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Interstate Peacekeeping: Causal Mechanisms and Empirical Effects

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Virginia Page Fortna
Virginia Page Fortna
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Columbia University
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Peacekeeping is perhaps the international community's most important tool for maintaining peace in the aftermath of war. Its practice has evolved significantly in the past ten or fifteen years as it has been used increasingly in civil wars. However, traditional peacekeeping between states is not well understood. Its operation is undertheorized and its effects undertested. This article explores the causal mechanisms through which peacekeepers keep peace and examines its empirical effects after interstate wars. To take the endogeneity of peacekeeping into account, it also examines where peacekeepers tend to be deployed. Duration analysis shows that, all else equal, peacekeeping significantly increases the chances that peace will last. Peacekeepers can help adversaries to maintain peace by making surprise attack more difficult, by reducing uncertainty about enemy intentions, and by preventing and controlling accidents and incidents that can spiral back to war.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 56 , Issue 4 , July 2004 , pp. 481 - 519
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 2004

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References

1 Although this is usually done by the UN, it is sometimes done by regional organizations or by an ad hoc group.

2 Fetherston, A. B., Towards a Theory of United Nations Peacekeeping (New York:St. Martin's Press, 1994CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

3 On the disconnect between peacekeeping practice and theory, see Ryan, Stephen, “The Theory of Conflict Resolution and the Practice of Peacekeeping,” in Moxon-Browne, Edward, ed., A Futurefor Peacekeeping? (New York:St. Martin's Press, 1998Google Scholar). Perhaps the most theoretical works are the classics: James, Alan, The Politics of Peace-keeping (New York:Praeger, 1969Google Scholar); and Jit Rikhye, Indar, The Theory and Practice ofPeacekeeping (London:C. Hurst and Company, 1984Google Scholar).

4 Bratt, Duane, “Assessing the Success of UN Peacekeeping Operations,” International Peacekeeping 3 (Winter 1996CrossRefGoogle Scholar); Durch, William J., ed., The Evolution of UN Peacekeeping (New York:St. Martin's Press, 1993Google Scholar); Durch, William J., ed., UN Peacekeeping, American Politics and the Uncivil Wars of the 1990s (New York:St. Martin's Press, 1996Google Scholar); Howard, Lise Morje, “Learning to Keep the Peace? United Nations Multidimensional Peacekeeping in Civil Wars” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2001Google Scholar); Krasno, Jean, Hayes, Bradd C., and Daniel, Donald C. F., eds., Leveragingfor Success in United Nations Peace Operations (Westport, Conn.:Praeger, 2003Google Scholar); Mackinlay, John, The Peacekeepers: An As sessment of Peacekeeping Operations at the Arab-Israeli Interface (London:Unwin Hyman, 1989Google Scholar).

5 See, for example, Doyle, Michael W. and Sambanis, Nicholas, “International Peacebuilding: A Theoretical and Quantitative Analysis,” American Political Science Review 94 (December 2000CrossRefGoogle Scholar); Amitabh Dubey, “Domestic Institutions and the Duration of Civil War Settlements” (Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association, New Orleans, March 24–27, 2002); Virginia Page Fortna, “Does Peacekeeping Keep Peace? International Intervention and the Duration of Peace after Civil War,” International Studies Quarterly 48 (June 2004); Hartzell, Caroline, Hoddie, Mathew, and Rothchild, Donald, “Stabilizing the Peace after Civil War,” International Organization 55 (Winter 2001CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

6 'The conventional wisdom is that peacekeeping is less effective in internal conflicts than in its traditional setting between sovereign states. For a preliminary comparison of peacekeeping's effects in the two types of war, see Fortna, Virginia Page, “Inside and Out: Peacekeeping and the Duration of Peace after Civil and Interstate Wars,” International Studies Review 5 (December 2003CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

7 For example, Haas, Ernst B., Butterworth, Robert L., and Nye, Joseph S., Conflict Management by International Organizations (Morristown, N.J.:General Learning Press, 1972Google Scholar).

