UN Peace Operations, Terrorism, and Violent Extremism
There are practical and financial reasons to give UN peace operations more robust mandates and mitigate and respond to violent extremism and terrorism. But the idea of UN peacekeepers conducting counter-terrorism operations is not without its challenges. Karlsrud argues that UN peace operations neither are, nor will be ready operationally, doctrinally, or politically to take on counter-terrorism tasks. Such a development could jeopardise the legal protection of UN staff; remove the ability of the UN to be an impartial arbiter of the conflict; and strongly undermine the ability for other parts of the UN family to carry out humanitarian work. However, peace operations should, in cooperation with the UN Country Team, strengthen their conflict prevention and early peacebuilding agenda, to remove root causes for radicalisation.
UN Peace Operations and Changes in the Global Order: Evolution, Adaptation, and Resilience
Changes in the global order are contributing to a more pragmatic era of UN peace operations. Peace operations are likely to become less intrusive and more supportive of locally-led solutions. Three overarching themes are identified. First, the degree to which a peace operation contributes to strategic political coherence will become a key measure of its effectiveness. Second, the principle of minimum use of force is likely to remain a defining feature of peace operations. Third, the scope of peace operations mandates may be trimmed down to focus on protection, stability, and politics. Whilst UN peace operations have shown a capacity to continuously adapt to new challenges, they will also remain resiliently identifiable by their enduring principles of peacekeeping.
Africa and UN Peace Operations: Implications for the Future Role of Regional Organisations
Over the last decade and a half, Africa’s peace operations capacity has significantly increased. African states have deployed operations of their own and they now contribute half of all UN peacekeepers. The African Union (AU) and the UN have developed a strategic partnership that plays out at the political, policy, and operational levels, and reflects the reality that neither will deploy peace operations in Africa without close consultations and some form of cooperation with the other. While the UN peacekeeping model is not found to be well-suited to enforcement, counter-terrorism or trans-national operations, the AU, sub-regional organisations and ad hoc regional coalitions have developed capabilities designed to address these challenges. These African capabilities help relieve the pressure on the UN to conduct such operations.
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.
Norway and Russia in the Arctic: New Cold War Contamination?
The standoff between Russia and the West over Ukraine has already obstructed cooperation across a range of issues. Could it also affect state interaction between Norway and Russia in the Arctic—an area and a relationship long characterized by a culture of compromise and/or cooperation? Here we start from the theoretical premise that states are not pre-constituted political entities, but are constantly in the making. How Russia views its own role and how it views other actors in the Arctic changes over time, calling for differing approaches. That holds true for Norway as well. To clarify the premises for interaction between Russia and Norway in the Arctic, we scrutinize changes in official discourse on Self and Other in the Arctic on both sides in the period 2012 to 2016, to establish what kind of policy mode—“realist,” “institutionalist,” or “diplomatic management”—has underlain the two countries’ official discourse in that period. Has Norway continued to pursue “balancing” policies undertaken in the realist mode with those in the diplomatic management mode? Which modes have characterized Russia’s approach toward Norway? Finding that realist-mode policies increasingly dominate on both sides, in the conclusion we discuss how the changing mode of the one state affects that of the other, and why a New Cold War is now spreading to the Arctic.
Strategic Assistance: China and International Nuclear Weapons Proliferation
A major power with access to nuclear technology, China has a significant impact on international nuclear weapons proliferation, but its attitude towards the spread of the bomb has been inconsistent. China’s mixed record raises a broader question: why, when and how do states support potential nuclear proliferators? This book develops a framework for analyzing such questions, by putting forth three factors that are likely to determine a state’s policy: (1) the risk of changes in the nuclear status or military doctrines of competitors; (2) the recipient’s status and strategic value; and (3) the extent of pressure from third parties to halt nuclear assistance. It then demonstrates how these factors help explain China’s policies towards Pakistan, Iran, and North Korea. Overall, the book finds that China has been a selective and strategic supporter of nuclear proliferators. While nuclear proliferation is a security challenge to China in some settings, in others, it wants to help its friends build the bomb.
China and the nuclear crises in Iran and North Korea
The nuclear deal with Iran is in crisis, and talks on the North Korean nuclear program has made little progress. At the same time, China is well on its way to become one of the world’s most powerful states. How important is it for China to prevent any further proliferation of nuclear weapons?
Is taxation the new politics of development?
According to scholars in the field of development studies, taxation might be the missing piece to the puzzle of peace- and state-building.