This book explores the contradictions that emerge in international statebuilding efforts in war-torn societies.

Since the end of the Cold War, more than 20 major peace operations have been deployed to countries emerging from internal conflicts. This book argues that international efforts to construct effective, legitimate governmental structures in these countries are necessary but fraught with contradictions and vexing dilemmas.. Drawing on the latest scholarly research on postwar peace operations, the volume:

• addresses cutting-edge issues of statebuilding including coordination, local ownership, security, elections, constitution making, and delivery of development aid
• features contributions by leading and up-and-coming scholars
• provides empirical case studies including Afghanistan, Cambodia, Croatia, Kosovo, Liberia, Sierra Leone, South Africa, and others
• presents policy-relevant findings of use to students and policymakers alike

The Dilemmas of Statebuilding will be vital reading for students and scholars of international relations and political science. Bringing new insights to security studies, international development, and peace and conflict research, it will also interest a range of policy makers.

This edited volume explores stability, security, transition and reconstruction operations (SSTR), highlighting the challenges and opportunities they create for the US Navy.

The book argues that SSTR operations are challenging because they create new missions and basing modes, and signal a return to traditional naval methods of operation. Mission accomplishment requires collaboration with a wide range of actors representing governmental, non-governmental and commercial organizations, which often creates politically and bureaucratically charged issues for those involved. However, although from a traditional warfighting perspective, stability operations might be viewed as having little to do with preparing for high-intensity conventional combat, these kinds of operations in fact correspond to traditional missions related to diplomacy, engagement, maritime domain awareness, piracy and smuggling, and intervention to quell civil disturbances. SSTR operations can be therefore depicted as a return to traditional naval operations, albeit operations that might not be universally welcomed in all quarters.

This new volume provides the first thorough examination of the involvement of peace enforcement soldiers in the detention of indicted war criminals. The book firstly addresses why peace enforcement missions need to be involved in detaining indicted war criminals. This discussion includes an analysis of how the securing of justice and transitional justice is incorporated into the UN's approach to peace-building. It also explores IFOR's, SFOR's and KFOR's activities aimed at detaining indicted war criminals, before turning to an analysis of how the detaining of indicted war criminals is incorporated into peace enforcement doctrines, mandates and rules of engagement. The book then outlines the mechanisms that need to be established in order to enable peace enforcers to effectively arrest war criminals in the areas where they are deployed. It concludes with a discussion of the prospects for the involvement of peace enforcement soldiers in the detention of indicted war criminals, and of what lessons future peace enforcement missions can learn from the experience of IFOR, SFOR and KFOR.

During the Vietnam War, Vietnamese Buddhist peace activists made extraordinary sacrifices -- including self-immolation -- to try to end the fighting. They hoped to establish a neutralist government that would broker peace with the Communists and expel the Americans. Robert J. Topmiller explores South Vietnamese attitudes toward the war, the insurgency, and U.S. intervention, and lays bare the dissension within the U.S. military. The Lotus Unleashed is one of the few studies to illuminate the impact of internal Vietnamese politics on U.S. decision-making and to examine the power of a nonviolent movement to confront a violent superpower.

This book clarifies some key ideas and practices underlying peacebuilding; understood broadly as formal and informal peace processes that occur during pre-conflict, conflict and post-conflict transformation.

Applicable to all peacebuilders, Elisabeth Porter highlights positive examples of women s peacebuilding in comparative international contexts. She critically interrogates accepted and entrenched dualisms that prevent meaningful reconciliation, while also examining the harm of othering and the importance of recognition, inclusion and tolerance. Drawing on feminist ethics, the book develops a politics of compassion that defends justice, equality and rights and the need to restore victims dignity. Complex issues of memory, truth, silence and redress are explored while new ideas on reconciliation and embracing difference emerge.

Many ideas challenge orthodox understandings of peace. The arguments developed here demonstrate how peacebuilding can be understood more broadly than current United Nations and orthodox usages so that women s activities in conflict and transitional societies can be valued as participating in building sustainable peace with justice. Theoretically integrating peace and conflict studies, international relations, political theory and feminist ethics, this book focuses on the lessons to be learned from best practices of peacebuilding situated around the UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security.

Peacebuilding will be of particular interest to peace practitioners and to students and researchers of peace and conflict studies, international relations and gender politics.