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11 The results of recent studies on civil wars are similarly contradictory. Doyle and Sambanis (fn. 5) find that some forms of peacekeeping lead to “peacebuilding success”; Dubey (fn. 5) finds that peacekeeping has no significant effect on the duration of peace; while Fortna (fn. 5) finds peacekeeping to have a significant positive impact in the post-cold war era.

12 On war termination see, for example, Walter, Barbara, “The Critical Barrier to Civil War Settlement,” International Organization 51 (Summer 1997CrossRefGoogle Scholar); idem, Committing to Peace: The Successful Settle ment of Civil Wars (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 2001Google Scholar); Goemans, H. E., War and Punishment: The Causes of War Termination and the First World War (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 2000CrossRefGoogle Scholar) On the duration of peace, see Werner, Suzanne, “The Precarious Nature of Peace: Resolving the Issues, Enforcing the Settlement and Renegotiating the Terms,” American Journal of Political Science 43 (July 1999CrossRefGoogle Scholar); Page Fortna, Virginia, “Scraps of Paper? Agreements and the Durability of Peace,” International Organization 57 (Spring 2003Google Scholar); idem, Peace Time: Cease-Fire Agreements and the Durability of Peace (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 2004Google Scholar).

13 For an analysis of third-party mediation and security guarantees after interstate wars, see Fortna (fn. 12,2004).

14 This notion is tested directly below. Werner's study (fn. 12) covers a much longer time period (1816–1992). However, peacekeeping was “invented” only after World War II, making the time period examined here a better test of its effects.

15 Weiss, Thomas G., Forsythe, David P., and Coate, Roger A., The United Nations and Changing World Politics, 2nd ed. (Boulder, Colo.:Westview Press, 1997), 53Google Scholar.

16 Diehl, Paul F., International Peacekeeping (Baltimore:Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 9Google Scholar; Durch (fn. 4,1993), 4.

17 Monitoring missions typically range in size from a few dozen observers to several hundred; they are unarmed (though observers are military personnel). Peacekeeping forces are lightly armed for “defensive purposes.” In interstate cases, these missions have ranged from about twelve hundred to thirteen thousand troops. I use the general term peacekeeping to refer to both types of missions; I use the terms monitoring and peacekeepingforces or armedpeacekeepers to distinguish between them.

18 Diehl (fn. 16), 10; James (fn. 3); James, Alan, Peacekeeping in International Politics (New York:St. Martin's Press, 1990CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

19 For a fuller discussion of these difficulties and mechanisms that can be used to overcome them, see Fortna (fn. 12, 2004).

20 It is rare for states to be drawn into war purely by accident; it requires deliberate action to decide to retaliate. But the familiar dynamic of the security dilemma suggests how accidents might set off an escalatory cycle of clashes that can lead back to full-scale war. Jervis, Robert, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1976Google Scholar).

21 Note, however, that some might argue just the opposite, that peace should be most stable in the immediate aftermath of war. According to the informational perspective on war, it is states' inability credibly to reveal their intentions and capabilities that leads to war. Fearon, James D., “Rationalist Explanations for War,” International Organization 49 (Summer 1995CrossRefGoogle Scholar). The fighting of the war itself, however, credibly reveals this information. The danger of renewed war should therefore be lowest when one has just been fought. This argument does not hold up well empirically, however. Rather, peace has been found to be most precarious just after fighting ends, becoming more stable over time. Fortna (fn. 12, 2004), 171–72; Werner (fn. 12), 927.

22 The development of more robust “peace enforcement” missions in civil conflicts, increasingly common after the mid-1990s (for example, the NATO mission in Bosnia or the UN mission in Sierra Leone) represents a significant departure from traditional peacekeeping and may enhance the deterrent effects of peacekeeping.

23 Even for states with a powerful ally in the Security Council willing to veto any UN sanctions, blatant violations can temper that ally's diplomatic support.

24 Direct effects of monitoring may be more important in civil conflicts, particularly for rebel groups without sophisticated intelligence-gathering capability.

