Adekeye Adebajo’s UN Peacekeeping in Africa: Lessons Learned or Conundrums Unearthed?

Abstract

AT THE END OF UN PEACEKEEPING IN AFRICA, A READER MIGHT PONDER whether to be utterly discouraged by the chaos, confusion, and—as Adebajo is quick to point out—the external “power politics” that have plagued UN peacekeeping missions in Africa since the 1956 Suez crisis. Or, she might instead marvel at the Herculean efforts on the part of special representatives of the Secretary-General, diplomats, and African leaders in carving out peace from environments of extreme cruelty and hatred. Conflicted emotions aside, it is clear that Adebajo has crafted a concise yet remarkably detailed account of UN engagement in some of the world’s most intractable conflicts, and thus UN Peacekeeping in Africa is a valuable resource for researchers, policymakers, and practitioners in the quickly evolving and uncertain field of peacekeeping. And despite the evolution of peacekeeping and the role of the UN throughout the decades, the book also reveals a set of timeless obstacles—from spoilers and the security dilemma to Security Council pathologies—that continue to obfuscate solutions to conflict. The author’s attention to detail, however, is also a detraction. Adebajo’s attempt to box uncertain outcomes from each case study into a general analytical rubric fails to offer sufficiently contingent generalizations on the evolving norms and modern dilemmas that occupy practitioners and scholars. Adebajo’s principal argument is that peacekeeping “success” (never defined, but clearly tenuous) is more probable when the interests and motivations of key local, regional, and international actors align. This is a framework he borrows from Barry Buzan,1 but which he explicitly does not test or formally adopt. Instead, he “seeks to demonstrate that contingencies at these three levels—rather than any established security patterns or theories—were critical factors in explaining the outcomes” (p. 4).