UN Peacekeeping Operations in a Multipolar Era.

• Date: 01 April 2023
• Author: Karlsrud, John

1 Introduction

What happens when the UN wages war? In 2015 I examined the move of UN peacekeeping toward peace enforcement in Central African Republic (CAR), the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA); Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the UN Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO); and Mali, the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA). I looked at the security and legitimacy implications of the expanded will of the UN to use force in peacekeeping operations and argued that this would negatively impact on UN peacekeeping operations and the UN's role as an impartial arbiter in postconflict countries. (1)

Not envisaged in the UN Charter, UN peacekeeping has evolved organically since its inception in 1948. While a comprehensive set of principles, rules, and guidelines have been developed over the ensuing years, the UN and Member States have also been able to adapt UN peacekeeping to changing circumstances. In the liberal era that began following the end of the Cold War, UN peacekeeping emerged as a tool to help states emerging from internal conflict. The failures in Bosnia and Rwanda led to a brief lull in the deployment of UN peacekeepers, but from 1999 onward a new wave of larger multidimensional missions was mandated. Seeking to address the failures of their precedents, these missions were centered on a mandate to protect civilians, but also sought to contribute to longer-term peacebuilding and state building. However, during the 2000s Western coalitions intervened in Afghanistan and Iraq and the arguably overambitious protection and peacebuilding agenda was gradually replaced with a more instrumental stabilization agenda. This trend migrated to the UN in parallel with the tongue duree of the 2008-2009 financial crisis, leading to a renewed wave of conflicts on the African continent and the deployment of a final set of multidimensional UN peace operations to Mali and Central African Republic (MINUSMA, 2013; MINUSCA, 2014), this time equipped with stabilization mandates bordering on peace enforcement. (2) At its pinnacle in April 2015, 126,247 military, police, and civilian peacekeepers were deployed. (3)

Eight years later, much has changed. No new UN peacekeeping operations have been fielded, and the UN has closed four large peacekeeping operations in Cote d'Ivoire, Darfur, Haiti, and Liberia. Furthermore, the UN is in the process of downsizing and transitioning the remaining four large missions: MINUSCA, MONUSCO, MINUSMA, and the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS). The number of UN peacekeepers in the field had shrunk to 87,217 in October 2022, (4) divided among twelve ongoing peace operations. The four large remaining operations accounted for 70,284 of these. (5) UN peacekeeping is in the process of becoming a more marginal actor, with regional and ad hoc coalitions being the mode de jour. (6)

Over the past decade, it has become increasingly clear that the liberal moment has passed. The world is marked by increasing geopolitical and ideological competition, where the liberal world order today is a less appealing alternative for many states than the authoritarian alternative that China is presenting. The war in Ukraine and an escalating trade war have accelerated tensions between key powers, leading to increasing transaction costs for the United States and its allies in multilateral organizations.

These trends are also impacting on UN peacekeeping operations. In this article, I look at some of the current and future trajectories that can be discerned. First, I examine the decline of peacekeeping over the past decade and identify some of the key reasons for this decline. Second, I note the parallel trend of an increase in regional and ad hoc coalitions and calls for the UN peace machinery to support these coalitions. Third, I look closer at geopolitical considerations and how these impact on peacekeeping operations. In conclusion, I argue that for now, multidimensional peacekeeping operations may soon be a thing of the past, and that we are entering a period where there will be a demand for counterinsurgency and counterterrorism operations that can be set up on short notice, are temporary, avoid path dependency spending in international organizations, have less focus on human rights and related liberal values, are endorsed by the UN Security Council or a regional organization, and align more closely with national self-interests.

2 The Decline of UN Peacekeeping Operations

There are several reasons for the gradual marginalization of UN peacekeeping operations. Traditional Western peacekeeping troop-providing countries started scaling back their support already in the 1990s, with a limited presence in some missions (Lebanon, Cyprus) and a one-off return in Mali. (7) UN multidimensional peacekeeping is going out of style. During the past two decades, UN peacekeeping operations have repeatedly been deployed to situations where there is no peace to keep, and also increasingly with a mandate making the operation a direct party to an ongoing conflict. MINUSMA has been the rock bottom of this development, as the mission has been deployed into an ongoing counterterrorism operation and eventually mandated to support one of the key actors in this conflict, the Joint Force of the Group of Five Sahel. (8)

UN peacekeeping operations are not fit for the revised purpose policymakers have mandated, doctrinally or operationally. As outlined in the introduction of this special issue, UN peacekeeping...