Master thesis Political Science Specialisation: International Relations
ENDING INTERVENTIONS:
WHEN SHOULD UN-AUTHORISED
INTERVENERS LEAVE AND HOW SHOULD
THEY BRING ABOUT THEIR DEPARTURES?
Author: Alba Godfrey (10600094) Supervisor: Dr. Sara Kendall
Research project: The Politics of International Law University of Amsterdam
TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ... 3
INTRODUCTION ... 4
1) Situating the debate ... 4
2) Framing the research question ... 5
3) Outlining the approach and the structure ... 5
4) Reaching a conclusion ... 7
CHAPTER 1: Policy analysis ... 9
1) The evolution of ideas concerning the issue of when to leave ... 9
2) Indications as to how to implement these ideas ... 17
a) Key factors ... 18
b) Principal constraints ... 21
3) The contemporary situation: the Peacebuilding Commission ... 24
CHAPTER 2: Debates within International Relations ... 27
1) The issue of sovereignty ... 27
2) The issue of the liberal peace ... 30
3) Introducing nuance into the debates ... 32
CHAPTER 3: Debates within International Law ... 43
1) What is jus post bellum and why is it important? ... 44
2) The responsibilities set out by the framework ... 47
3) A new conceptualization of endings ... 48
4) Possible criticisms ... 50
CHAPTER 4: Suggested guidelines for success ... 53
1) When should interveners leave? ... 54
2) How should they bring about success? ... 56
a) The need to plan ... 58
b) The need to rebuild ... 60
c) The need to involve the local population ... 63
d) The need to change mindsets ... 66
3) The contemporary peacebuilding moment ... 69
CONCLUSION ... 73
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
HLP High-Level Panel
ICISS International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty
IL International Law
IR International Relations PBC Peacebuilding Commission R2P Responsibility to Protect
UN United Nations
UNAMA United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan UNGA United Nations General Assembly
UNSC United Nations Security Council
UNSMIL United Nations Support Mission in Libya
INTRODUCTION
1) Situating the debate
The issue of humanitarian intervention has been and still is the subject of a great deal of debate. Much of this debate had centred around the question of when to intervene, or indeed if one should intervene at all, and if so who should carry out these interventions. Such discussions are highly controversial, and it is unlikely that a consensus will be reached any time soon. But what is interesting is that although the beginnings of an intervention attract much attention, and to a certain extent this attention is sustained throughout the military phase of the operation, after a certain point interest starts to decline, and the end phase, and end itself, are relatively little discussed. This is true as far as concerns levels of scholarly interests as well as those of policy-makers and of the general public. There is thus a gap, both in policy and in the literature, in terms of examining the endings of humanitarian interventions, and if the first objective of this thesis is to highlight this gap in the hope that it will receive more attention, the second is to make a contribution towards filling it.
The interlinked issues of when UN-authorised interveners should leave and how they should bring about their departures are not merely interesting because they have been relatively neglected, but also because they are highly relevant and can have a very real impact. Indeed, the way an intervention ends influences how the intervention as a whole is perceived. It can also have an effect on future interventions: a successful ending is more likely to encourage further missions – or at least not hinder the possibility of them taking place. Moreover, the overall assessment of a UN-authorised intervention reflects upon the UN as a whole. On a more general level, when and how an intervention ends has an obvious impact on the country in which the intervention has taken place, as well as on the region in which it is situated, and on the global geopolitical situation. The way interventions end can contribute towards the spread of stability and peace, and this is therefore a vitally important issue, which urgently requires more attention. The fact that the issue is complicated and controversial should encourage rather than deter contributions, since it is only through reasoned discussion and debate that viable solutions can be found.
2) Framing the research question
Thus the interlinked issues of when to leave and how to implement the leaving process are not only interesting, but also important, and relevant, both from theoretical and practical perspectives, and to scholars, policy-makers and the public alike. Highlighting and trying to fill the gap in policy and literature is conceptually engaging, and could have an impact on real events. This thesis thus seeks to answer two interlinked questions: when should interveners leave, and how should they bring about their departures? The ends of interventions are often couched as temporal dilemmas, between on the one hand leaving too soon, and on the other staying for too long. The double-edged nature of the research question leads towards an answer which sets out both theoretical and practical ways to escape from this dilemma – in other words, addressing the issue of how to leave demonstrates how to put into practice the answer to the question of when.
These questions shall be answered with reference to multidimensional interventions carried out under the auspices of the UN, which means that the post-conflict rebuilding element, or peacebuilding, that I will focus on, must have been preceded by a military operation. The military phase and the peacebuilding phase are thus both part of the same intervention. It is important to state however that I am not concerned with what lies behind the beginning of interventions, and do not question the motivations of the interveners upon their entrance into a state. Instead, I address the factors that need to be taken into consideration when concerning their departure.
3) Outlining the approach and the structure
I approach these issues from several different perspectives, and herein lies one of the originalities of the thesis. By drawing on the debates and insights of several different fields I am able to offer a truly multi-faceted and wide-ranging answer. The first chapter consists primarily of a policy analysis, in which I draw out UN perspectives on the issue of when to leave through a reading of UN reports and documents. A close reading of these texts allows me to chart the evolution of the issue from the end of the Cold War to the present day. In particular, I will highlight the importance of the advent of the Responsibility to Protect, and its subsidiary notion of the responsibility to rebuild. Through this analysis I reach a preliminary answer to the first of the research questions: interveners should stay as long as necessary to help implement a self-sustainable peace. I then pull out of these same documents some indications concerning how to implement this idea.
But although this answer may be viable from a UN-perspective, from an IR point of view, it immediately triggers suspicion, for it appears to advocate a neo-colonial approach. In the second chapter I look into this issue in more detail, setting forth the debates within IR that are concerned with the problems of the final stages of an intervention, with a particular focus on those surrounding the issue of sovereignty and of the liberal peace. Although it may at first seem that the argument that interveners should stay ‘as long as necessary’ must be rejected if it wishes to steer clear from neo-imperialist labels, in actual fact the issue is not so clear-cut. The introduction of nuance, provided by the works of several groundbreaking scholars, allows me to argue that one cannot simply dismiss the idea that it is necessary to stay until peace is self-sustainable. I maintain that this approach can in fact be justified, and that staying ‘as long as necessary’ is an acceptable policy to adopt.
In addition, more than just being acceptable, I argue that this policy is a duty for interveners. In order to do so I draw on the recent debates surrounding the issue of jus post bellum, which take place principally in the field of International Law. Combining the scholarly insights of IR and IL sheds a new and very interesting light on the topics explored in this thesis, adding a moral dimension to peacebuilding and bringing forth the notion of responsibility.