Peace Support Operations: Nordic Perspectives brings together Nordic academics working in the field of peace support operations broadly defined. It contains a collection of articles that present different theoretical approaches to the study of peace support operations and contribute to enhance the knowledge of the Nordic countriesa (TM) participation in such operations. Its case studies describe the development of peacekeeping forces from Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland in the face of evolving threats to world security over the past sixty years, and how each country's reaction has differed. The conflicts covered in this study include the Cold War, the Balkan conflict, the first Gulf War and the Malawian ethnic conflict. Thus, it constitutes a contribution to the academic field in both a theoretical and an empirical sense.

This book was previously published as a special issue of International Peacekeeping

The protection and promotion of human rights is an integral part of contemporary international peacekeeping operations. It is also a controversial aspect of peace operations at both an institutional and operational level.

By bringing together a wide range of practitioners and academic scholars, this special issue addresses key contemporary legal, political and operational challenges to human rights protection.

This book was previously published as a special issue of the leading journal International Peacekeeping.

The central assertion of this book is that states pursue social actions to serve self-identity needs, even when these actions compromise their physical existence. Three forms of social action, sometimes referred to as 'motives' of state behaviour (moral, humanitarian, and honour-driven) are analyzed here through an ontological security approach. Brent J. Steele develops an account of social action which interprets these behaviours as fulfilling a nation-state's drive to secure self-identity through time. The anxiety which consumes all social agents motivates them to secure their sense of being, and thus he posits that transformational possibilities exist in the 'Self' of a nation-state. The volume consequently both challenges and complements realist, liberal, constructivist and post-structural accounts to international politics. Using ontological security to interpret three cases - British neutrality during the American Civil War (1861-1865), Belgium's decision to fight Germany in 1914, and NATO's (1999) Kosovo intervention - the book concludes by discussing the importance for self-interrogation in both the study and practice of international relations. Ontological Security in International Relations will be of particular interest to students and researchers of international politics, international ethics, international relations and security studies.

Foreword Frederick D. Barton Preface Derick W. Brinkerhoff 1. Governance Challenges in Fragile States: Re-Establishing Security, Rebuilding Effectiveness, and Reconstituting Legitimacy Derick W. Brinkerhoff Part 1. Governance and Post-conflict: Perspectives on Core Issues 2. Does Nation Building Work? Reviewing the Record Arthur A. Goldsmith 3. Constitutional Design, Identity and Legitimacy in Post-Conflict Reconstruction Aliza Belman Inbal and Hanna Lerner 4. Election Systems and Political Parties in Post-Conflict and Fragile States Eric Bjornland, Glenn Cowan, and William Gallery 5. Democratic Governance and the Security Sector in Conflict-affected Countries Nicole Ball Part 2. Actors in Governance Reconstruction: Old, New, and Evolving Roles 6. From Bullets to Ballots: The U.S. Army Role in Stability and Reconstruction Operations Tammy S. Schultz and Susan Merrill 7. The Private Sector and Governance in Post-Conflict Societies Virginia Haufler 8. Rebuilding and Reforming Civil Services in Post-Conflict Societies Harry Blair 9. Contributions of Digital Diasporas to Governance Reconstruction in Fragile States: Potential and Promise Jennifer M. Brinkerhoff Part 3. Reforming and Rebuilding Governance: Focus on the Local 10. Decentralization, Local Governance, and Conflict Mitigation in Latin America Gary Bland 11. Subnationalism and Post-conflict Governance: Lessons from Africa Joshua B. Forrest 12. Subnational Administration and State Building: Lessons from Afghanistan Sarah Lister and Andrew Wilder About the Contributors Index