25 To be exact, of the forty-eight cease-fires analyzed in this article, peacekeepers are present in thirty-four. Of these, war resumes in eighteen, or 53 percent. Of the fourteen with no peacekeepers, war resumes in only three, or 21 percent.

26 Luttwak's more general argument is similar-that intervening to set up and maintain a cease-fire too early, before war “burns itself out,” only postpones the war-induced exhaustion that will lead to accommodation and stable peace; Luttwak, Edward N., “Give War a Chance,” Foreign Affairs 78 (July-August 1999CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

27 For a related argument, see Downs, George W., Rocke, David M., and Barsoom, Peter N., “Is the Good News about Compliance Good News about Cooperation?” International Organization 50 (Summer 1996CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

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29 As noted above, this study builds on my previous work (see fn. 12), examining in greater depth one of a number of mechanisms used to maintain peace. Others of these mechanisms, particularly demilitarized zones and arms control measures, are somewhat correlated with peacekeeping. Because these other mechanisms are not causally prior to peacekeeping, I do not include them in the analysis presented below, but I have checked whether the results hold up when these correlated mechanisms are controlled for. They do. The hazard ratios remain the same, although, as we would expect when multicollinearity is introduced, the standard errors become somewhat larger, in some cases missing the conventional 0.05 standard for significance.

30 For a similar approach to evaluating the effectiveness of peacekeeping in the context of civil wars, see Fortna (fn. 5).

31 For more detailed information on the Cease-Fires Dataset, see Fortna (fn. 12,2004). The data are available at http://www.columbia.edu/~vpf4/research.htm.

32 The time periods run consecutively from the cease-fire to the outbreak of another war, or until the data are censored (see fn. 37) in 1998.

33 Singer, J. David and Small, Melvin, “Correlates of War Project: International and Civil War Data, 1816–1992” (ICPSR 9905,1994); Stam, Allan C., Win, Lose, or Draw: Domestic Politics and the Crucible of War (Ann Arbor:University of Michigan Press, 1996Google Scholar); Werner (fn. 12).

34 Werner (fn. 12).

35 Brecher, Michael and Wilkenfeld, Jonathan, “International Crisis Behavior Project, 1918–1988”Google Scholar (ICPSR 9286,1992).

36 Note that the failure of peace between India and Pakistan in 1999 with the Kargil War, and between the U.S. and Iraq in 2003 occur after the data are censored.

37 Duration or survival models such as the Weibull have several desirable properties. They do not require an arbitrary specification of “successful” peace (such as a five-year cutoff) but can treat the stability of peace as a continuous variable. They are also adept at handling censored data, in which observation ends before peace has failed. While we know, for example, that the Korean armistice has held to date, we do not know for certain that it will continue to hold in the future. Duration models incorporate this uncertainty into their estimations. For a technical discussion, see Greene, William H., Econo-metric Analysis (New York:MacMillan, 1993Google ScholarPubMed).

38 Box-Steffensmeier, Janet M. and Jones, Bradford S., “Time is of the Essence: Event History Models in Political Science,” American Journal of Political Science 41 (October 1997CrossRefGoogle Scholar). The results for peacekeeping are, if anything, stronger in the Cox model, but analyzing goodness of fit by plotting the empirical Aalen-Nelson cumulative hazard function against Cox-Snell residuals suggests that the Weibull model fits the data better than the Cox model.

39 For work in this direction, see James Raymond Vreeland, “Selection and Survival” (Manuscript, Department of Political Science, Yale University, 2002). His solution is not applicable here because the assignment of peacekeeping is static, not dynamic; that is, it is determined at the beginning of a spell of peace not at independent intervals over the spell of peace. See also Frederick J. Boehmke, Daniel Morey, and Megan Shannon, “Selection Bias and Continuous-Time Duration Models: Consequences and a Proposed Solution” (Manuscript, University of Iowa, July 2004).