Hence by the end of the first three chapters, the answer that emerges to the question of when the interveners should leave is that they should leave once peace is self-sustainable and that their moral responsibilities are fulfilled, which, put together, makes them ‘successful’. This, however, is a very theoretical perspective, and in the final chapter I insert a more practical note. In the first place I elaborate upon the concept of ‘success’, and secondly I show what guidelines should be followed in order to achieve it. In keeping with the more practical perspective of the final chapter, I base myself not merely on the insights provided by the three previous chapters, but also on examples of previous interventions. It must be made clear however that I do not attempt an exhaustive empirical analysis, but merely select the cases that best highlight the guidelines that interveners should follow in order to successfully complete an intervention.
It must also be made clear that the suggested guidelines are very different from strict policy proposals. Rather than tell interveners what to do, they tell interveners how to do it. In other words, they are not detailed prescriptions, but suggestions as to the overarching conditions that should guide the implementation of more concrete measures. Therefore even though the fourth chapter has a practical dimension, it remains in a way somewhat theoretical in scope. The rather abstract nature of my guidelines is a positive – and I argue the only – way to deal with the issue of when to leave. Interventions are so varied in nature that it is very hard to
draw rules that are applicable to all. This is the reason why it is better to abide by general guidelines, at the heart of which lie the imperatives of nuance and adaptability, rather than by inflexible rules.
This also explains why, although I engage with some empirical data, I do not make use of a quantitative analysis. Such a classical IR approach would force me to think very carefully about the selection criteria for the interventions to be included in the study. As such, the conclusions I would reach would not only be very strict, but would also only be applicable to a select number of future cases. My aim however is to create a set of conditions, or guidelines, that are very widely applicable, and this is why I select a wide variety of previous cases on which to draw upon. This means that the guidelines I produce are similarly wide-ranging and can be applied to a large spectrum of future interventions, since they do not suffer from being overly specific.
To give a few examples: although I state that the interventions examined in this study must be authorised by the UN, Kosovo is included even though the military phase of the operation was not sanctioned, since it was the UN which took charge of the peacebuilding, and it is this aspect which is most relevant to the research. Similarly, I also include East Timor, although strictly speaking it does not qualify as a humanitarian intervention since the Indonesian government consented to the mission. The extent of economic pressure exerted by western powers, however, renders their consent largely artificial (Farer, 2003: 58). This approach allows the discussion of individual missions on an individual basis, and I am thus able to include in my study all examples which are useful in helping to construct my guidelines. Through a combination of this selective analysis of previous missions and of the insights provided by the three previous chapters, I thus set out the guidelines necessary for interveners to comply with in order for their intervention to be successful, and for them to be able to leave. Interveners need to plan, they need to rebuild, they need to involve the local population, and they and the international community as a whole need to change their mindsets concerning the ending of interventions.
4) Reaching a conclusion
Hence interveners can only leave once they are successful, both on a moral and practical level, and they must follow certain guidelines in order to do so. Rather ironically perhaps for a thesis which is centred around the issue of when to leave, I conclude that the focus on leaving is very unhelpful, for two reasons. First, because more important than ‘leave’, interveners
‘leave behind’. The language of departure, and of exit, so often used by theorists and policy-makers alike, is actually very misleading, for it implies a clean break with what comes before. But the end is less of a strict line and more a porous boundary, for much of what is set up during the peacebuilding phase remains in place after the interveners have left. Though they may no longer be physically present – and even this is not always true – they leave much behind, and this is crucially important, for it is through this legacy that sustainable peace is maintained. An end is thus more of a transition than an end, since many aspects of the intervention continue after it has officially ended.
Second, and linked to this first reason, the focus on leaving is also unhelpful because it highlights the absence of interveners, whereas what is actually more important is their presence. A more suitable way of asking the question of when to leave is asking instead how long to stay, for in this case the emphasis is rightly placed on what the interveners achieve whilst they are there. This is why it is crucial to not only answer to question of when to leave, but also to show what should guide the conduct of the interveners during their stay. Moreover, I argue that following the guidelines I set out and helping to build a self-sustainable peace is not merely a necessity in order for interveners to be able to leave, but also a responsibility. There is currently no adequate doctrine elaborating upon this responsibility. The advent of the concept of the responsibility to rebuild is thus a great opportunity, and there are two parallel tasks which must be undertaken. The concept needs to be built upon, clarified, and refined, and it needs to become central to UN debates – and it is crucial that these changes occur now.
CHAPTER 1: Policy analysis
It must made clear from the very start that there is no policy in the strict sense of the term surrounding the issue of when to leave, and this is one of the reasons why it is such a contentious and such an interesting topic to pursue. There are however a number of reports, speeches, and policy documents that confront the issue, the most important and relevant of which will form the basis of the following analysis. I do not therefore present a clearly codified list of UN policies, but instead engage in a reading of these key documents. These documents are selected for their relevance to the research question, and span the period from the end of the Cold War up to the present day. In the first section, I historicize and contextualise the issue of when to end interventions, and show how it has developed and evolved over the years. Widening the scope of the analysis to include some matters associated with intervention more generally is useful at this early stage in the thesis, as it will help to gain a fuller understanding of the background to the research. Second, stepping back from the chronological approach, I draw out the main indications on how to implement the ideas reached at the end of the first part, and also on the constraints exercised upon them. Finally, I provide a brief overview of the contemporary situation, pointing out some potential future pitfalls, and some of the hopes for the coming years.
1) The evolution of ideas concerning the issue of when to leave
In this first section I engage in a reading of UN policy reports and documents in order to chart the evolution of the debate on the issue of when to end interventions. The first key document to emerge from the UN after the end of the Cold War is entitled ‘An Agenda for Peace’, and this is a clear reflection of the mood prevalent in the organisation at the beginning of the 1990s. The conflict that had bitterly divided the world for decades was finally over, and the possibility of an era of peace loomed large. Moreover, the UN felt itself able to help consolidate this peace, since for the first time since the signing of the Charter in 1945, the capabilities of the Security Council were not held hostage by the vetoes of opposing power blocs. The urge to finally assume a meaningful role in world affairs is apparent in many of the documents issued at the time and in subsequent years. The ‘Agenda for Peace’, published in June 1992, was no exception, since it was responding to a demand made by the UNSC for an ‘analysis and recommendations on ways of strengthening and making more efficient within
the framework and provisions of the Charter the capacity of the United Nations for preventive diplomacy, for peacemaking and for peace-keeping’ (Boutros-Ghali 1992: 1).
