectives impact the mission’s legal work and hamper the EU in achieving a coherent and impactful rule of law policy. In turn, this decreases the local populations’ trust and approval of EULEX and ultimately undermines the EU’s overall goals of promoting good governance and a European perspective for Kosovo. This tension highlights the incompatibility of the EU’s short-term focus on crisis management and the more longterm focus on crisis transformation. We see this as particularly problematic for an actor whose self-image as a ‘normative power’, is underpinned by an assumption that its influence in the world in gained through ‘the power of ideas’.

UN peace operations in a multipolar order: Building peace through the rule of law and bottom-up approaches

UN peace operations need a new peacebuilding agenda that acknowledges both the transboundary nature of conflict drivers and the multipolar nature of the global order. This means casting aside the current stabilization approach, but also abandoning the pursuit of liberal peacebuilding of the unipolar era. Such a conflict transformation agenda would require UN peace operations to prioritize the rule of law and bottom-up approaches, thus creating the potential to be embraced by a much broader range of member states. In this article, we bring liberal peacebuilding critiques into a discussion with debates on the nature of the global order. Liberal peacebuilding critiques are rooted in the bottom-up problematization of international interventions and show what kind of peacebuilding is desirable. Conversely, the debates on the multipolar nature of the global order expose the top-down constraints as to what kind of peacebuilding is feasible.

The double proximity paradox in peacebuilding: implementation and perception of the EU rule of law mission in Kosovo

This contribution increases the understanding of the EU's role in post-conflict settings by exploring perceptions of EULEX by local rule of law experts. Drawing on critical peacebuilding and the decline of normative power Europe literatures, we develop an analytical framework, underlining the importance of the intention–implementation gap and the implementation–perception gap in understanding how EU missions are perceived. By comparing local expert narratives to those of EULEX judges, prosecutors, and legal officers, we contend that the core problem for the negative perception of the mission results from what we call the double proximity paradox in peacebuilding. The first paradox is one of implementation and transpires when an actor commits substantial resources to address structural problems in a post-conflict territory due to its centrality for its own interests, but fails to uphold its commitment as its immediate interests can only be achieved through agents who contribute to these problems. The second paradox relates to perception and transpires as high commitments raise expectations of structural impact. The visibility of the actor's investment makes any implementation failures more tangible. The actor is therefore, paradoxically, the most open to criticism in a territory where it is doing the most.

Peacekeeping: Resilience of an idea

This chapter examines the evolution of the idea of UN peacekeeping, asking how an instrument developed in the late 1940s managed to not only survive but also respond to the changing geopolitical and conflict landscape over the last seventy years. Through an overview of major doctrinal developments and institutional adaptations, the chapter analyses how the peacekeeping tool was adapted from a bipolar world, via a unipolar one to today’s multipolar world. Peter argues that peacekeeping started as a conflict management instrument, which was adapted to a conflict resolution mechanism after the end of the Cold War, but has now come full circle and is again increasingly used to manage and contain, not resolve conflicts.

Introduction. UN peace operations: Adapting to a new global order?

The introduction identifies four transformations in the global order, whose implications on the UN peace operations are studied in the remainder of the volume. These four transformations are: (1) the rebalancing of relations between states of the global North and the global South; (2) the rise of regional organisations as providers of peace; (3) the rise of violent extremism and fundamentalist non-state actors; and (4) increasing demands from non-state actors for greater emphasis on human security. With the entry of new actors from the global South as important players in the peace arena, we are entering a more pragmatic era of UN peace operations. At the same time, the UN is facing a classic struggle between the promotion of liberal international norms and realist security concerns.

