When asked to think of the United Nations (UN), many of my students picture blue-helmeted soldiers. In UN hagiography, peacekeeping is synonymous with forceful, self-sacrificial, and benevolent internationalism. The reality is, of course, more complicated.
Tag: peacekeeping
Roundtable 14-2 on The Frontlines of Peace: An Insider’s Guide to Changing the World
Promoting peace is something everyone endorses – from the United Nations to rich foundations to idealistic schoolchildren. But what is peace? How does it unfold? How can those who want to promote it help? In a book that is more revolutionary than its straightforward language belies, Séverine Autesserre wants to change how we answer each…
Roundtable 12-13 on Peacekeeping in the Midst of War
Peacekeeping was born in 1948, in the midst of the American civil rights and anti-colonial movements. The basic thrust of the idea was to resolve violent conflict without resorting to violence. In that sense, peacekeeping is unlike other forms of military intervention because of its foundational principles: consent, impartiality, and the use of force in…
Article Review 141 on “Networked Cooperation: How the European Union Mobilizes Peacekeeping Forces to Project Power Abroad.”
In this article Marina Henke takes an interest in force generation processes in European Union (EU) peacekeeping operations. Even though the EU is the subject of the research, force generation in multilateral peacekeeping operations is indeed an overlooked phenomenon in general. As such, and beyond the carefully studied and researched case that Henke examines here,…