Review: Annual Review of Global Peace Operations 2007

Abstract

ANNUAL REVIEW OF GLOBAL PEACE OPERATIONS 2007 Center on International Cooperation Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2007. 391pp, US$25.00 paper (ISBN 9781588265098)The world is a better place because of the United Nations: because it exists, because of what it does, and because of how it does it. One unexpected but vital component of the organization's overall success story is its history of peacekeeping. That is a story that needs telling by a skilled narrator and then constant retelling with each passing year, lest we forget.A hundred years ago, war was an accepted institution with distinctive rules, etiquette, norms, and stable patterns of practices. In that Hobbesian world, the only protection against aggression was countervailing power that increased both the cost of victory and the risk of failure. Since 1945, the United Nations has spawned a corpus of law to stigmatize aggression and create a robust norm against it. Now there are significant restrictions on the authority of states to use force either domestically or internationally.The trend towards narrowing the permissible range of unilateral resort to force by nation-states has been matched by the movement to broaden the range of international instruments available to settle their disputes by peaceful means. The United Nations incorporated the League proscription on the use of force for national objectives, but inserted the additional-and in theory mandatory-prescription to use force in support of international, that is UN, authority. This is integral to organizing a system of collective security. However, efforts to devise an operational collective security system proved a nonstarter. Instead, the instrument of choice by the United Nations for engaging with the characteristic types of contemporary conflicts is peacekeeping, which evolved in the grey zone between pacific settlement and military enforcement.Traditional or classical international peacekeeping forces could never keep world peace, for they lacked both the mandated authority and the operational capability to do so. Yet even while failing to bring about world peace, UN forces successfully stabilized several potentially dangerous situations. The number of UN operations increased dramatically after the end of the Cold War as the United Nations was placed centre-stage in efforts to resolve outstanding conflicts.Traditional peacekeeping aimed to contain and stabilize volatile regions and interstate conflicts until such time as negotiations produced lasting peace agreements. By contrast, the newer generation of peacekeeping saw UN missions being mounted as part of package deals of peace agreements-for example in Namibia and Cambodia-that aimed to complete the peace settlement by providing third-party international military reinforcement for the peace process. Reflecting the changing nature of modern armed conflict, UN operations expanded not just in numbers but also in the nature and scope of their missions.The volume under review is the second in a new series that establishes a partnership between the Center on International Cooperation of New York University and the best practices unit of the UN department of peacekeeping operations. The goal presumably is to combine the authoritative presentation of the most reliable and current data held inside the UN secretariat with the analytical capability and editorial independence of a major university. The result is quite a splendid anthology of facts and figures cleverly and attractively presented.The United Nations has long been vulnerable to bias towards American-and especially east coast-universities. There are of course many practical advantages to working with good universities that, because of geographic proximity, are that much more accessible. The series makes a deliberate effort to overcome the tyranny of proximity in two ways. First, its advisory board of distinguished personalities is broad-based. Second, it works in partnership with individuals and institutions elsewhere. …