40 In other words, the relationship shown holds constant the fact that neither side has been eliminated or has had a new government imposed on it. Because there is no variation in peacekeeping in the few cases with such extreme military outcomes, this variable cannot be included in the multinomial logit analysis.

41 This makes it impossible to include the stakes variable in the multinomial logit. The negative relationship is statistically significant in a cross-tabulation between stakes and peacekeeping (P(Ξ2) = 0.02).

42 Werner (fn. 12). It is not clear, however, whether changing capabilities affect the resumption of war or whether the resumption of war (or its anticipation) changes measures of material capabilities. See Fortna (fn. 12,2003), 353.

43 These peacekeeping measures include both newly deployed missions and those left over from an earlier conflict. The results are the same or stronger if the measure including only new missions is used.

44 As noted above, war outcomes fall into three categories: ties, which are shown here to have the highest risk of resumption; decisive victories short of elimination or regime change, which is the omitted category in Tables 3 and 4; and elimination or foreign-imposed regime change, shown to be the most stable.

45 For a brief summary of the war, see Bercovitch, Jacob and Jackson, Robert, International Conflict: A Chronological Encyclopedia of Conflicts and Their Management, 1945–1995 (Washington, D.C.:gressional Quarterly, 1997), 148Google Scholar–49.

46 Zartman, I. William, Ripefor Resolution: Conflict and Intervention in Africa (New York:Oxford University Press, 1989), 104Google Scholar–5.

47 Bercovitch and Jackson (fn. 45), 230–31. In 1988 Ethiopia and Somalia signed a peace agreement pledging among other things to stop aiding rebel armies fighting the other. Jeffrey A. Lefebvre, Arms for the Horn: US Security Policy in Ethiopia and Somalia, 1953–1991 (Pittsburgh: University of Pitts burgh Press, 1991); Makinda, Samuel M., “Security in the Horn of Africa,” Adelphi Papers 269 (Summer 1992Google Scholar). Somalia was engulfed in its own civil war soon after, and its claim to the Ogaden has lain dormant.

48 For an overview of the repeated rounds of fighting between China and Vietnam, see Bercovitch and Jackson (fn. 45), 188–89, 212, 216–17. The interstate conflict eventually wound down with the resolution of Cambodia's civil war in 1991.

49 The short-lived cease-fire reached between Azerbaijan and Armenia in 1992 provides another example. An Iranian-brokered cease-fire halted the fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh in March 1992, but the war resumed only three weeks later. The war ended in 1994 only after Armenia had occupied Nagorno-Karabakh and almost 20 percent of the rest of Azerbaijan. Carley, Patricia, “Nagorno-Karabakh: Searching for a Solution,” in USIP Roundtable Report (Washington, D.C.:United States stitute of Peace, 1998Google Scholar).

50 By contrast, most peacekeeping missions in civil wars have included at least some armed troops, often along with sizable civilian components.

51 The UN-flagged force that fought during the Korean War is not considered a peacekeeping mission here; the Neutral Nations Supervisory Committee deployed after the war is. It consisted of monitors from Sweden, Switzerland, Poland, and Czechoslovakia operating in twenty teams of at least four observers. Agreement between the Commander-in-Chief, United Nations Command, on the one hand, the Supreme Commander ofthe Korean People'sArmy and the Commander ofthe Chinese People's on the other hand, Concerning a Military Armistice in Korea (Panmunjom, Korea, July 27,1953).

