THE UNITED NATIONS SECURITY COUNCIL AND THE ORGANISATION OF AFRICAN UNITY

The UN relies on regional organisations to carry out peacekeeping activities and has very good reasons for doing so: resource constraints and relevant political influence. In Africa, however, the UN Security Council seems unwilling to take decisive action when faced with complex emergencies and leaves the burden to the OAU which has its own problems. The UN charter does allow regional organisations to take enforcement action even without prior armed attack. The OAU charter converges with that of the UN in ways that should make cooperation easier than it has been. Despite the rhetoric, the UN Security Council has undertaken very little visible action in Africa when it is most needed. A lack of significant African representation in the Council is perhaps a cause. The Council will improve its global authority if it undertakes reforms that reduce the power of the US and the UK over its decisions.     

Peace enforcement in Africa: Doctrinal distinctions between the African Union and United Nations

When the United Nations (UN) Security Council needs to authorize a peace enforcement operation in Africa, its partner of choice is the African Union (AU). Africa has developed significant peace operations capacity over the past decade. In addition to deploying eight AU operations, Africa now contributes 50% of all UN peacekeepers. African stability operations, like its mission in Somalia, are often described as peace enforcement operations. In this article, I question whether it is accurate to categorize African stability operations as peace enforcement? I answer the question by considering what the criteria are that are used to differentiate between peace enforcement and peacekeeping operations in the UN context. I then use the peace enforcement criteria to assess whether AU stabilization operations would qualify as peace enforcement operations. In conclusion, I consider the implications of the findings for the strategic partnership between the AU and the UN.     

区域性国际组织参与维和事务研究

当今世界,区域性国际组织以其独特优势,成为联合国以外维护和平与稳定的重要力量。以典型的区域性国际组织实施、参与的维和行动为例,分析其存在的重要性;援引《联合国宪章》等重要文献,说明区域性国际组织在维护世界和平事务中的合法性;通过对区域性国际组织本身特点的分析,说明其实施维和行动的优势以反对联合国维和行动地位产生的影响;最后,从如何发挥区域性国际组织的重要作用进行分析,并提出建议。     

The Nepalese Army: From counterinsurgency to peacekeeping?

Can peacekeeping participation help reform military institutions in democratizing states? Drawing on evidence from Nepal – one of the world's largest troop contributors to UN peacekeeping operations – this essay illustrates that participation in peace missions can sometimes undermine security sector reform and deteriorate civil–military relations. Furthermore, this analysis shows that peacekeeping participation will not necessarily reorient troops away from their conventional internal roles (such as counterinsurgency) or improve civilian control over the armed forces. Hence, civilians can lose control over soldiers just as frequently when they are deployed overseas as when they are at home.     

From Domestic to Regional: The Civil War Conundrum and the Cases of Syria and Algeria

This paper seeks to answer a simple question: When do regional powers get involved in civil wars? Some civil wars see a significant involvement of regional actors, while others show a remarkable level of isolation. What explains this difference? This research answers this question by looking at two case studies: the Algerian civil war (1991–2002) and the Syrian civil war (2011–up to date). The paper identifies and develops five factors of regional involvement. These are: capabilities, regional dynamics, country’s relevance, regional security issues/containment and domestic–external links. civil wars are today one of the most prominent and deadly forms of conflict, and this paper contributes to understanding the important but understudied issue of regional involvement.     

提高维和警察防暴队培训质量的实践与思考

武警学院已经培训了6期维和警察防暴队,圆满完成了维和培训任务。受到联合国、当地政府及民众的充分肯定和高度赞扬。今后要进一步适应新形势,提高培训质量,不断创新培训模式、培训思路、培训机制。     

维和警察安全意识和自我防护能力刍议

联合国维和任务日益复杂,维和警察在任务区面临的危险无法预知。从维和培训以及任务区执法着手,通过合理的安全教育,有助于不断提高维和警察的安全意识和白我防护能力。     

中国警察参与联合国维和行动风险分析

风险管理是一门新兴学科，已普遍应用于各个领域。维和工作处处充满风险，有必要进行深刻探讨，进而对中国警察参与联合国维和行动面临的风险进行科学合理的分析并提出应对措施。     

Past as prologue: USMC small wars doctrine

Africa is arguably the most important regional setting for United Nations peacekeeping challenges. In the 1990s, extensive efforts have been made by the United Nations in the fleld of peacekeeping with the speciflc aim of reducing the levels of conflicts on the continent. Another significant development relates to the fact that organisations in Africa have started to feature as important peacekeeping instruments in recent years as it is increasingly being accepted that there is a need for such institutions to take care of their own security requirements. However, a key issue at stake is the need to achieve greater consistency with regard to third-party intervention in African conflicts. A look at the more glaring examples of multinational operations in the name of peace and security gives a sense of the magnitude and difficulties often experienced during such endeavours. In addition, both past and current operations have brought to light certain perspectives and lessons that require careful analysis and study. In this article, an overview is given of some of the perils and challenges associated with multinational operations in the realm of peace and security. Specifically, the focus is on Africa and on key issues and challenges regarding the strategic and operational management of such operations in view of the need to consider a more integrated approach towards multinational operations in support of peace and security in Africa.     