What stands out most from this report is the overwhelming sense of optimism of its author, the then Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali. ‘The nations and peoples of the United Nations are fortunate in a way that those of the League of Nations were not’, he wrote, adding that ‘we have been given a second chance to create the world of our Charter that they were denied’ (Boutros-Ghali 1992: 20). But what is perhaps even more interesting is that to help bring about this new world, to the three concepts he was requested to elaborate upon, he added a fourth: ‘post-conflict peace-building’ (Boutros-Ghali 1992: 2). For the first time, it was recognized that ‘peacemaking and peace-keeping operations, to be truly successful, must come to include comprehensive efforts to identify and support structures which will tend to consolidate peace and advance a sense of confidence and well-being among people’ (Boutros-Ghali 1992: 15). Rather than setting out precise policy measures, Boutros-(Boutros-Ghali limited himself to suggesting several possible elements of peacebuilding, He proposed for instance that education systems be reformed, to help reduce cultural tensions and foster exchange (Boutros-Ghali 1992: 15). Yet the lack of precision is understandable, and indeed it is even commendable. The small number of relevant empirical examples available to look back upon at that point made it better to suggest than to prescribe, leaving room for future development. His contribution, in that it set in motion the discussion, is of crucial importance.
The ‘Supplement to the Agenda for Peace’, published three years later, is more subdued in tone, a change which can be attributed to the failed UN-led missions in Somalia, Rwanda, and Bosnia, and the tragedies that followed. This caused Boutros-Ghali to call ‘for a retrenchment of an over-extended UN commitment to peacekeeping’ (Doyle & Sambanis 2007: 505). It is therefore particularly interesting that even in this context, the relatively new concept of peacebuilding continued to be considered important. ‘International intervention’, wrote the Secretary-General (1995: 5), ‘must extend beyond military and humanitarian tasks and must include the promotion of national reconciliation and the re-establishment of effective government.’ Moreover, he also recognized the possibility that this might be a long-term commitment, since ‘implementation of the settlement in the time prescribed may not be enough to guarantee that the conflict will not revive. Coordinated programmes are required, over a number of years and in various fields, to ensure that the original causes of war are eradicated’ (Boutros-Ghali 1995: 7). Once more, he did not indicate rules to follow, but in this early stage of conceptual development, perhaps it is enough that ‘the validity of the concept of post-conflict peace-building has received wide recognition’ (Boutros-Ghali 1995: 12).
The end of Boutros-Ghali’s tenure did not mark an end to the interest in post-conflict situations, and if anything his successor Kofi Annan advocated the importance of debate and development even more staunchly. ‘After the conflict is over’, Annan (1999: 4) wrote in one of his yearly reports to the General Assembly, ‘it is vitally important that the commitment to peace be as strong as the commitment to war’. He underlined that ‘the aftermath of war requires no less skill, no less sacrifice, no fewer resources in order to forge a lasting peace and avoid a return to violence’ (Annan 1999: 4). Throughout the 1990s therefore, interest in peacebuilding was maintained and fuelled by the two Secretary-Generals. But whilst discussion in itself is positive, this cannot be said of all of its consequences, since Call and Cousens (2008: 3) remark that the concept ‘became more expansive—arguably, to the point of incoherence’. The two scholars note that the ‘conceptual breadth’ that the numerous debates inspired ‘came at the cost of analytical and practical utility’, since ‘practitioners and scholars debated peacebuilding while referring to a confusing and overlapping mix of goals, activities, timelines, and contexts’ (Call and Cousens 2008: 3). Perhaps it was as a response to this confusion that in March 2000, Annan created a High-Level Panel charged with investigating UN activities concerned with peace and security (Spieker, 2000: 144). The document that resulted from this investigation is, according to Spieker (2000: 145), ‘the most incisive and comprehensive analysis of peace operations ever undertaken by the United Nations’.
This long and detailed document, known as the ‘Brahimi Report’ after the Chair of the Panel, Lakhdar Brahimi, emphatically stated that ‘force alone cannot create peace; it can only create the space in which peace may be built’ (Brahimi 2000: viii). In other words, a military intervention can only create the conditions, the space, for peace to grow in, and that space is where peacebuilding takes over. Looking back on the missions of the previous decade, Brahimi (2000: viii) explained that ‘United Nations operations thus did not deploy into post-conflict situations but tried to create them. In such complex operations, peacekeepers work to maintain a secure local environment while peace-builders work to make that environment self-sustaining.’ The different parts of the missions cannot be neatly separated, but must work together to achieve their ultimate objective – peacekeepers and peacebuilders are ‘inseperable partners’ (Brahimi 2000: ix). Moreover, Brahimi’s (2000: ix) assertion that ‘only such an environment offers a ready exit to peacekeeping forces’, provides an answer to the first part of the issue under scrutiny in this thesis: interveners can leave once peace is self-sustainable. The importance of peacebuilding is stressed throughout the report, and indeed Spieker (2000: 150) comments that ‘the Panel's observations on building in past missions qualify
peace-building as crucial to the success of peacekeeping operations in general and of operations in complex situations in particular’. These ideas were further taken up a year later, in Annan’s ‘No exit without strategy’ (2001), which represents the culmination of the previous decade’s thinking on the concept of peacebuilding.
This report by the Secretary-General is the outcome of a discussion amongst the members of the Security Council seeking to evaluate ‘what factors the Security Council should assess in deciding to launch, close or significantly alter a United Nations peacekeeping operation’ (Annan 2001: 1). In other words, it is the UN’s doctrine on when to end operations, and as such it is a key document for this thesis. Since a detailed analysis would take too long, I limit myself to merely drawing out the main points. Annan (2001: 2) argued that there are three ‘circumstances’ which can lead interveners either to exit or to ‘significantly alter a peacekeeping operation’, and these are: ‘successful completion of the mandate, failure, or partial completion’. By far the most complex – and recurring – of the three scenarios is the partial completion of the mandate, and this can be at least partly attributed to the fact that it is very difficult to determine what constitutes success, a point which shall be further elaborated upon in the final chapter of this thesis. Whereas Annan set out clear policy proposals for the two less frequently occurring cases, he admitted that most often, it was very hard to know what to do.
Rather than lead to discouragement, the Secretary-General’s admission should in fact be seen in a positive light, for several reasons. First, and most crucially, he avoided the pitfall of dogmatism. By steering clear of narrow and prescriptive policy proposals, Annan allowed and in fact encouraged further development, both conceptually and on the ground – and it goes without saying that these two aspects are strongly linked. The lack of dogmatism is particularly important given that peacebuilding was and still is a very new concept. Moreover, in a more profound sense, the absence of an overarching answer prompts the idea that there might be no such thing as far as concerns the issue of when to leave. More precisely, there is no answer if it is one expressed in chronological terms that is sought. Any answer there might be will be expressed in a way which allows for more nuance. Finally, Annan’s attitude should be taken as an example of how to proceed in search of this answer: by asking questions (the one Annex he attaches to his report is entitled ‘Key questions in the life of a peacekeeping operation’ – Annan 2001: 12-3). Only through an inquisitive frame of mind, open to the possibility of change, will further development be possible.
