1 Introduction 2 the Evolution of UN Peacekeeping
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Notes 1 Introduction 1. In much of the peacekeeping literature, ‘peace operation’ has replaced ‘peacekeeping operation’. I follow this usage because the former term better captures the range of activities undertaken in the context of contemporary operations. 2. Other than in the case of East Timor, and different from many other multidimensional peace operations, the UN was barely involved in the run-up to the Security Council decision on Kosovo. It was not the UN and its Secu- rity Council but the Bosnia Contact Group, NATO and the Group of Eight that dealt with the political and security crisis in Kosovo (Heinbecker 2004). The UN was tasked with administering Kosovo ‘unexpectedly and at regret- tably short notice’ (Griffin and Jones 2000: 78). In addition, three non-UN organisations also played substantial roles in the field: the EU was responsible for the economic reconstruction, the Organization for Security and Cooper- ation in Europe was responsible for institution-building, and the NATO-led international Kosovo-Force provided security. 2 The Evolution of UN Peacekeeping: Towards the Emergence of a 21st-Century Peacekeeping Model 1. Today the operation is called UNEF I because it had a successor operation named UNEF II, deployed after the 1973 Yom Kippur War (Ghali 1993b). 2. The League of Nations had deployed civilian and military personnel in the Saar Basin, in Vilna, in Danzig and Upper Silesia in accordance with the Treaty of Versailles (Chesterman 2004: 18–25). The UN began to experiment as early as 1947 with sending fact-finders and unarmed observers to the Balkans, later the Middle East, and India (Durch 1993b). 3. See interviews with the key actors, UN Oral History project, http://www.un. org/Depts/dhl/dag/oralhist.htm, accessed 08.08.2012. 4. Not only was the Secretariat requested to propose a plan for the force, includ- ing its functions, composition and guiding principles, but it was also asked to negotiate with member states about force contributions, to advise the force commander in the field, and to issue regulations and instructions essential to the functioning of the force – for instance, with regard to the financial modalities or legal liabilities. The General Assembly furthermore authorised the Secretary-General to pave the way for the deployment of the force, to negotiate with the conflict parties in order to reach a ceasefire and with- drawal of troops, and to enter into agreements with regard to the status of force (Cohen 1957). 237 238 Notes 5. The UN peace operation deployed in the Congo (ONUC, 1960–4) was an exception. After the Congo’s independence in 1960, almost immediately widespread civil unrest occurred, followed by a collapse of civil services, the attempt of the secession of the resource-rich Katanga province and a military intervention by the former colonial power, Belgium. ONUC was established to ensure the withdrawal of Belgian forces, to assist the gov- ernment in maintaining law and order, and to provide technical assistance. Initially a traditional peace operation, ONUC later used considerable force (including a UN air force provided by India and Sweden). It basically took over a country that had collapsed (Durch 1993f ; Urquhart 1991: 145–70). It evolved into the ‘UN’s Vietnam’ (Durch 1993b: 8), not only because of the large number of casualties but also because of the political rifts that it created among the Western allies, and between the West and the Soviet Union. 6. In the early 1990s the UN and member states experimented with peace enforcement under UN command. In Somalia (1993–5) and in Bosnia- Herzegovina (1994–5), blue helmets engaged in war-fighting operations and lost their impartiality. These experiments led to widely acknowledged and analysed failures, and a broad consensus emerged that UN peace opera- tions were not suitable for high-intensity warfare. For an excellent study of the evolution of the use of force in UN peacekeeping, see Findlay (2002). 7. Chapter VII of the UN Charter contains the provisions relevant to enforce- ment actions by the Security Council. If the Security Council authorises a peace operation under Chapter VII, it usually specifies the conditions. The mission-specific rules of engagement determine when, where and how force should be used. 8. While regular civilian police officers are individually recruited and deployed, and they perform monitoring, training and advisory tasks, formed or stabil- ity police units are robust, armed police units that are capable of performing specialised law-enforcement and public-order functions, and are contributed by member states in larger units, similar to military forces (Dziedzic and Stark 2006; Hansen 2002: 70–3). 9. After the end of the Cold War, industrialised states initially became heav- ily involved as troop contributors, particularly but not exclusively to the UN operation in the Former Yugoslavia. Their contingents made up roughly 41 per cent of troops and police in the largest UN operations outside Europe (1993) and for Europe itself (1995) (Durch and Berkman 2006b: 41). 