Traditional UN missions:
The UN isn't in the job of "making peace". It is in the job of facilitating de-escalation. It's
It's not that bad at itthis traditional approach, given favorable circumstances: stable states that both want a ceasefire and are ready to respect it.
That doesn't mean the UN is useless in other situations, elsewhere.
Newer-style UN missions.
Turns out that's not the entire story either. Found a paper that points out, correctly, that some of the historical assumptions and statements about the UN missions don't always hold true anymore.
Why Peacekeeping Fails
They divide UN missions into 3 groups:
Uncomplicated but Endless: Classical Peacekeeping
i.e. what was just covered above.
In classical peacekeeping operations, the peacekeepers had the uncomplicated assignment of monitoring a demilitarized zone between the two armies following a war between countries over territory. The goal was to allow both sides to have the confidence that neither was taking advantage of a cease-fire to improve its military position. The combatants had a wide variety of weapons at their disposal, but they were generally disciplined military forces that attacked each other rather than civilians. So while the work had its risks, the peacekeepers were not targeted.
and yes, they address the never-ending bit and state:
If the United States wants to save money on peacekeeping, it should push to close all six classical operations (and the non- U.N. mission in the Sinai). If the countries involved and their main supporters want to retain the peacekeepers, they should be required to pick up the tab.
Multidimensional Peacekeeping Operations
The term is jargon-y, but they seem to mean keeping the peace in ethnically divided and/or civil war contexts, as they give Kosovo and Haiti as examples, as well as Angola wrt a rebellion. It's not state-to-state but it's still relatively old-school stuff and no combat is required from the UN:
Once a cease-fire was established in these wars, peacekeepers could be sent. They brought a long list of goals to accomplish to help the peace become permanent. The list could include demobilization of most of the former combatants, helping them reintegrate into civilian life, forming a new national army that was not loyal to only one faction, aiding refugees and displaced persons with returning to their homes, providing humanitarian aid and development assistance to restart the economy, and holding elections in a country with little-to-no democratic experience.
While the United Nations has had mixed results in its multidimensional peacekeeping missions, they are, at least for the moment, largely a thing of the past.
Peacekeeping in the Face of Violent Extremism
Traditionally, three principles have guided the conduct of peacekeepers: (1) They became involved only at the invitation of the parties to the conflict; (2) They were to be strictly neutral; and, (3) They were to use force only in self-defense. If these principles were not adhered to, a situation could prove disastrous. For instance, when peacekeepers took sides in the Congo in 1960 and Somalia in the early 1990s, hundreds of them died as they were drawn into the fighting.
At the risk of being tautological, peacekeepers are bound to fail if there is no peace to keep. When a cease-fire is negotiated, peacekeepers can do their work. Without one, they are either ineffective or the international community is faced with ordering them to try to impose an end to the fighting. That requires the international community to be willing to have the peacekeepers inflict and take casualties.
The rise of terrorism is the reason the final stage in the evolution of peacekeeping has become so dangerous. Perhaps reflecting the lack of an agreed definition of terrorism, many in the United Nations and elsewhere prefer to use the term “violent extremism.” Terrorists are indistinguishable from noncombatants; they will use any type of weapon, and their objective is to kill innocent people to call attention to their cause. Whatever it is called, when extremist violence comes into play there is no role for peacekeeping. Yet peacekeepers are being asked not only to protect civilians but, often, to help the government stabilize the situation and extend its control over its own territory in countries threatened by extremists.
To make matters much worse, the five countries where these protection and stabilization missions are taking place—Mali, Sudan, South Sudan, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo—have governments that are among the most corrupt, repressive and incompetent in the world. One need only to look at their corruption rankings by Transparency International, their political liberty rankings by Freedom House or their governance scores on the Ibrahim Index to confirm that.
The fundamental problem is that there is no peace to keep, and U.N. forces are incapable of imposing one because they are peacekeepers and not warfighters. If the international community wants to try to impose a peace, it should send troops that are capable and willing to do that.
p.s. I suspect that if there is ever a real, comprehensive, deal between Israel and Palestine, the enforcement of it will have to be "outsourced" in some form to a more trusted, as well as more powerful, set of outsiders.