Hence it seems that at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the conditions were right for peacebuilding to flourish. But although initially it may have looked like that was going to
happen, peacebuilding actually evolved in a different way. As is often the case when such landmark dates come about, the start of a new millennium was seized upon by the UN as an opportunity to take stock. It turned both to the past and to the future, to what had been done and to what yet needed to be done, and took steps to re-orient itself to indicate that lessons had been learned and mistakes would not be repeated, that problems had been understood and their solutions meditated upon. This desire to implement change, change which would originate in the workings of the UN and the effects of which would hopefully be felt worldwide, is encapsulated in Annan’s wide-ranging report ‘We the Peoples’ (2000). This document is addressed to the heads of States and Government convened by the General Assembly in order to discuss the role the UN should assume in the new century. ‘As we prepare for the Millennium Summit’, wrote the Secretary-General (2000: 67), ‘we must reaffirm our founding purposes. But we must also think imaginatively how to strengthen the United Nations so that it can better serve states and people alike in the new era.’ One of the outcomes of Annan’s report was the creation of the High-Level Panel chaired by Lakhdar Brahimi, and this has already been discussed. But although the ‘Brahimi Report’ was wide-ranging, it focused more on summing up the debates of the previous century than on presenting new ideas for the new one. This second task was undertaken by a different Commission, the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (henceforth ICISS). It is this report that truly sets the tone for the new millennium.
Leaving aside for the moment the more political aspects dealt with in the report, which shall be analysed in the next chapter (in particular its discussion of sovereignty), I will continue to focus on more general developments, highlighting the space given to peacebuilding within the wider range of issues discussed by the ICISS. It began the report by signaling that ‘the issue of intervention for human protection purposes has been seen as one of the most controversial and difficult of all international relations questions’ (ICISS 2001: vii). The Commission’s task was ‘to try to find, once and for all, a new consensus on how to approach these issues’ (ICISS 2001: vii). And in many respects it was successful, since it developed a new principle – the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ – and moreover this principle was unanimously adopted a few years later by the General Assembly – albeit in a slightly modified version. What is of real interest for the purpose of this thesis is that as presented in this initial report, the ‘Responsibility to Protect’, or R2P as it has since become known, was composed of three different facets: the responsibilities in turn to prevent, to react, and to rebuild.
Obviously, it is the last of these three aspects that is most interesting here, and even more than the detail of what is written, what is important is the fact that rebuilding was thus placed on a
par with preventing and reacting. All the work of the previous decade seems to have come to fruition. With its importance enshrined in the report, peacebuilding could no longer be ignored by scholars, policy-makers, or the public. No more would it be a slightly overlooked domain, sidelined by what were considered to be the more important aspects of intervention. ‘Too often in the past the responsibility to rebuild has been insufficiently recognized’, the Commissioners (2001: 39) declared, ‘the exit of the interveners has been poorly managed, the commitment to help with reconstruction has been inadequate, and countries have found themselves at the end of the day still wrestling with the underlying problems that produced the original intervention action.’ The implication, quite clearly, is that this will no longer be the case. In sum: ‘if military intervention is to be contemplated, the need for a post-intervention strategy is also of paramount importance’ (ICISS 2001: 39).
The report’s suggestion for what this strategy should be echoes that of Kofi Annan in ‘No exit without strategy’ in that it stresses both the difficulty of coming up with a clear answer, and the necessity of keeping an open mind. ‘How an intervention will ultimately play out is always hard to determine’, it is explained (ICISS 2001: 59). ‘Unexpected challenges are almost certain to arise, and the results are almost always different from what was envisaged at the outset. […] This uncertainty is what drives some intervening countries and their militaries to define an exit strategy in terms of an arbitrary withdrawal date’ (ICISS 2001: 59). Having outlined the problem, the Commissioners then proposed a solution. ‘To see an intervention through means as well that the intervening side has to be prepared to remain engaged during the post-intervention phase as long as necessary in order to achieve self-sustained stability. Coalitions or nations act irresponsibly if they intervene without the will to restore peace and stability, and to sustain a post-intervention operation for as long as necessary to do so’ (ICISS 2001: 64). Stated more clearly than in the ‘Brahimi Report’, this is again the appropriate answer to the question of when to leave. Clearly, it needs to be placed in a more theoretical framework, and it needs to be expanded upon, and I do so in the following three chapters. But before ending the policy analysis it is necessary to look at the immediate reaction to and subsequent evolution of this idea.
One fact that must be made absolutely clear is that up until now all the documents that have been analysed have been reports, either written by Secretary-Generals or panels, and that as such they do not represent actual policies, merely suggestions of what those policies should be. Two further points derive from this one. First, this does not mean that all development was purely theoretical and that what occurred in practice on the field remained static, abiding by outdated rules. As has been noted, the rules concerning peacebuilding have been very flexible,
and this is positive since it allows interveners to adapt to different and changing situations. There has been much development on the field, which has then been echoed in more theoretical discussions. The practical and the theoretical are thus interlinked, often evolving in parallel. The second point is that the influence of reports such as these must not be underestimated, and that their recommendations often do become policies. However, this is not always the case. The UN being a democratic body, in order for proposals to become laws they must be voted in as such by the General Assembly. This fact is of particular importance in a discussion of the ‘Responsibility to Protect’, for in this case, the member states did not agree with all of the ICISS’s suggested framework and measures, and the policy that emerged thus differs from its report. Although in some respects the differences between suggestion and implementation are slim, as far as concerns what is being researched in this thesis, they had a huge impact.
Before the General Assembly decided what to do with the information provided by the ICISS, a further report was produced, compiled by the Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel (HLP) on Threats, Challenges, and Change, and entitled ‘A More Secure World’ (2004). The most relevant finding is the statement that ‘our analysis has identified a key institutional gap: there is no place in the United Nations system explicitly designed to avoid State collapse and the slide to war or to assist countries in their transition from war to peace’ (HLP 2004: 83). The Panel (2004: 83) then added that ‘that this was not included in the Charter of the United Nations is no surprise since the work of the United Nations in largely internal conflicts is fairly recent’. Its response to this changing situation was to suggest that the Security Council, acting under Article 29 of the Charter, create a new institutional body: the Peacebuilding Commission (henceforth PBC). Annan (2005: 31) endorsed this in his report to the General Assembly in 2005, declaring that ‘I therefore propose to Member States that they create an intergovernmental Peacebuilding Commission, as well as a Peacebuilding Support Office within the United Nations Secretariat, to achieve this end’. The end in question was that of filling the ‘gaping hole in the United Nations institutional machinery’, namely that ‘no part of the United Nations system effectively addresses the challenge of helping countries with the transition from war to lasting peace’ (Annan 2005: 31).