This fascinating book recounts the remarkable tale of a career UN official from Indonesia caught in the turmoil of international and domestic politics swirling around Cambodia during the tumultuous period after the fall of the Khmer Rouge. Writing from his experience first as a member of the UN transitional authority and then as a personal envoy to the UN secretary-general, Benny Widyono re-creates the fierce battles for power centering on King Norodom Sihanouk, the Khmer Rouge, and Prime Minister Hun Sen. A simultaneous insider and outsider, he also untangles the competing and conflicting agendas of the key international players, especially the United States, China, and Vietnam. He argues that great-power geopolitics throughout the Cold War and post-Cold War eras triggered and sustained a tragedy of enormous proportions in Cambodia for decades, ultimately leading to a flawed peace process. Widyono tells the inside story of the massive UN operation in Cambodia, the largest and most challenging in the organization's history to that time and long considered a model for UN operations elsewhere. He draws not only on his vantage point as part of the UN bureaucracy, but also as a local UN official in the rural Cambodian province of Siem Reap, the site of Angkor Wat. As a fellow Southeast Asian with no geopolitical axe to grind, Widyono was able to win the respect of Cambodians, including the once and future king, Norodom Sihanouk, whose decline after fifty years as his country's leading figure is vividly portrayed. Putting a human face on international operations, this book will be invaluable reading for anyone interested in Southeast Asia, the role of international peacekeeping, and the international response to genocide.

This book clarifies some key ideas and practices underlying peacebuilding; understood broadly as formal and informal peace processes that occur during pre-conflict, conflict and post-conflict transformation.

Applicable to all peacebuilders, Elisabeth Porter highlights positive examples of women's peacebuilding in comparative international contexts. She critically interrogates accepted and entrenched dualisms that prevent meaningful reconciliation, while also examining the harm of othering and the importance of recognition, inclusion and tolerance. Drawing on feminist ethics, the book develops a politics of compassion that defends justice, equality and rights and the need to restore victims' dignity. Complex issues of memory, truth, silence and redress are explored while new ideas on reconciliation and embracing difference emerge.

Many ideas challenge orthodox understandings of peace. The arguments developed here demonstrate how peacebuilding can be understood more broadly than current United Nations and orthodox usages so that women's activities in conflict and transitional societies can be valued as participating in building sustainable peace with justice. Theoretically integrating peace and conflict studies, international relations, political theory and feminist ethics, this book focuses on the lessons to be learned from best practices of peacebuilding situated around the UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security.

Peacebuilding will be of particular interest to peace practitioners and to students and researchers of peace and conflict studies, international relations and gender politics.

Foreword Frederick D. Barton Preface Derick W. Brinkerhoff 1. Governance Challenges in Fragile States: Re-Establishing Security, Rebuilding Effectiveness, and Reconstituting Legitimacy Derick W. Brinkerhoff Part 1. Governance and Post-conflict: Perspectives on Core Issues 2. Does Nation Building Work? Reviewing the Record Arthur A. Goldsmith 3. Constitutional Design, Identity and Legitimacy in Post-Conflict Reconstruction Aliza Belman Inbal and Hanna Lerner 4. Election Systems and Political Parties in Post-Conflict and Fragile States Eric Bjornland, Glenn Cowan, and William Gallery 5. Democratic Governance and the Security Sector in Conflict-affected Countries Nicole Ball Part 2. Actors in Governance Reconstruction: Old, New, and Evolving Roles 6. From Bullets to Ballots: The U.S. Army Role in Stability and Reconstruction Operations Tammy S. Schultz and Susan Merrill 7. The Private Sector and Governance in Post-Conflict Societies Virginia Haufler 8. Rebuilding and Reforming Civil Services in Post-Conflict Societies Harry Blair 9. Contributions of Digital Diasporas to Governance Reconstruction in Fragile States: Potential and Promise Jennifer M. Brinkerhoff Part 3. Reforming and Rebuilding Governance: Focus on the Local 10. Decentralization, Local Governance, and Conflict Mitigation in Latin America Gary Bland 11. Subnationalism and Post-conflict Governance: Lessons from Africa Joshua B. Forrest 12. Subnational Administration and State Building: Lessons from Afghanistan Sarah Lister and Andrew Wilder About the Contributors Index

This volume provides a framework for analyzing security sector reform under international tutelage. Following violent conflict and military interventions, international organizations or coalitions of countries increasingly engage in post-conflict reconstruction. Part of the international post-conflict agenda is the 'reconstruction' or 'reform' of the security sector (SSR). In post-conflict situations, the security sector is often characterized by politicization, ethnicization, corruption of the security services, excessive military spending, lack of professionalism, poor oversight and inefficient allocation of resources. At the same time, there is great need for effective and efficient (re-)establishment of a legitimate monopoly of force. While initially this is in the purview of the external intervention forces, they also face the task of the building up of effective, efficient accountable and democratically legitimized security forces as quickly as possible. The contributors analyze six pertinent cases: Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Haiti, Kosovo, Sierra Leone and Timor Leste, focusing on issues such as priorities for security and for security sector reform, sequencing of reconstruction and reform, tensions between requirements of security and security governance and the interaction of domestic and external actors in security sector reform. This book was previously published as a special issue of International Peacekeeping.

