Understanding Collective Security in the 21St Century: a Critical Study of UN Peacekeeping in the Former Yugoslavia
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Department of Political and Social Sciences Understanding Collective Security in the 21st century: A Critical Study of UN Peacekeeping in the former Yugoslavia Jibecke H. JOENSSON Thesis submitted for assessment with a view to obtaining the degree of Doctor of Political and Social Sciences of the European University Institute Florence, September 2010 Abstract This thesis is motivated by the puzzle that while the practice of collective security continues to grow and expand with more and bigger peacekeeping operations, the system is struggling increasingly to address the threats and stabilize the global world. Thus to find out more about the justificatory background of the reinvention of collective security after the end of the Cold War, an in-depth critical analysis is conducted of the UN Protection Force (UNPROFOR) for the former Yugoslavia and the subsequent peacebuilding missions. Question are asked about whether in fact the problems of multidimensional peacekeeping are limited to bureaucratic and technical flaws that can be corrected through institutional and instrumental adjustments, or if they also relate to more fundamental normative problems of collective security in a global world. As such, the thesis has two main trajectories: collective human security and multidimensional peacekeeping. On the one hand, it addresses the relationship between security and world order, and on the other, the correlation between peace and collective security. By bringing security and peace studies together within a critical analytical framework that aims to inform theory through practice, divides between the discourse and the system of collective security are highlighted and connected with the practical problems of multidimensional peacekeeping and collective security in a global world. Three main sets of findings are made that indicate that multidimensional peacekeeping amounts to an institutionalization of internal conflicts that requires a practice of peace-as-global-governance that the UN is neither technically let alone normatively equipped to carry out. First, the policies of multidimensional peacekeeping have perverse consequences in practice whereby peacekeeping comes at the expense of peacebuilding. Second, in order to terminate multidimensional peacekeeping successfully, the UN is forced to compromise the initial aims of the operations to accommodate practice. Third, the aim of multidimensional peacekeeping is in the doing or in the ritual, rather than in the end result. Against this background, the argument is made that there are conceptual incoherencies between the practice and the system of collective security, which assumes that collective security is a sphere of influence in its own right that can tackle delicate normative dilemmas, both making and enforcing decisions about which processes and needs should be upheld and satisfied at the cost of others. ii Joensson, Jibecke H. (2010), Understanding Collective Security in the 21st century: A Critical Study of UN Peacekeeping in the former Yugoslavia European University Institute DOI: 10.2870/20470 Contents Contents iii Abbreviations vi Acknowledgements viii Introduction. The Reinvention of Collective Security for a Global World 10 Collective security: an international discourse and framework for a universal peace project ................................... 14 The United Nations: the organization and peacekeeping ............................................................................. 18 Analyzing collective security: the stabilizing effects of the UN discourse and peacekeeping ................................... 22 Discourse analysis and case study criterion: the stabilizing effects of collective security and UNPROFOR ............. 24 Chapter outline .................................................................................................................................. 29 Chapter 1. Security in the Global Order: A World of Risks 36 1. Stabilizing world order: from traditional to human security ................................................. 39 Security studies ................................................................................................................................... 40 Security according to the UN: human security ........................................................................................... 45 The practice of collective human security ................................................................................................... 50 2. The international security agenda: threats and risks ............................................................. 54 Two World Wars and a Cold War: first and second waves of the international security agenda ........................... 55 The end of the Cold War: a third wave of the international security agenda ..................................................... 56 What war, which wars?: the fourth wave of the agenda ............................................................................... 58 The uncertainty of the global world: a world of risks ................................................................................... 61 3. Human security and fourth-wave threats: the analytical, normative, and managerial security challenge of risks ........................................................................................................... 62 The analytical challenge of risks: forming a multi-risk analytical model .......................................................... 63 The normative challenge of risks: universalizing the particular ...................................................................... 64 The managerial challenge of risks: collectively strengthening states to combat feelings of insecurity .......................... 66 Human security and the fourth-wave threats: a new system of international security? ......................................... 68 Chapter 2. Peace in the Global Order: A World of Weak States 74 1. The project of universal peace: an international institutionalization of peace .................... 76 Peace according to the classic liberals: the beginning of peace research .............................................................. 77 Researching to institutionalize peace: a project for peace ............................................................................... 81 The universalization of the liberal peace: the democratic peace paradigm .......................................................... 84 2. The progress of universal peace: United Nations peacekeeping ......................................... 88 The practice of the UN since 1945: six decades of peacekeeping ................................................................... 89 Peacekeeping and the UN in the new Millennium: a ‘vision of collective security’ for the global world ................... 92 Peacebuilding according to the UN: the concept and practice ......................................................................... 97 3. How to evaluate global peace: strengthening or breaching peace? ................................... 100 iii Joensson, Jibecke H. (2010), Understanding Collective Security in the 21st century: A Critical Study of UN Peacekeeping in the former Yugoslavia European University Institute DOI: 10.2870/20470 The burden of the ‘vision of collective security’ for the global world: the uncertainty of peacebuilding ..................... 101 Peace studies .................................................................................................................................... 102 The success and failure of peacebuilding ................................................................................................. 106 Chapter 3. Collective Security in the Global Order: The Positive Effects of UN Peacekeeping 112 1. The UN reviews of peacekeeping: international revisionary processes ............................. 116 Reviewing UN peacekeeping during the Cold War: an ad hoc report-writing exercise ...................................... 117 Reviewing peacekeeping in the post-Cold War: systematizing 40 years of practice ........................................... 121 The institutionalization of the UN peacekeeping reviews: peacekeeping best practices ....................................... 123 2. Evaluating multidimensional peacekeeping: the peacekeeping literature ........................ 126 The peacekeeping literature: from descriptions to analytical models ............................................................... 127 Three findings of the peacekeeping literature: civil war and UN peacekeeping ................................................ 130 The success of multidimensional peacekeeping: the UN might be keeping the peace, but is it building it? .............. 132 3. Evaluating multidimensional peacekeeping: peacekeeping, peacebuilding and world order ..................................................................................................................................................... 136 The missing link in the analysis of peacekeeping operations: stabilizing the world ........................................... 137 Three types of peacekeeping success: conceptual, practical and ‘projectual’ ....................................................... 139 A brief revisit of UNTSO and ONUC: operationalizing the triangular analytical framework ........................ 143 Chapter 4. The Positive Effects of UNPROFOR: Forceful and Intrusive Peacemaking 152 1. UNPROFOR’s initial mandate: from a civil war and humanitarian