These various reports having been published, it was then incumbent upon the General Assembly to decide what to do with the suggestions they contained. This was in line with the ICISS’s (2001:73) statement that ‘the Commission’s objective from the outset has been for our report to have a practical and concrete political impact, rather then simply provide additional stimulation to scholars and other commentators’. In 2005, the General Assembly
convened a World Summit at which to meet and deliberate. At first glance it seems that the recommendations of all reports were taken up very enthusiastically, since in the ‘World Summit Outcome Document’, the General Assembly proclaimed its adherence to the concept of the ‘Responsibility to Protect’, and furthermore stated that ‘we decide to establish a Peacebuilding Commission as an intergovernmental advisory body’ (UNGA 2005: 25). However, when looked at more closely, it appears that there is a discrepancy between suggestions and adopted policies, and this discrepancy is felt particularly strongly in the area of peacebuilding.
Indeed, as previously mentioned, the 2001 report established a three-tiered platform for peace operations, but in the ‘World Summit Outcome Document’, the responsibility to rebuild is almost entirely sidelined. Some have argued that this is due to the fact that in order to make R2P as a whole politically acceptable and operational, it was necessary to restrict certain aspects of it, and thus that rebuilding was in a sense sacrificed for the greater good. Seen in this light, it is positive that the ‘initially broad and fuzzy scope of R2P, as suggested in the 2001 Report, has been narrowed and more precisely circumscribed’ (Hoffmann & Nollkaemper 2012: 15). But Thomas Weiss (2011: 8) laments this, noting that ‘the World Summit set aside peace-building (or included it as part of prevention, thereby downgrading it). But the distinct spectrum of prevention, reaction, and rebuilding remains preferable.’ Looking back on the ICISS report, the fact that it devotes fewer pages to the responsibility to rebuild than to the other responsibilities could be seen as an early warning of what occurred. Nevertheless, the General Assembly did at least agree to the creation of the PBC, and this could be seen as an acknowledgment of the importance of peacebuilding. I argue however that this is a misleading interpretation. Although the creation of an institution specifically designed to address post-conflict matters seems to herald a new age in which rebuilding is not only rightfully recognized as an important aspect of peace operations, but moreover there are those whose job it is to put theory into practice, there are in fact two possible downsides to this. The first is that this scenario is only true if the PBC lives up to expectations – and this issue shall be addressed shortly. The second is that the creation of the PBC fostered the assumption that the peacebuilding issue was ‘solved’, and hence interest declined. It is possible that the advent of the PBC and the decline in interest in rebuilding is a tenuous link; nevertheless, it seems a little too easy to dismiss the timing as purely coincidental.
But although the responsibility to rebuild was sidelined by the General Assembly, this does not mean that it immediately became obsolete. Indeed, writing in 2009, O’Neill (2009: 479) comments enthusiastically that ‘the “Responsibility to Protect” includes the often neglected
principle of the responsibility to “rebuild”’, adding that this concept ‘has been overlooked in the debate on the norms and conditions for military intervention to stop genocide, war crimes, or crimes against humanity’. This comment rests on the assumption that no more will this principle be ‘neglected’. Yet in the same year, following in the footsteps of the General Assembly, a further blow was dealt to the concept of rebuilding by the now current Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, in his report entitled ‘Implementing the Responsibility to Protect’ (2009). This is a crucial document, for it takes up on the doctrine agreed upon by the General Assembly and further develops it. It is therefore disappointing – but perhaps not entirely surprising – that here too the ‘responsibility to rebuild’ does not feature strongly. It could even be argued that this report signals its final demise, since it reformulates the three concepts of the R2P into three different pillars, and in the re-shuffling, the rebuilding aspect is dropped. The three new component parts of R2P become:
Pillar one: The protection responsibilities of the State
Pillar two: International assistance and capacity-building
Pillar three: Timely and decisive response
As Ban Ki-moon (2009: 2) clearly states: ‘The strategy stresses the value of prevention and, when it fails, of early and flexible response tailored to the specific circumstances of each case.’ Following on from this, the Secretary-General has published an annual report concerning R2P, each time choosing a specific focus. The four selected areas to date have been: ‘Early warning, assessment, and the R2P’, ‘The role of regional and sub-regional arrangements in implementing the responsibility to protect’, ‘Timely and decisive response’, and ‘State responsibility and prevention’. In most of these documents, the responsibility to rebuild is not just sidelined, it is completed ignored.
Hence although the advent of the R2P seemed to herald a coming of age, and indeed a golden age, for peacebuilding, the reality speaks somewhat differently. All has been placed on the shoulders of the PBC, and, thus unburdened, the rest of the UN turns its attention elsewhere. Whether or not the PBC has been, and will in the future, be able to bear this heavy load, shall be considered in the final section of this chapter.
2) Indications as to how to implement these ideas
Through a reading of UN reports and documents, the broad outline of the evolution of the issue of when to leave has been traced. Moreover, I have also pulled out the beginnings of an
answer to the research question: interveners should not leave until they have helped to install a self-sustainable peace. I now turn to the second aspect of the research, namely, how to implement such a policy. The UN documents do not provide clear guidelines, but they do emphasize certain factors which need to be taken into account, factors which must be borne in mind when it comes to creating my own guidelines. The documents also point to several aspects which constrain the implementation of these ideas, and it is also important to consider these since they can have a very real impact on the practice of peacebuilding.
a) Key factors
Although the documents under scrutiny were written at different times and for different purposes, that does not mean that there are not similarities between them. Indeed, when discussing the issue of when to leave, there are a number of recurring factors that are singled out as highly important, and without which a solid policy cannot be established. The first of these is the need for clarity, and encompassed within this is the importance of the mandate, of planning, and of gathering information. Second, the documents stress the importance of a realistic as opposed to an optimistic outlook. Third, in trying to work out solutions for the present, the UN emphasizes the need to pay attention to both the past and the future. Finally, it needs to be credible. Each of these aspects is tied in with the others, and concerns not merely peacebuilding, but peace operations more generally. In what follows I focus on each of them in turn, drawing out the most relevant passages from the selection of documents.