52 The other cases in this category provide less insight. While monitors in Korea may have helped stabilize the armistice to some extent, nuclear deterrence makes the case overdetermined. Monitors deployed in Vietnam in 1973 were quickly overtaken by events. The UN Iraq-Kuwait Observation Mission (UNIKOM) deployed at the end of the Gulf War is an unusual case in that, having sanctioned the war against Iraq, the UN could not claim impartiality as observers. This mission was later converted into an armed peacekeeping mission. The UN Iran-Iraq Military Observer Group (UNIIMOG) operated much like UNTSO and UNMOGIP. UNIIMOG is credited with keeping a number of serious skirmishes from escalating out of control in the first months of the cease-fire after the Iran-Iraq War and with helping to keep peace until Iraq's more pressing security concerns in the Gulf War prompted reconciliation with Iran in January 1991. Smith, Brian D., “United Nations Iran-Iraq Military Observer Group,” in Durch, William, ed., The Evolution of UN Peacekeeping (New York:St. Martin's Press, 1993Google Scholar); see also United Nations, The Blue Helmets: A Review of United Nations Peace-Keeping, 3rd ed (New York:United Nations, 1996), 669Google Scholar–78.

53 Bailey, Sydney D., Four Arab-Israeli Wars and the Peace Process (London:MacMillan, 1990CrossRefGoogle Scholar)

54 Brines, Russell, The Indo-Pakistani Conflict (London:Pall Mall Press, 1968), 239Google Scholar, 320.

55 For detailed accounts of UNTSO and its operations, see de Azcarate, Pablo, Mission in Palestine (Washington, D.C.:Middle East Institute, 1966Google Scholar); Brook, David, Preface to Peace: The United Nations and the Arab-Israeli Armistice System (Washington, D.C.:Public Affairs Press, 1964Google Scholar); Odd Bull, General, War and Peace in the Middle East: The Experiences and Views of a UN. Observer (London:Leo Cooper, 1976Google Scholar); Lt. Burns, General E. L. M., Between Arab and Israeli, 2nd ed. (Beirut:Institute for Palestine Studies, 1969Google Scholar); Hutchison, E. H., Violent Truce (New York:Devin-Adair, 1956Google Scholar); Lucien Lee Kinsolving, “The Israeli-Syrian Demilitarized Zones: The UN Security Council Record” (Master's thesis, American University, 1967); Pelcovits, Nathan A., The Long Armistice: UN Peacekeeping and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1948–1960 (Boulder, Colo.:Westview Press, 1993Google Scholar). For specific examples, see Bar-Yaacov, N., The Israel-Syrian Armistice: Problems ofImplementation, 1949–1966 (Jerusalem:Magnes Press, Hebrew University, 1967Google Scholar); Khouri, Fred J., “Friction and Conflict on the Israeli-Syrian Front,” Middle East Journal 17 (Winter-Spring 1963), 21Google Scholar.

56 Azcarate (fn. 55), 100; Bull (fn. 55), 54, 62; Bums (fn. 55), 27.

57 Dawson, Pauline, The Peacekeepers of Kashmir (London:Hurst and Company, 1994), 304Google Scholar.

58 Brines (fn. 54); Korbel, Joseph, Danger in Kashmir (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1954Google Scholar); Lamb, Alastair, The Kashmir Problem (New York:Praeger, 1966Google Scholar); idem, Kashmir: A Disputed Legacy, 1846–1990 (Hertingfordbury: Roxford Books, 1991Google Scholar).

59 United Nations (fn. 52), 138–39.

60 India's wariness of UN involvement reflected reluctance to hold the plebiscite promised in Kashmir in 1949 as part of UN Commission for India and Pakistan resolutions, as well as a desire to settle issues with Pakistan bilaterally. It also stemmed in large part from the sovereignty concerns of a relatively new state. As is often the case, states that have newly won independence from colonial powers are reluctant to allow international forces back on their soil, thus constraining UN involvement.

61 General (ret.) Jehangir Karamat of the Pakistan Army (Presentation at CISAC, Stanford University, May 19,1999).

62 United Nations, Security Council, Report by the Secretary-General on the Current Situation in Kashmir with Particular Reference to the Cease-Fire Agreement, the Cease-Fire Line and the Functioning of VNMOGIP (S/6651), September 3,1965, 7.

63 Roberts, Adam, “The Crisis in UN Peacekeeping,” in Crocker, Chester A., Hampson, Fen Osier, and Aall, Pamela, eds., Managing Global Chaos (Washington, D.C.:U.S. Institute of Peace, 1996Google Scholar).