UNITED NATIONS SECURITY COUNCIL REFORM

Much has changed since the United Nations was established in 1945. New challenges confront the organization including global warming, global diseases and global terrorism. Responding to these challenges requires continual change, adaptation and learning—a hallmark of the stewardship of current UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. In 1997 Annan announced major structural changes to streamline the organization, follow up five years later by another initiative to clarify, simplify and rationalize the organization and subsequent efforts to streamline UN peacekeeping. The UN has also forged new partnerships with civil society and the private sector. Important as these changes are, reform of the General Assembly and the Security Council hold the organization hostage to the vested interests of key member states. There are a number of options to make the Council more representative including regionalism, population distribution, economic weight, culture/religion/civilization and democracy. Clearly the largest challenge is the absence of representation for Asia, Africa and Latin America. Currently Germany, Japan, India and Brazil have strong claims—plus at least one candidate from Africa. Should these four countries decide to act in unison, they could force reform of the Security Council     

Early warning,the protection of civilians and United Nations peacekeeping operations

This commentary traces the increasing importance of early warning in United Nations (UN) peacekeeping, an emphasis that has emerged in connection with the evolution of protection of civilians mandates in UN peacekeeping missions. It examines the current and emerging practice of early warning in UN peacekeeping as well as the challenges faced, drawing on case studies from the UN missions in South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The authors also propose a set of basic principles upon which early warning in UN peacekeeping operations might be approached in the future.     

THE POST-9/11 SECURITY AGENDA AND PEACEKEEPING IN AFRICA

There are two mainstream schools of thought about the impact of the war against terror on international efforts to resolve African conflicts. One sees in the war against terrorism a renewed focus on eradicating the root causes of civil war in Africa and elsewhere, simply because it is believed that it is these conditions that foster the kind of political alienation that propels people into committing acts of terror. The other sees the continued marginalisation of Africa by powerful nations that, despite rhetoric to the contrary, have clearly become so preoccupied with their own security agenda that the bulk of resources will be directed towards combating the symptoms, rather than the root causes, of terrorism. This article asserts that the US, UN and African responses to 11 September open the door for a manipulation and redefinition of terrorism to justify crackdowns on legitimate dissent, and that peacekeeping and peace-building in Africa must inevitably take a back seat to the war on terror. It calls for a more sober and balanced perspective on what is needed to cope with the ever-increasing challenges to human security in Africa.     

The African Capacity for Immediate Response to Crisis: conceptual breakthrough or anti-imperialist phantom?

The creation of an African Capacity for Immediate Response to Crisis (ACIRC) is a sign of Africa's willingness to take its destiny into its own hands. Presented as a reaction to the slowness of the development of the African Standby Force (ASF), it is also a response to some of the ASF's conceptual weaknesses. This decision reflects a wish to establish an instrument better equipped to deal with the challenges Africa is facing. Departing from the (sub)regional logic of the ASF results from a desire to take into account the transnational nature of threats, while its enlarged mandate is meant to offer Africa the capacity to intervene in all kinds of conflicts, including by undertaking peace enforcement activities. But the obstacles on the road towards the actual creation and mobilisation of this capacity should not be underestimated. These include material difficulties, but also political tensions, between ‘small’ and ‘big’ states as well as between the African Union and subregional organisations. The risk then is high that the ACIRC, whose announcement came as a reaction to France's intervention in Mali, ends up joining the ranks of the many ‘anti-imperialist’ phantoms haunting the history of the Organization of African Unity/African Union (OAU/AU). Confronted by events considered ‘neocolonial’ initiatives, African actors have indeed traditionally reacted by launching grand projects that never got off the ground. However, by actually establishing this new instrument, they may also demonstrate that times have definitively changed.     

Burden Sharing in CSDP Military Operations

Abstract

Military burden sharing has been a subject of repeated debates in NATO and the UN. Despite more modest goals, the European Union’s (EU) Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP) has experienced no fewer difficulties in garnering men, money, and materiel. While this may not come as a surprise, the fact that some EU member states have carried disproportionate shares of the burden of CSDP operations is a puzzle that remains unaccounted for. We address this gap by analyzing determinants of contribution levels to CSDP operations. In employing an innovative multi-method design that combines insights from collection action theory with those from integrated theories of military burden sharing, our results indicate that EU countries tend to contribute in positive disproportion with their capabilities when they have a strong peacekeeping tradition and elections are distant. In contrast, they undercontribute when small trade volumes with the area of operations combine with a weak peacekeeping tradition.     