United Nations Peace Operations in a Changing Global Order

This edited volume generates a discussion about UN approaches to peace by studying challenges and opportunities that the organisation is facing in the 21st century. We use some of the findings from the HIPPO report as an inspiration and put both its recommendations and broader UN actions in a wider context. We identify four transformations in the global order and study what implications these have on UN peace operations. The first two transformations emanate from the changing relations between states and reflect the increasingly multipolar character of contemporary global governance. The latter two transformations reflect the changing relations between state and non-state actors. These two broad groups of non-state actors are fundamentally incompatible in their outlook on how and whether the international community should be intervening. That notwithstanding, both groups of non-state actors also force the UN and its member states to rethink the centrality of state-based approaches to security and intervention. In this volume, we identify four transformations in the global order and study their implications on the United Nations peace operations. We ask: - How is the rebalancing of relations between states of the global North and the global South impacting the UN’s decision-making, financing and ability to design operations that go beyond the minimum common denominator; - How is the rise of regional organisations as providers of peace impacting the primacy of UN peace operations and how and whether the UN can remain relevant in this era of partnership and competition; - How have violent extremism and fundamentalist non-state actors changed the nature of international responses and what does this mean for previously advanced longer-term approaches to conflict resolution; - How are demands from non-state actors for greater emphasis on human security impacting the UN’s credibility, and whether, in light of the first three transformations, is the UN even able to prioritise people-centred approaches over state-centred ones. Our core finding is that with the entry of new actors from the global South as important players in the peace arena, we seem to be entering a more pragmatic era of UN peace operations. As contributions to this volume show, there is a greater willingness to innovate and experiment with new forms of conflict management, including more robust interpretations of UN peacekeeping and an increasing reliance on regional actors as providers of peace. At the same time, the UN is facing a classic struggle between the promotion of liberal international norms and realist security concerns. The resolution of this struggle is less clear. The contributors to this volume emphasise the importance of people-centred approaches, conflict sensitivity and longer-term thinking as key aspects to continued relevance of the UN, but their conclusions as to how achievable these are by the UN are not as clear cut.

The EU and international actors in Kosovo: Competing institutional logics, constructive ambiguity and competing priorities

The EU's Crisis Management in the Kosovo-Serbia crises

UN support in the formation of new states: South Sudan, Kosovo, and Timor-Leste

This edited volume offers a thorough review of peacekeeping theory and reality in contemporary contexts, and aligns the two to help inform practice. Recent UN peacekeeping operations have challenged the traditional peacekeeping principles of consent, impartiality and the minimum use of force. The pace and scope of these changes have now reached a tipping point, as the new mandates are fundamentally challenging the continued validity of the UN peacekeeping’s core principles and identity. In response the volume analyses the growing gap between these actual practices and existing UN peacekeeping doctrine, exploring how it undermines the effectiveness of UN operations, and endangers lives, arguing that a common doctrine is a critical starting point for effective multi-national operations. In order to determine the degree to which this general principle applies to the current state of UN peacekeeping, this book: - Provides a review of conceptual and doctrinal developments in UN peacekeeping operations through a historical perspective - Examines the debate related to peace operations doctrine and concepts among key Member States - Focuses on the actual practice of peacekeeping by conducting case studies of several UN peacekeeping missions in order to identify gaps between practice and doctrine - Critically analyses gaps between emerging peacekeeping practice and existing doctrine - Recommends that the UN moves beyond the peacekeeping principles and doctrine of the past Combining empirical case-based studies on UN peace operations, with studies on the views and policies of key UN Security Council members that generate these mandates, and views of key contributors of UN peacekeepers, this volume will be of great use to policy-makers; UN officials and peace operations practitioners; and academics working on peace and conflict/security studies, international organizations and conflict management.

Securitisation of research: fieldwork under new restrictions in Darfur and Mali

Knowledge on conflict-affected areas is becoming increasingly important for scholarship and policy. This article identifies a recent change in knowledge production regarding 'zones of danger', attributing it not only to the external environment, but also to an on-going process of securitisation of research resulting from institutional and disciplinary practices. Research is increasingly framed by security concerns and is becoming a security concern in itself, although the implications are not readily acknowledged. To illustrate these developments, we draw on fieldwork in Mali and Darfur.