First, and this is perhaps the most recurring of concerns, UN policy-makers stress the need for clarity. Even if they cannot provide a definitive answer to the question of when to leave, they are adamant that all aspects surrounding and bearing an influence on it should be managed as efficiently as possible. The most crucial element to be considered is the mandate. In the ‘Agenda for Peace’, Boutros-Ghali (1992: 14) indicated that ‘a clear and practicable mandate’ was one of the ‘basic conditions for success’ for all aspects peace-keeping operations. The ‘Brahimi Report’ dedicated a whole section to the need for ‘Clear, credible, and achievable mandates’ (Brahimi 2000: 10), and another to ‘Information-gathering, analysis, and strategic planning capacities’ (Brahimi 2000: 12). Furthermore, Brahimi (2000: 1) emphasized that success is contingent on ‘a sound peace-building strategy’, and that there is a ‘critical need to improve Headquarters planning (including contingency planning) for peace operations’.
But it is perhaps Annan (2001: 8) who encapsulated this idea most clearly when he wrote quite simply that ‘a good exit strategy needs a good entrance strategy’, going on to explain that ‘the Security Council is expected to reach agreement on a clear and achievable mandate based on a common understanding of the nature of the conflict’. This concern is kept alive in the new doctrine of R2P, for the ICISS (2001: 60) stated without reserve that ‘a clear and unambiguous mandate is one of the first and most important requirements of an operation to protect. However well or ill-defined the end state of intervention, political vision should encompass what it will take to get there.’ The authors of ‘A More Secure World’, finally, concurred with this assessment, commenting that one of the challenges of a mission is to have ‘an appropriate, clear and well understood mandate, applicable to all the changing circumstances that might reasonably be envisaged’ (HLP 2004: 68). There can be no doubt that this has been and still is a key concern for UN policy-makers.
Second, and interlinked with the desire for clarity – and in particular clarity of the mandate – the documents stress the need for a realistic as opposed to an optimistic outlook. In other words, interveners and theorists should not shield themselves from the potential negative aspects of an intervention. The objective of course is to be prepared for any circumstances that might arise, however ill-desired. What this perspective brings to the issue of ending interventions is the idea that those who engage themselves should not falsely believe that the ‘end’ will be easy, or that it will necessarily come about rapidly. The interveners should instead be prepared to participate in a long rebuilding phase. Indeed, Annan (2001: 9) wrote: that ‘both the Security Council and the Secretariat must resist the temptation to identify and frame a mission’s objectives in a optimistic light; they must be prepared for worst-case scenarios’. In other words – those of Lakhdar Brahimi (2000: x): ‘The Secretariat must tell the Security Council what it needs to know, not what it wants to hear.’ And if the scenario is so bad to begin with that there is little hope of a mission being successful, then according to the ICISS (2001: xii) the UN should refrain from intervening at all. Indeed, one of its ‘precautionary principles’ is that of ‘reasonable prospects’, defined as follows: ‘There must be a reasonable chance of success in halting or averting the suffering which has justified the intervention, with the consequences of action not likely to be worse than the consequences of inaction’ (ICISS 2001: xii).
Third, in attempting to draw up the rules governing peacebuilding, UN policy-makers need to turn their gaze in two opposite and arguably equally important directions: towards the past
and towards the future. The past is there to learn from, and the future is there to strive to do better in. I believe this duality of vision to be very interesting, and indicative of something profound about the mindset of the UN. For if on the one hand it is aware of past events, and in particular of past failures, it is also always exceedingly hopeful for the future. Boutros-Ghali (1992: 22) commented that ‘we must be guided not by precedents alone, however wise these may be, but by the needs of the future and by the shape and content that we wish to give it’. It is this hope above all else which stands at the core of the UN. Of course, the past is not forgotten – after 1995 few documents fail to mention the Rwandan and Bosnian tragedies, and lament the role, or lack of role, that the UN played in this instances. But what is truly striking is the belief in the possibility of change, and moreover change for the better.
Almost invariably, each time a new speech is made or a report published, the speaker or author extols upon the fact that that moment, right then, is the opportune moment, the moment which the UN should seize upon to make a difference. The ICISS (2001: 7) contended that ‘for perhaps the first time since the UN was established, there is now a genuine prospect of the Security Council fulfilling the role envisioned for it in the UN Charter’. Four years later Annan (2005: 53) was convinced that ‘now is the time to act’. There is much rhetoric concerning the ‘vision’ of the UN, and Annan (2005: 53) concluded the same report by exclaiming that ‘what I have called for here is possible. It is within reach. From pragmatic beginnings could emerge a visionary change of direction in our world. That is our opportunity and our challenge.’ The UN is thus constantly driven forth by a will to do better, to reform, and a parallel belief that it is able to do so. And although the past is also taken into consideration, increasingly so and rightly so, it is also important to have a forward-looking mentality. In this instance, an optimistic point of view, which believes in the possibility of making things better, is appropriate.
Placed side by side, these three concerns all lead up to the final one: the need to be credible. This is why the UN must present a clear precise mandate and a carefully planned mission, adopt a realistic outlook, and recognise the mistakes it has committed whilst at the same time affirming that it is able and will live up to the ideals on which the organisation was founded. What this means in terms of the framework for post-conflict situations, is that the UN cannot simply lay down theoretical rules that it knows will not work in practice (such as an arbitrary time-limit on how long to stay), since when inevitably these rules are not respected, it will lose a significant amount of credibility. As is already becoming apparent through a reading of the policy documents, and as I expand upon in the final chapter, there can be no template rules
as regards precise aspects of the issue of when to leave. The fact that the UN acknowledges this by refraining from setting out arbitrary laws should thus be seen in a positive light, and it is linked to the need and desire for credibility. If the UN loses its credibility, then its loses the trust that nations place in it, and this could have drastic consequences. In the ‘Supplement for the Agenda for Peace’ Boutros-Ghali (1995: 7) wrote that ‘perceived shortcomings in the United Nations performance of the tasks entrusted to it have recently, however, seemed to incline Member States to look for other means, especially, but not exclusively, where the rapid deployment of large forces is required’. At the end of the century this is indeed what happened, with the unauthorized bombing of Kosovo by NATO forces.
These are the four key factors which the UN sees as vitally important to take into account when trying to implement their ideas on when to leave, or in other words, the factors guiding their stay. But it is also important to be aware of the fact that there are several issues which have plagued the UN throughout the development of the concept of peacebuilding. First, it is hampered by a lack of resources, both on a financial and on a human level. Second, it also has to deal with a lack of political will.
b) Principal constraints
First, one of the issues raised most often in the documents is the lack of resources. UN policy-makers are convinced that they could frame far more overarching and reliable procedures if
only they were given the necessary means to ensure they were carried out. Indeed,
Boutros-Ghali (1992: 13) wrote in his ‘Agenda for Peace’ that ‘at a time when nations and peoples increasingly are looking to the United Nations for assistance in keeping the peace - and holding it responsible when this cannot be so - fundamental decisions must be taken to enhance the capacity of the Organization in this innovative and productive exercise of its function’. Furthermore, in the ‘Supplement’, he stated quite unequivocally that ‘none of the instruments discussed in the present paper can be used unless Governments provide the necessary financial resources’ (Boutros-Ghali 1995: 23). But the fact that Brahimi repeated almost exactly the same injunctions shows that nearly a decade later, these words had yet to be heeded. ‘The Member States must give the Secretary-General some flexibility and the financial resources to bring in the staff he needs to ensure that the credibility of the Organization is not tarnished by its failure to respond to emergencies as a professional organization should’, he explained (Brahimi 2000: 33).