浅议维和警察团队构建及团队精神的培养

维和警察团队在维和行动中展现了强大的优势。在构建维和警察团队时,要把握好一系列原则;在培养其团队精神时,要做好以下六个方面的工作：强化维和事业心、合理明确的定位、警队制度化、复合化培养、以人为本、处理好警队内部竞争与合作的关系。     

Radio Jamming: The Disarmament of Radio Propaganda

To more concretely define what the UN's policy towards international peacekeeping should be in the twenty-first century, novel methods of addressing inter-and intrastate conflict need examining. Consequently, this article argues that UN peacekeeping operations must begin to include technological capabilities – namely UN jamming of hate radio – when certain prerequisites are met. Using the Rwandan genocide and the radio station that largely inspired the conflict, RTLMC, as a case study, this article illustrates hate radio's power in both inter- and intrastate conflict and devises a system wherein UN peacekeeping efforts can effectively silence this menace to international security.     

Rentier peacekeeping in neo-patrimonial systems: The examples of Burundi and Kenya

International peacekeeping in Africa has developed dynamically in the last decade. The majority of global missions are deployed to the continent, the largest regional contingent of troops comes from Africa, and the African Peace and Security Architecture has made significant progress. Peacekeeping is Africanized today more than at any time before. However, mainstream research has insufficiently paid attention to African agency in this context. This article sheds light on the often neglected influence of African politics on international peacekeeping missions. The focus is set on the consequences of neo-patrimonial political systems, which can use international peacekeeping missions as an opportunity to generate rents. It will be shown that such a rent-seeking approach is highly problematic for the troop-contributing as well as mission-hosting countries. Instead of curbing conflict, rentier peacekeeping is prolonging and exporting it. The empirical examples used are the Burundian and Kenyan involvement in peacekeeping in Somalia.     

Women and the military

Debates about the relationship between women and the military have become common within Western societies. These debates primarily centre on the issue of the place, fitness and desirability of a female presence within institutions designed for national war making. There are those who claim that equality betwen the sexes demands the full integration of women into national militaries, including in combat roles, others however argue that women are ill‐equipped for the traditional tasks required of ‘warriors’. This article argues that these debates are increasingly irrelevant. Future wars are increasingly less likely to be fought only by clearly defined national combat forces and more likely to be ‘virtual’ wars involving the deployment of Western technologies against militarily inferior opponents. This too is an age in which Western states will be engaged not just in virtual wars but in ‘humanitarian intervention’, peacekeeping, enforcement and postwar reconstruction. This allows, even encourages, a rethinking of traditional notions and debates over the place of women within the military sphere.     

CHINA AND THE U.S. BEYOND THE KOREAN PENINSULA

China-U.S. cooperation over the most difficult security problem in Northeast Asia—the North Korean nuclear issue—in essence projects its bigger power game amid the tectonic shifts of Asian geopolitics. The nuclear issue affords a test case to gauge the future posture of China and the United States in East Asia and their partnership in that conflict-prone region. Approaches to resolving this issue must take into account the geopolitical realignment of Asia, Washington's reorientation of relations with its Asian allies, and China's rise as an influential regional player and the subsequent regional response. However, the long-standing mistrust between China and the United States is contributing to a lack of substantial progress in Korean nonproliferation efforts. The declared nuclear test by Pyongyang further put the denuclearization cooperation between China and the Unites States on the line. China-U.S. cooperation in denuclearizing Pyongyang may either produce lasting stability for the region or create ‘‘collateral damage,’’ with the North Korean issue paling in comparison.     

Mediation,Peacekeeping And Civil War Peace Agreements

The post-civil war agreement phase is vulnerable to credible commitment problems, a lack of government capacity to implement, and/or mutual vulnerability to retribution from violating the agreement. This study’s main contribution is to demonstrate the combined utility of mediation and UN peacekeeping. Mediation builds trust and confidence and works with the parties to design an efficacious agreement conducive to, among other features, tamping down post-agreement violence. Peacekeeping stems violence and facilitates the implementation of the agreement. Agreements that are mediated and followed by UN peacekeeping are expected to be more robust in terms of staving off violence. We report the effects of the mediation–peacekeeping interaction using a method correcting for a common misinterpretation of interaction terms. We test logit and hazard models using a sample of full and partial civil war peace agreements signed between 1975 and 2011. Controlling for agreement design, democracy, and income per capita, the results indicate mediation and its interaction with peacekeeping reduce the probability of renewed/continuing violence and have a positive impact on agreement duration. We also report brief case study evidence from the 1990s peace process in Guatemala.