United Nations Peace Operations and the Management of World Order 1
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United Nations Peace Operations and the Management of World Order Richard Kareem Alqaq School of Oriental and African Studies University of London PhD 1 ProQuest Number: 11010469 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 11010469 Published by ProQuest LLC(2018). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 Abstract The thesis critically examines the advance of United Nations peacekeeping as an instrument for managing various facets of a post-colonial world order. The first part of the study explores the structural role of UN peace operations in a world of sovereign states as well as the internal political struggle to shape the parameters and direction of the UN’s work. As far as the former is concerned, it is suggested that peace operations should be understood as very specific political activities that have been forged to provide for either a transition from one social system to another, or deployed to buttress a particular world social order. Concurrently, it is argued that the expansion of peacekeeping must also be seen in the context of the internal ideological and political battle to determine the orientation of the world body. While this has witnessed the organisation briefly challenged during the 1970s by Third World states determined to direct the UN’s gaze onto the regulation of the private international economy, the matter has been settled (for now) in favour of the organisation directing its energies to advocating particular forms of liberal governance within Southern societies. Both dynamics—the wider structural role of peace operations and the narrower internal struggle to determine the content of the UN’s work—are necessary in order to understand the political connotations of these practices and their predominance in the organisation’s activities today. After analysing the political specificity of UN peace practices, the study moves on to look at their utilisation in the African context—in Angola, Rwanda, and Somalia—paying particular attention to the wider political transformations underway in each context and the role of the UN in pursuing such ends. The thesis concludes with a set of observations about the place of the UN in managing world order in the Southern hemisphere. 2 Contents Acknowledgements 4 Preface: United Nations Peace Operations in Perspective 5 1. United Nations Peace Operations and World Order: A critical reappraisal of 18 purposes and practices, 1948-1987 2. Defining the Work of the United Nations: From the challenge of Third World 46 activism to the resurgent Western security agenda 3. Reorienting the United Nations in a Post Second World Context: The advance of 63 peace operations 4. United Nations Misadventures in Somalia: Militarised liberal internationalism in 91 the early 1990s 5. Post-Colonial Rwanda and United Nations Conveyance Operations: From 125 trusteeship to neo-liberal state transformation 6. Manufacturing Peace in Angola: The Lusaka Protocol and the standard of UN 155 peace operations 7. United Nations Peace Operations and the Management of the World Political 189 Order in the Periphery Appendices: 1. UN Security Council Vetoes January 1989-December 2005 221 2. UN Peacekeeping Operations January 1989-December 2005 223 Bibliography 225 3 Acknowledgements Over the years in which the research and writing-up of this study has taken place, I have had the support and encouragement of friends, family and colleagues. I would like here to say a special thanks to Nick and Pamela for reading and commenting on innumerable rough drafts and for their unflinching belief in the cause, as well as to my family in general, Anis, Sigrid, Janna, Makram, Adam and Inas for their solidarity and for the many happy and welcome distractions that they have provided. In the UN in New York, the Division for Palestinian Rights provided the ideal setting to observer the various transformations in orientation that the world body has been undergoing since the collapse of the Second World and, through the example of its continued existence and refusal to redefine the parameters of the legitimate rights of Palestinians, especially refugees in the wider region, practically demonstrated how resistance from within the UN is still possible, even if increasingly difficult. Following and working closely with the Permanent Observer Mission of Palestine during this time showed from another angle—that of the consultative organs and committees—how it is possible for the dedicated staff of a small observer mission to continuously take on the chancelleries of materially mighty UN member-states and occasionally emerge victorious. It is not of course in New York that any of these issues will be resolved—resistance in our current context is best organised in Nablus, Jenin and other towns in Occupied Palestine—but it is important to recognise for Palestine and elsewhere, that in the beleaguered and barricaded comers of the UN system there are staff and diplomats who are holding their ground too. In the School of Oriental and African Studies, the Department of Politics and International Studies has proved a stimulating intellectual environment where I have benefited from working with John Game, Stephen Hopgood and Mark Laffey. Most of all, in the School, the intellectual encouragement that I have had from Tom Young has been greatly valued—not only in the context of PhD supervision—but over the years for showing me the tangible and intangible virtues of an older much more independent and less machine-like academic order. I am grateful for this opportunity and experience, not least because of the space it opened for much more critical reasoning. It goes without saying, however, that I alone am responsible for any omissions or mistakes contained herein. Finally, none of what follows would have been possible without the faith and patience of Stephanie, who has indulged, on occasion intolerably suffered, the trials and tribulations of a SOAS PhD student. No mean feat it must be confessed. It is to Stephanie and the eagerly awaited first addition to our family that this thesis is dedicated. 4 Preface United Nations Peace Operations in Perspective 5 ‘Peacekeeping operations symbolise the world community’s will to peace and represent the impartial, practical expression of that will’ Javier Perez de Cuellar (Noble Peace Prize acceptance speech, 1988). ‘...Universal and lasting peace, seen as the greatest aim of collective endeavour, tends to go hand-in-hand with a freezing of the world’s political, economic and military map as it is at the time of the constitution of the organisation. Again, this involves a remarkably primitive notion of the Cosmopolis, in that the idea of peace is opposed not only to that of war but also, implicitly, to the notions of social change, development and productive rivalry.’ DaniloZolo (Cosmopolis, 1994). Introduction Since the collapse of the Second World the United Nations (UN) has moved to the centre of the regulation and management of conflict in Southern states and societies. This has seen the organisation take on new and varied tasks in the ordering and reordering of numerous societies including: monitoring cease-fires, quartering and demobilisation; organising, overseeing and verifying democratic elections; establishing, advising and running international tribunals; and even assuming, albeit temporarily, executive authority over entire African and Asian states.1 Remarkable as these ‘new’ roles may be, they are now routinely treated as a natural and normal set of activities for the UN to be preoccupied with. In today’s post-Cold War milieu, peace operations have been thoroughly internalised and naturalised. The primary aim of this study is to explain the context of such a radical alteration in the scope and extent of UN peace activities through a historical and conceptual re-evaluation of the functions of these practices in world order management, and through an extended discussion of several UN encounters with post-colonial states. It is suggested that it is practically meaningless to view these practices as anything other than deeply political regimes for overseeing social transitions in the periphery of the world system. More specifically, it challenges the assertion that 1 For a brief description of some of these new activities see UN document: ST/ESA/246, 1996, ‘An Inventory of Post-Conflict Peace-Building Activities’. 6 such activities, from the 1940s to the 2000s, can be separated from the political project of making and remaking post-colonial states and societies along certain liberal political economy lines.2 Remarkably little has been written on the wider ramifications of the huge projects of domestic constitution of several Southern states that the UN has been entrusted with, and the consequences of these for how we understand the political and ideological specificity of international bodies, such as the UN, charged with the management of these practices. In fact, the sheer extent of UN involvement in the domestic affairs of Southern societies has not generated any