The Future of Peace Support Operations: Strategic Peacekeeping and Success

Abstract

This article uses the concept of "strategic peacekeeping" to understand peace support operations situated at a midpoint in the spectrum between observation missions, classic peacekeeping, and peace enforcement. Attempts to integrate enforcement measures into peace operations are not inherently contradictory and self-defeating, as some recent critics have suggested. Rather, they may be inevitable and necessary. Drawing on evidence from peace operations in the Republic of the Former Yugoslavia, two arguments are defended. First, the types of operation that require the possible mixing of consent and force to achieve success differ from traditional peacekeeping missions at the strategic level. For this reason, the term strategic peacekeeping is used to refer to situations in which an international force is inserted into a continuing conflict to assist in creating the conditions for conflict termination without taking sides in the conflict. Second, a strategic peacekeeping operation rests on particular conditions for success. These are not so much the consent of the conflicting parties, or the use of force alone, but the challenges of maintaining sufficient support (or a suitable absence of opposition) in the eyes of different audiences both in the host state and further afield. This should be understood as a process of legitimation.