10. As of June 2013, only Italy (19) is among the top-20 contributors to peace operations. The United Kingdom holds position 44, before Germany (47). The United States is in position 62 (see UN DPKO homepage, accessed 18.07.2013). 11. Already by 1961 the International Court of Justice had confirmed that peacekeeping was consistent with the goals of the organisation, and that its costs therefore should be borne by all member states. In spite of this deci- sion a group of countries led by France and the Soviet Union did not to pay their share for selected operations. In 1965 the United States attempted to evoke Article 19 of the UN Charter, which entails the loss of voting power in the General Assembly should a country accumulate high arrearages. The crisis brought about a lame-duck session of the General Assembly in 1964–5 Notes 239 when all votes had to be avoided. The acute crisis was eventually dissolved when the United States backed down from its demands, yet disagreements on how to finance peace operations continued (Durch 1993e). 12. Six operations involved fewer than 1,000 soldiers, two operations fewer than 2,000, and four operations had a maximum deployment of between 6,000 and 7,000 uniformed personnel. The operation in the Congo (roughly 20,000) serves as the only exception (Jacobsen 2005: Appendix 3). 13. After the success of UNEF I, establishing a UN standing army became a popular idea. The purpose of this army was peacekeeping, not peace enforce- ment, as foreseen in the Charter (Kinloch-Pinat 2004: 72–100). Proposals ranged from standing forces of varying sizes, through permanent, rapidly deployable headquarters, to standby forces earmarked for UN peacekeeping, at the service of the General Assembly, the Secretary-General or the Security Council. In the light of the Congo experiences in 1960, the Secretary- General, Hammarskjöld, explicitly rejected the idea of a standing force as an ‘unnecessary and impractical measure’. His successor, U Thant, confirmed this position in 1963, yet highlighted that ‘the world should eventually have an international police force’ (Kinloch-Pinat 2004: 93, 95, emphasis added). 14. In 2004 the Secretariat developed proposals for a strategic reserve force and presented it to member states. Acting as crisis response force to temporarily strengthen already operating peace operations, the strategic reserve would have consisted of a number of taskforces of some 1,250 troops, each con- tributed by a range of countries. To enable a speedy dispatch, each of the troop contributors would have secured prior political and legislative agree- ment to deploy its forces for predetermined missions. Upon completion the taskforces would return to their countries of origin (UN Secretary-General 2004a: §13–18). The strategic reserve concept did not receive the blessing of heads of states and government at the World Summit in 2005. 3 The Influence of International Bureaucracies: A Framework for Analysis 1. At a later stage, Ernst and Peter Haas attempted to reconceptualise inter- national bureaucracies as creators and administrators of knowledge, and explored their role in organisational change and learning (Haas 1990; Haas and Haas 1995). 2. Cox (1969: 207) provided a taxonomy of enabling or constraining fac- tors for executive heads of international organisations. He distinguished between idiosyncratic, legal-institutional, ethical-normative and other factors. Idiosyncratic aspects include the personality, leadership style, pro- fessional background or even the intelligence of the incumbent. Legal- institutional factors consist of the legal powers entrusted to an executive head, their formal standing in the organisation, and the like. Ethical- normative factors comprise the moral authority, the impersonation of neutrality and the international values credibly embodied by the executive head. In addition, other factors carry weight, such as the relations that an executive head maintains with key member states, his or her standing within the international bureaucracy, the material resources that he does or does not 240 Notes command, his or her control over information and knowledge, or situational factors such as (un)animity between member states in a given situation. 3. Be it for reasons of linguistic elegance, simplification or the focus on pre- ventive diplomacy, many scholars working on the UN still do not bother to differentiate between the Secretariat, higher-ranking UN officials and the Secretary-General. 4. In 1922, Max Weber wrote about the peculiar character of bureaucratic rule that is based on a special form of authority – namely, rational-legal authority. Instead of obeying a leader because of their charisma or because of traditions that put them in a position of power, people follow the rules of bureaucracies because they seem rational, formally correct and therefore legitimate (Weber 1972: 124–30). 5. The P-A model is also applied to courts or regulatory agencies (Alter 1998; Büthe 2008; Goldstein and Steinberg 2008).