This lack of resources is felt particularly keenly in post-conflict situations, an obvious echo to the relative lack of interest. ‘Peace-building also requires prompt, flexible provision of resources’, remark Call and Cousens (2008: 12), ‘but these still tend to fall between the cracks of peacekeeping and development.’ This is all the more problematic because the fact that peacebuilding is under-funded and under-manned impacts upon other aspects of peace operations. Indeed, the lack of resources could mean that a mission fails to complete its mandate, which reflects negatively on all that came before it, and could lead to member states being less willing to support future interventions, or at least more willing to prevent them from happening. Once an operation has begun and resources have been invested, it is crucial that all efforts are made to ‘end’ the operation successfully. If a state reverts to conflict soon after an intervention, it could be argued that all the resources invested in securing peace and stability up until that point had in a certain sense been wasted. ‘Peace-building is another activity that is critically dependent on Member States’ readiness to make the necessary resources available’, Boutros-Ghali (1995: 24) remarked in the ‘Supplement’. ‘It can be a long-term process and expensive - except in comparison with the cost of peacemaking and peace-keeping if the conflict should recur’ (Boutros-Ghali 1995: 24). Since post-conflict rebuilding is crucial in ensuring a sustainable peace, it makes sense to make sure it is given all the means necessary to carry out its aims. As was highlighted in the key report ‘A More Secure World’: ‘Resources spent on implementation of peace agreements and peace-building are one of the best investments that can be made for conflict prevention’ (HLP 2004: 70). Perhaps one of the reasons that resources for peacebuilding are so difficult to come by is that they are slightly different to what is needed for other operations. On the financial side, much of the money is needed not to invest in the UN itself (for instance, on training and equipment), but in the state which is recovering. As far as personnel is concerned, although the military is crucial in preparing the ground for the peacebuilding operation, once a certain level of stability has been reached, a far more varied array of professionals is required. Already in 1992 Boutros-Ghali was aware of this fact, and he noted that ‘increasingly, peace-keeping requires that civilian political officers, human rights monitors, electoral officials, refugee and humanitarian aid specialists and police play as central a role as the military’ (Boutros-Ghali 1992:14). Again though, his recommendations were not heeded, for in ‘We the Peoples’ Annan (2000: 49) observed that ‘on the civilian side, we have been starkly reminded in Kosovo and East Timor how difficult it is to recruit qualified personnel for missions. Where do we find police officers quickly, or judges, or people to run correctional institutions—to focus only on law enforcement needs?’ There is much hope that the new PBC will redress
these matters, but even if it does so successfully, a deeper issue lurks behind. What if the problem was not so much that the UN lacked the capacity to effectively coordinate or martial resources, or that member states did not have resources available, but that they did have them, and did not want to give them?
Indeed, one of the greatest constraints acting upon the UN is the lack of backing from member states. As an organization entirely dependent upon the will of its members, their support is crucial. And yet, scholarly opinion seems to reach the consensus that this most crucial of necessities is often lacking – Bellamy and Williams (2007: 187) dub political will ‘that elusive element’. If UN policy-makers are not backed by member states, their policy making will clearly suffer. They cannot elaborate ambitious doctrines if they know that no one will listen, or that even if they do they will not act. They need to be believed in in order to have the temerity to plan confidently and boldly. Already in 1992 Boutros-Ghali (1992: 14) complained about the failure of members to demonstrate their will to cooperate with the UN: ‘Member States were requested in 1990 to state what military personnel they were in principle prepared to make available; few replied. I reiterate the request to all Member States to reply frankly and promptly.’ But again this did not get any better as the century progressed. ‘Without renewed commitment on the part of Member States, significant institutional change and increased financial support’, warned Brahimi (2000: viii), ‘the United Nations will not be capable of executing the critical peacekeeping and peace-building tasks that the Member States assign to it in coming months and years.’
The ICISS (2001: 70) agreed with him, arguing that whilst ‘the need to get operational responses right’ was clearly important, ‘it is even more important to get the necessary political commitment right’. ‘It remains the case that unless the political will can be mustered to act when action is called for, the debate about intervention for human protection purposes will largely be academic’, the report continued (ICISS 2001: 70). The Commissioners then increased the rhetoric to strengthen the point, declaring that ‘the most compelling task now is to work to ensure that when the call goes out to the community of states for action, that call will be answered. There must never again be mass killing or ethnic cleansing. There must be no more Rwandas’ (ICISS 2001: 70). But although, as Hamilton (2006: 296-7) concedes, ‘there is much “in principle” support for the R2P from state actors, civil society, and in recent months, the U.N. as a whole’, she warns that ‘unless this “in principle” support is matched by a political commitment to making the reforms needed for the R2P to be operational, the ICISS
report will merely mark the turn of another century of inaction in the face of mass human suffering’.
The only way for the UN to function successfully is if it is supported by its members – both their governments and their population – and Annan eloquently called for this on various occasions. At the advent of the new millennium, after detailing the issues with which the world was faced, he declared that ‘no state and no organization can solve all these problems by acting alone. Nor however, should any state imagine that others will solve them for it, if its own government and citizens do not apply themselves wholeheartedly to the task. Building a twenty-first century safer and more equitable than the twentieth is a task that requires the determined efforts of every state and every individual. In inspiring and coordinating those efforts, a renewed United Nations will have a vital and exalting role to play’ (Annan, 2000: 80). A few years later he was still convinced that such a scenario was possible. ‘We can build a world in larger freedom’ he declaimed, ‘— but to do it we must find common ground and sustain collective action’ (Annan, 2005: 53). Yet although this is a powerful proposal, the common ground has yet to be found.
3) The contemporary situation: the Peacebuilding Commission
Before moving to more theoretical issues, I will provide a brief overview of the current situation, which brings together ideas of when and how. Indeed, the most important development in recent years – arguably too important, since it has stifled development in any other direction – is the coming into being in late 2005 of the PBC. This seems to highlight the importance that the UN attributes to peacebuilding, as well as providing a locus for the discussion of how to turn theory into practice. First showing how the PBC emerged and how its mission was initially framed, I will then proceed to look at how it has developed since then, and provide some thoughts and hopes for the future.
