There’s been talk of speeding up the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan this week. France is hurrying for the exit. On a recent visit to Brussels, I found that many NATO diplomats were frank about their desire to get the Afghan withdrawal over and done with (although there were responsible voices urging caution too). As Jake Sherman and I note in a new paper for ZIF, NATO’s drawdown and moves to cut back UN peace operations will have a big impact on the global security landscape:
Since the late 1990s, two big institutional players have dominated international peace operations. NATO deployed major military missions in the Balkans and Afghanistan, while the United Nations was in the lead almost everywhere else – with a focus on Africa and the Middle East. Other organizations, most notably the African and European Unions, also played an active part in peacekeeping but none have come close to NATO and the UN in terms of deployments. In late 2011, there were just over 260,000 soldiers and police officers on duty in peace operations worldwide. Over 140,000 of these were under NATO command (the vast majority in Afghanistan) while nearly 100,000 were serving with the UN.
Yet, peace operations may be on the verge of a period of deep change. NATO forces are beginning to pull back from Afghanistan. The UN is also likely to make significant cuts to some long-standing missions in the next two to three years, shrinking its forces in the Congo, Haiti and West Africa. New NATO or UN peacekeepers may be needed elsewhere, not least in response to turbulence in the Middle East. But there are strong financial pressures on both organizations to limit their overall deployments.
Those financial pressures (which I’ve highlighted before) are mounting. Bruce Jones has a piece in World Politics Review in which he argues that the UN operations proved suprisingly resilient over the last year in places like Côte d’Ivoire, Haiti and the Congo. But this better-than-expected performance has gone unremarked:
Rather than talking about the effects of operations, diplomats and officials have developed one obsession: what operations cost.
From 2008 to 2010, the global economic downturn had only a marginal effect on peacekeeping. Western powers, led by the Obama administration, remained ready to fund the bulk of the U.N. and AU operations, while also sustaining NATO deployments. This has started to change over the past year as the financial crisis has made itself felt in the world of peace operations.
In New York, 2011 saw a fierce debate over the rate of reimbursements to the U.N.’s troop contributors — still primarily from Asia, Africa and Latin America. For the past decade, the troop suppliers have received just more than $1,000 per month per soldier. Last summer, they demanded a 57 percent increase. Western governments pushed back, eventually agreeing to a temporary deal for a 7 percent hike.
Jones rightly argues that governments should think about the strategic advantages of peacekeeping as well as the financial implications. But, as Sherman and I argue, NATO’s drawdown and the UN’s constraints create space for other organizations to play a greater role in peace operations.
Over the last year the African Union has expanded it forces in Somalia – now mandated to grow to 17,000 personnel – while taking an increasingly robust approach to Islamist militias. AU forces gradually secured control of Mogadishu after prolonged block-to-block fighting, despite taking significant casualties.
Responding to events in Syria, the Arab League launched its first peace operation since the 1970s at the end of 2011. Its observer mission – meant to oversee the withdrawal of Syrian forces from urban areas – was quickly improvised and deeply flawed. But the League could well deploy more operations in the future.
We cite a number of other non-Western organizations, like ASEAN, that seem to be edging towards a greater role in peacekeeping. Does that mean that NATO and UN officials can go home and take a nap? No chance:
Yet, organizations such as the AU and Arab League cannot become peacekeeping powerhouses on their own. The AU has had missions in the field for nearly a decade, but it has often struggled to get the equipment it needs and to build up its headquarters capacity. Its mission in Darfur received support from the EU, UN and NATO, and was converted into an AU-UN mission in 2008. Its operation in Somalia relies on the UN for its supplies, while the EU is involved in training Somali soldiers in Uganda. After its initial foray into Syria, the Arab League requested UN assistance in deploying any larger peacekeeping mission.
So the next generation of peace operations is likely to be based on innovative inter-organizational cooperation. What forms will future missions take, and how will organizations pool their resources?
Read the rest of our paper for some ideas on the topic.
