Why Peacekeeping Fails.

• Author: Howard, Lise Morje

New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999, 236 pages

Multidimensional peacekeeping operations seek to rebuild the basic institutions of a post-war state so that the warring parties do not return to war. The operations are large and complex, involving sizable political, military, police, refugee, humanitarian and electoral components. Since the end of the Cold War, the United Nations has mainly been engaged in this type of peacekeeping. In the early 1990s, disastrous failures in Somalia and Rwanda, as well as in Bosnia's Srebrenica almost brought about the end of multidimensional peacekeeping. However, the United Nations has recently begun new, substantial missions in East Timor and Kosovo and may begin more in places like Afghanistan and the Sudan. War-torn countries often become havens and breeding grounds for terrorists, which, in part, explains renewed calls to end devastating civil wars through the use of multidimensional peacekeeping operations.

In light of the renewed interest in multidimensional peacekeeping and the need to make such operations more successful, Denis Jett, the former US ambassador to Mozambique, has written a timely book. Unfortunately, it does not help us much in understanding how to achieve success in multidimensional peacekeeping operations. Though the book offers some helpful analysis, it is self-contradictory at times, is plagued by research design flaws and has a pervasive pessimistic bias.

The author wisely breaks down his analysis of peacekeeping operations according to their three basic stages: pre-deployment, deployment and post-deployment. The importance and uniqueness of each stage have been overlooked in the peacekeeping literature; thus, Jett's exploration of the conditions and difficulties associated with each represents an analytic advance. Jett also makes some very good suggestions for the improvement of peacekeeping. He advocates more pre-operational planning, highlighting the need to choose carefully the secretary-general's special representative (the top political figure in a peacekeeping operation). He suggests that the Security Council should refer to the Secretariat only those operations that have a reasonable chance of success. He also rightly points out that UN authority in the field should be concentrated in the hands of the special representative of the secretary-general:

The peace agreement and the mandate given the PKO [peacekeeping operation] must unequivocally put the UN in charge, with all...