Echoes of the Mission Civilisatrice: Peacekeeping in the Post-Cold War Era

Abstract

The existing literature on peace operations is preoccupied with the practical problem of improving techniques to contain or resolve local conflicts, and devotes little attention to the ideological assumptions that underlie these operations.1 This chapter argues that post-cold war peacekeeping operations are not merely a method of conflict management, but an instance of a much larger phenomenon: the globalization of a particular model of domestic governance — liberal market democracy — from the ‘core’ to the ’periphery’ of the international system. Most international organizations engaged in peacekeeping have internalized the broadly liberal political and economic values of the wealthy and powerful industrialized democracies (which comprise the core of the international system), while nearly all of the countries that have hosted peacekeeping missions are located in the poor and politically weak periphery. Without exception, peacekeeping missions in the post-cold war period have promoted the values and institutions of the liberal democratic core within the domestic affairs of peripheral host states.