Exploring the story of Africa's contemporary history and politics through the lens of peacekeeping, this concise and accessible book, based on over a decade of research across ten countries, focuses not on peacekeeping in Africa but, rather, peacekeeping by Africans. Going beyond the question of why post-conflict states contribute troops to peacekeeping efforts, Jonathan Fisher and Nina Wilen demonstrate how peacekeeping is - and has been - weaved into Africa's national, regional and international politics more broadly, as well as what implications this has for how we should understand the continent, its history and its politics. In doing so, and drawing on fieldwork undertaken in every region of the continent, Fisher and Wilen explain how profoundly this involvement in peacekeeping has shaped contemporary Africa.

Over the last decade the failure of countries to emerge from conflict has focused attention on state security sectors. This book examines how the external approaches to security sector reform (SSR) have evolved and what they entail; the specific problems faced by the SSR agenda; and what policy recommendations for engagement can be drawn from reform experiences.

This book examines NATO's Balkan interventions over the entire decade starting with the break-up of Yugoslavia in 1992. Focusing on the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo, it traces the record of early transatlantic failures and later successes as once bitterly divided allies were able, finally, to unite around some basic principles. By the time of the Kosovo intervention in spring 1999, the allies agreed on the necessity of taking sides and using military force in conflicts that were complicated, but far from morally opaque. The book concludes with some lessons around which the transatlantic allies might reasonably hope - despite other pressing concerns - to stay engaged and stay united.

Much of the scholarly literature on peacekeeping focuses on particular peacekeeping operations, or on the political bargaining between peacekeeping participants at both the institutional and national levels. However, there is very little published research on why nations commit forces to peacekeeping operations. As Sandra Whitworth noted in a book review of six books on peacekeeping in the International Journal, the important political questions thus far have not been asked: who benefits, who pays, and who is excluded?. This book addresses that need. The authors focus specifically on the political and economic motivations that influence the decision to participate in peacekeeping. They consider how definitions of national interest frame the political debate, and what the reasons are for the military support or opposition for peacekeeping operations. They also explore the role of inter-agency politics, the role of public opinion in peacekeeping decisions, and the influence of pressure from other nations and non-nation actors to commit peacekeeping forces. Each chapter includes several recent cases of national peacekeeping to illustrate how national political debates framed their c

This book explores the question of whether peacekeeping commanders can be held accountable for a failure to protect the civilian population in the mission area. This requires an assessment of whether peacekeeping commanders have an obligation to act against such serious crimes being committed under domestic and international law. The work uses the cases of the Dutch and Belgian peacekeeping commanders in Srebrenica and Kigali as examples, but it also places the analysis into the context of contemporary peacekeeping operations. It unfolds two main arguments. First, it provides a critical note to the contextual interpretation given to international law in relation to peacekeeping. It is argued that establishing a specific paradigm for peacekeeping operations with clear rules of interpretation and benchmark criteria would benefit peacekeeping and international law by making the contextual interpretation of international law redundant. Second, it is held that alternative options to the existing forms of criminal responsibility for military commanders should be considered, possibly focusing more clearly on failing to fulfil a norm of protection that is specific to peacekeeping and distinct from protective obligations under international human rights law and international humanitarian law.

This title examines the roles and new opportunities arising from the increasing participation of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in peace-making, peacekeeping and peace-building processes, both formal and informal, state-sponsored and unofficial. Drawing on both academic experts and activists, this study brings together contributions from those who have observed how NGOs have sought to reflect civil society concerns, provide humanitarian relief, monitor compliance with international norms and treaty requirements, and disseminate information of concern to advocacy networks.
A critical appraisal of the opportunities and constraints of NGOs is provided alongside the examination of the NGOs role in the "new agendas" for peace.