As previously noted, in a remarkably fast transition from theory to practice, the idea for the PBC was first launched in the 2004 report ‘A More Secure World’, further promoted by Annan a year later in ‘In Larger Freedom’, and that same year enshrined in policy by the General Assembly’s ‘World Summit Outcome Document’. It is worth quoting at length from the first of these documents, for it is there that the purpose of this Commission was first set out. ‘The core functions of the Peacebuilding Commission should be to identify countries which are under stress and risk sliding towards State collapse; to organize, in partnership with
the national Government, proactive assistance in preventing that process from developing further; to assist in the planning for transitions between conflict and post-conflict peace-building; and in particular to marshal and sustain the efforts of the international community in post-conflict peace-building over whatever period may be necessary’ (HLP 2004: 83-4). Although this is a wide and ambitious scope, it must be noted that the issue of when to leave does not feature, and this is the first sign that the PBC may not be the answer to the problems raised in this thesis. Much in the same way that peacebuilding is the neglected area of peacekeeping, the final stages of a mission are often left out even in discussions of post-conflict situations. This is all the more disheartening since it is precisely those final stages that are so crucial. Although the report gives further indications concerning the functioning of the PBC, and suggests that a Peacebuilding Support Office (PBSO) be created to help it in its duties, nowhere does it fill this highlighted gap – worse still, it does not even acknowledge that it needs to be filled. Annan suggested similar functions in his report, he too omitting to address the issue of when to leave.
However, even bearing this in mind, the PBC as initially conceived remained an impressive project. But there was much debate before it came into being, and what emerged was a body subsidiary to both the Security Council and the General Assembly and bearing ‘no operational capacity of its own’ (Berdal, 2009: 139). This is a long way from what was initially suggested, and indeed Jenkins (2012: 70) remarks that ‘almost none of the key recommendations for the PBC’s functional remit were reflected in the final institutional design’. Moreover, not only does it have no authority, but any recommendations which it chooses to make must be reached through the consensus of its members (Paris, 2009: 73), which makes the possibility of wide-ranging reform, of innovation, and of setting of new standards, even more unlikely. This move from ‘a robust and focused body to something altogether more woolly and vague’ was to be expected, comments Berdal (2008: 358), for it is representative of the political tensions that permeate the UN as a whole. Indeed, he writes that most of the discussion surrounding the PBC has ‘everything to do with politics and little to do with any genuine attempt to translate the vague and easily agreed upon statements of intent contained in constitutive resolutions into workable arrangements at headquarters or in the field’ (Berdal, 2008: 357). There was a possibility of real reform, and that possibility is rapidly diminishing. ‘Unfortunately’, comments Paris (2009: 73), ‘much of the early ambition for the Peacebuilding Comissions appeared to dissipate after the body came into being.’ Therefore that the General Assembly agreed to the creation of an institution dedicated to peacebuilding is a positive development. But whether that institution is shaped in the best
possible way, and whether it will live up to expectations, is a different matter. It is too early pass any final judgments on the PBC. But although it may be pessimistic to adopt a negative outlook so soon, it is hard to see how it will contribute to developing and implementing the issues of when to end interventions and how to bring these endings about, and all too easy to imagine how it could have a negative impact. Indeed, as has been noted, nowhere in the various descriptions of its mission is the need to think about these issues mentioned. In addition, it seems that rather than broadening its ambitions, the PBC is restricting them. Commenting from a recent perspective, Fleck (2012: 96) writes that ‘in the words of its former Chairman, however, the Commission is “still underutilized”’, and argues that ‘its activities should be widened to include more countries in different regions and to exercise even preventive roles in situations of risk’ (Fleck, 2012: 98). Moreover, since it is now the official body charged with peacebuilding, it is possible that other parts of the UN will cease to concern themselves with this matter, which further damages the possibility of constructive debate around the issue of when to leave. Again, I repeat that it is too early to tell what may happen in the coming years, and we may yet – hopefully – be surprised by what will occur both inside and outside the PBC. But the prospects of developing a coherent policy on when to leave do not look promising, and after so many years of discussion, this is a huge shame. Call and Cousens (2008: 11) note that ‘over the past 15 years, the architecture and mechanisms for international peace-building have improved considerably […]. There is a much greater understanding of the complexities of peace-building, more self-critique about the limits of international assistance, and increasing appreciation of the unique demands of specific situations.’ Yet they acknowledge that ‘these advances have not yet sufficiently diminished persistent and serious shortcomings in international responses to war-torn societies, which the PBC and related bodies have just been created to fill’ (Call and Cousens, 2008: 11) – and they fear that ‘the PBC and related reforms will be limited to making only marginal contributions’ (Call and Cousens, 2008: 17). Hence although at the turn of the millennium there was an emerging consensus on how to approach the end of interventions, it seems that most of the momentum that carried it forth has been lost. Putting the sidelined responsibility to rebuild back on the agenda is one suggestion for how to revive and further encourage the lost momentum before it is too late and comes to a complete halt.
CHAPTER 2: Debates within International Relations
An analysis of UN reports and documents has led me to argue that interveners should only leave once they have helped to build self-sustainable peace. This idea comes up against a barrage of criticism, criticism which needs to be addressed before the argument can be further expanded upon. Indeed, just because an argument is sound from a policy perspective, that does not necessarily mean that it is also acceptable from a theoretical or normative point of view. The debates I focus on in this section stem from within the field of International Relations, for it is scholars within this field that pose the greatest objections to my argument. Yet the way to solve these debates, or at least to mediate and compromise upon the objections they raise, also comes from within IR. It is important to point out that many of the debates I analyse have wider ramifications, although I focus primarily on those aspects particularly relevant to the research question.
The principle critique which can and has been attached to the notion that interveners should leave only once peace is installed is that this could entail a potentially lengthy and invasive stay, and thus that it denotes a neo-imperialist point of view. There are two main dimensions to this critique. First, it is claimed that peacebuilding as thus understood is an unacceptable infringement on the sovereignty of the state in which it takes place. Second, the fact that interveners impose measures from above – such as those linked with the liberal peace – has been said to demonstrate a superior and arrogant stance which fails to take into account local specificities and the wishes of the local population. After expanding upon these issues, I show that these notions are too rigid and to a certain extent outdated. A more nuanced understanding relying on recent scholarship actually demonstrates that the outcome of the debates within the sphere of IR does not necessarily stand against my argument, and that it can in fact help to justify it.
1) The issue of sovereignty
If there is one issue which is mired in controversy and central to many debates within the field of IR, it is that of sovereignty. Debates concerning the end of interventions are no exception, for if entering a state can be seen as problematic from the point of view of state sovereignty, then staying any length of time surely exacerbates the problem. In order to understand why the concept of sovereignty is in opposition to the idea that it is necessary for interveners to