64 During the tenure of Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the UN became less reluctant to condemn belligerents; Howard (fn. 4). This trend has continued under Kofi Annan. See, for example, United Nations, General Assembly and Security Council, Report ofthe Panel on United Nations Peace Operations (the Brahimi Report) (A/55/305-S/2000/809), August 21, 2000.

65 The OAS secretary-general, Galo Plaza, had been involved in UN peacekeeping in Lebanon and Cyprus and was determined to avoid getting “locked in” and having peacekeepers stay for years. He insisted that “the parties themselves must take over full responsibility.” Quoted in Wainhouse, David W., International Peacekeeping at the Crossroads (Baltimore:Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), 590Google Scholar.

66 Reid Martz, Mary Jeanne, The Central American Soccer War: Historical Patterns and Internal Dynamics of OAS Settlement Procedures (Athens:Ohio University Center for International Studies, 1978), 73–80Google Scholar.

67 This last case falls outside the temporal scope of the quantitative analysis above. Adding it, however, would strengthen the finding that peace is more likely to last when peacekeepers are present.

68 Britain and France agreed to withdraw as soon as a UN force was in position to ensure that hostilities would not resume; United Nations (fn. 52), 45.

69 Bailey (fn. 53).

70 Up to this point, Israel had viewed aggressive posturing in Egypt as merely political maneuvering; Khouri, Fred J., The Arab-Israeli Dilemma, 3rd ed. (Syracuse, N.Y.:Syracuse University Press, 1985), 245Google Scholar–48.

71 United Nations (fn. 52), 54.

72 Ibid., 53.

73 UNTSO observers were not even able to tell which side started the Yom Kippur War. Bailey (fn. 53), 308; Ma'oz, Moshe, Syria and Israel: From War to Peacemaking (Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1995), 99Google Scholar.

74 Opposition from Arab states and the Soviets to the bilateral Egyptian-Israeli peace process precluded any continued UN peacekeeping role.

75 Israel, previously opposed to strong peacekeeping forces, pushed for a large force of at least three thousand troops. Syria, by contrast, was concerned about infringements on its sovereignty and wanted a nonmilitary operation of only a few hundred monitors. They settled on 1,250 UN troops. The issue was touchy enough politically that even the name of the operation was an issue, with both “observer” and “force” in the title as a compromise. Kissinger, Henry, Years of Upheaval (Boston:Little, Brown, 1982), 1044Google Scholar, 1094.

76 Ghali, Mona, “United Nations Disengagement Observer Force,” in Durch, William J., ed., The Evolution of UN Peacekeeping (New York:St Martin's, 1993Google Scholar).

77 A request by either side that the UN mission depart would be seen as a distinctly hostile act by the other side.

78 The impotence of peacekeepers in the face of determined aggression is perhaps best exemplified by the case of Lebanon in 1982, when the role of the peacekeepers was reduced to counting Israeli tanks as they rolled by.

78 Brines (fn. 54), 310.

80 Israel has always been concerned with U.S. opinion, often waiting for a green, or at least a yellow, light from Washington before acting militarily. Khouri (fn. 70), 244; Ma'oz (fn. 73), 100–101. India also delayed military action against Pakistan in 1971 because of concerns about international reaction to a precipitous attack; Ganguly, Sumit, The Origins of War in South Asia: Indo-Pakistani Conflicts since 1947 (Boulder, Colo.:Westview Press, 1986), 120Google Scholar.

81 This is true both of scholars generally inclined to see the peacekeeping as efficacious, such as Wainhouse (fn. 65), chap. 3, and of a skeptic on the UN's role like Brines (fn. 54).

82 Doyle, E. D., “Eyewitness: Verification in the Sinai,” Journal of International Peacekeeping 1 (Autumn 1994Google Scholar); Pelcovits, Nathan A., Peacekeeping on Arab-Israeli Fronts: Lessonsfrom the Sinai and Lebanon (Boulder, Colo.:Westview Press, 1984Google Scholar).