International intervention in internal wars has gained rhetorical legitimacy in the post-cold war period, but in practice it has remained problematic. Response to these conflicts has remained mainly diplomatic and military - and belated. Is there anything international actors can do to prevent, or at least ameliorate, such conflicts? Are conflict-prevention measures already being attempted, and sometimes succeeding so well that we are unaware of their effectiveness? If so, what can we learn from them? In this book, Robert J. Muscat, a veteran international development expert who has worked in South America, South and Southeast Asia, East Africa, and the Balkans, attempts to answer these questions. Drawing on the work of others as well as his own extensive experience, he reviews the accrued insights into the causes of internal conflict. He examines nine cases in which the work of development agencies exacerbated or ameliorated the root causes of conflict. This permits some generalizations about the efficacy or deleterious effects of development programs - and of their futility when the conflict-prevention dimension of international assistance efforts is ignored.

International intervention in internal wars has gained rhetorical legitimacy in the post-cold war period, but in practice it has remained problematic. Response to these conflicts has remained mainly diplomatic and military - and belated. Is there anything international actors can do to prevent, or at least ameliorate, such conflicts? Are conflict-prevention measures already being attempted, and sometimes succeeding so well that we are unaware of their effectiveness? If so, what can we learn from them? In this book, Robert J. Muscat, a veteran international development expert who has worked in South America, South and Southeast Asia, East Africa, and the Balkans, attempts to answer these questions. Drawing on the work of others as well as his own extensive experience, he reviews the accrued insights into the causes of internal conflict. He examines nine cases in which the work of development agencies exacerbated or ameliorated the root causes of conflict. This permits some generalizations about the efficacy or deleterious effects of development programs - and of their futility when the conflict-prevention dimension of international assistance efforts is ignored.

Civil wars pose some of the most difficult problems in the world today and the United Nations is the organization generally called upon to bring and sustain peace. Lise Morje Howard studies the sources of success and failure in UN peacekeeping. Her in-depth 2007 analysis of some of the most complex UN peacekeeping missions debunks the conventional wisdom that they habitually fail, showing that the UN record actually includes a number of important, though understudied, success stories. Using systematic comparative analysis, Howard argues that UN peacekeeping succeeds when field missions establish significant autonomy from UN headquarters, allowing civilian and military staff to adjust to the post-civil war environment. In contrast, failure frequently results from operational directives originating in UN headquarters, often devised in relation to higher-level political disputes with little relevance to the civil war in question. Howard recommends future reforms be oriented toward devolving decision-making power to the field missions.

Military intervention has emerged as one of the greatest challenges facing the West. This book explores how the West has reacted to this challenge. In particular it examines the question of how military power has and might be used to help protect those elsewhere who are in danger. It looks at how force is used, the limits on the use of force, and how monitoring and verification of ceasefires can be effectively implemented to stop force being used. It also examines the political context in which force is used, including the West's intolerance for casualities, the role of the media and the gender dimensions of intervention.

This work explores the application and structure of negotiation within existing international conflicts, and assesses the effectiveness, or otherwise, of such forms of dispute resolution. Active negotiation exists at all three levels in a conflict: strategic; operational; and tactical, and little analysis of negotiation exists at any level other than strategic. The text examines the role of negotiation and the skills required by any practitioner in the field. The aim of this work is to highlight the local, national, and international implications of negotiated outcomes in any current conflict, the political and interpersonal repercussions of mediatory work in an operational scenario, and the difficulties involved in being a negotiator as well as carrying out one's role as a politician, aid worker or soldier.

This work focuses on women's participation in peacekeeping operations and what needs to be considered regarding the role and circumstances of women, including those in relation to the host society. This volume opens with an article offering historical insights that reflect on the contemporary relevance of two ancient Greek plays, "Antigone" and "Lysistrata." The latter was referred to by Nelson Mandela in his efforts to negotiate the conflict in Burundi. The following essay is a theoretical perspective on women and war, highlighting the difference between post-modernist and universalist approaches to women's roles in peacemaking and conflict resolution. Other topics include the role of women in military operations, the implications of the high levels of sexual violence in peacekeeping operations and the UN's gender policy for peacekeeping operations. Case studies include Macedonia, the only preventative operation in which it is possible to discuss gender implications on security.
In view of the extendedperiod of time in which UNIFIL operated in Lebanon, it is valuable to compare operations before and after the inclusion of women on the staff. The peacekeeping mission in Namibia is notable as the UN's first multi-dimensional operation and as an operation in which women constituted a large part of the civilian staff is also examined.