In the early twenty-first century, the United States has engaged increasingly in a foreign policy of democracy exportation to other countries. This often was done through military intervention in a country (for example, Iraq in 2003) and then involved various international actors like the United Nations in order to try and build institutions that would provide for a stable democratic state. What is the rationale for such a foreign policy? Why is it so controversial? Can instilling democracy in other countries help ensure long-term peace in post-conflict countries? With these questions in mind, this week I will explore the topic of peacebuilding, or a long-term institution building after countries have ceased often intra-state conflicts (i.e. post peace-agreement), and its operationalization on the international stage as influenced strongly by Western actors like the United States.
This international impulse emerging towards peacebuilding through democratization emerged in the United States prominently in the advent of the Bush Doctrine during the Bush administration of 2001-2009. Democratization as ensuring long-term peace essentially relies on the logic of "democratic peace" theory, in which democracies are less likely to go to war with other democracies. In the wake of 9/11, the Bush administration articulated a new vision of foreign policy in which the United States' new role on the world stage was to help spread democracy at the very least and democracy and capitalism in the best case scenario in order to help with America's national security.
One of the main purposes of the United Nations (UN), one of the largest international governmental organizations (IGOs) with 194 nation-state members, from its inception is to maintain international peace and security. The primary mechanism that the UN has sought to maintain the peace is the mechanism of peacekeeping, which entails brokering an end to primarily intrastate conflicts that have increased in incidence post WWII. However, the international community has struggled to find a means to maintain the peace after brokering an end to these conflicts. In 1992, Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali’s “Agenda for Peace” report introduced to the international community the concept of “post-conflict peacebuilding” defined as “action to identify and support structures which will tend to strengthen and solidify peace in order to avoid relapse into conflict” (Barnett et al., 2007, p. 35). The main responses to this challenge in the international system has taken on a form of peacebuilding through state-building that involves the setting up and maintenance of democratic institutions modeled largely around the Western liberal institutional model in order to promote socioeconomic and political stability. This has put significant strain on the organizational resources the UN possesses and also has generated much controversy.
The main organs in the UN responsible for peacebuilding activities are the Special Representatives for the Secretary General (SRSGs), the Peacebuilding Commission (established in 2005), the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO), the Peacebuilding Fund and the Peacekeeping Best Practices Unit (PBPU). Underneath the jurisdiction of the UN Economic and Social Council (UN-ECOSOC) and the UN Secretary-General (UNSG), these bodies (representing 31 UN member states) also form a partnership with organizations within and outside the UN, such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to aid in carrying out its peacebuilding programs. While the DPKO provides oversight to the conduct of peacebuilding missions and the Peacebuilding Fund a portion of the needed resources, the PBPU and recently established Peacebuilding Commission largely serve as administrative and advisory organs that seek to develop “best practices” and “standard operating procedures” for peacebuilding missions in order to promote operational success and efficiency. Success of peacebuilding missions is defined by a basic benchmark of a country not relapsing into violent conflict after five years of the conclusion of a peace agreement. Moreover, as with other UN organizations, member state contributions, including monetary donations and troop/personnel contributions are largely voluntary.
In addition to existing organizations addressing the new prerogatives of peacebuilding on the international level are various country-specific organizations that address peacebuilding related concerns, such as the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the UK Department for International Development (DFID), and the Japan Development Agency (JDA), to name a few. Further supplementing IGOs’ operational capacities and resources is the partnerships of these international and country-specific organizations with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) on the ground in various countries. These partnerships serve to reduce the burden of peacebuilding missions on the organizations while providing critical connections with civil society and local administrative bodies in order to promote desired political changes.
Peacebuilding has proven to be a complex and controversial undertaking, which ultimately is reflected in the convoluted and semi-fragmented global governance that exists in this area. Not aiding organizational coherency and coordination is the fact that peacebuilding is a relatively recent phenomenon and that different organizations in and outside of the UN define and operationalize peacebuilding differently. In addition, complicating matters is the potential Western-liberal bias of the peacebuilding missions, the rising global demand accompanying an increase in intrastate conflicts, and the fact that the UN is dependent on its member states’ contributions.
Because peacebuilding is uncharted territory for an organization predicated on non-intervention and self-determination, the UN particularly is hampered by its member states (including the United States) that are reluctant to grant the UN further authority to intervene in state affairs to build sustainable institutions in post-conflict states. In practice, this means that the UN is often lacking sufficient monetary, technical, and personnel resources for its missions and must rely on and attempt to coordinate with a complex patchwork of NGOs and other non-UN organizations to operationalize its mandate. Particularly controversial was a proposal to create an “early warning system” or an Early Information and Strategic Analysis Secretariat (EISAS) as a form of “preventive diplomacy,” which would entail a large-scale intelligence exchange across various UN peacekeeping and peacebuilding bodies (Benner & Rotmann, 2008, p. 10). Therefore, many of the decisions within and across UN bodies are made per intergovernmental bargaining and consensus, which has reduced the “formal budgetary and disciplinary powers” that the SRSGs have in incentivizing diverse actors to effectively coordinate on various missions as well as provide adequate operational resources (Benner & Rotmann, 2008, p. 52; Ritterberger et al., 2011). In other words, inter- and intra-agency coordination has not been sufficiently addressed and has hampered the ability of the UN to promote international security and peace.
Aside from consensus and intergovernmental decision-making processes, another factor serving to harm effectiveness in this area of global governance is the variance in definition of peacebuilding across various organizational levels. For example, while the UN Secretariat organs see peacebuilding as addressing both security and socioeconomic concerns, the World Bank focuses primarily on peacebuilding through infrastructure and reconstruction projects. Overall, because of the high degree of specialization among the different organizations, coordination problems are exacerbated and (ironically) the long-term institution building concerns are neglected in favor of a prioritization of reducing conflict recurrence. This can prove detrimental, because democratic transitions can prove to be highly destabilizing when institutions are designed poorly or are not tailored to country-specific contexts (such as in the cookie-cutter application of Western models of liberal democracy) and fail to promote peaceful conflict-resolution mechanisms.
Overall, the global governance in peacebuilding is highly decentralized and in the process of maturation due to the recent nature of the peacebuilding concept and the above-outlined coordination problems that hamper effective long-term coordination among various IGOs, NGOs, and great powers. Ultimately, as in other areas of global governance, states are reluctant to give up more of their sovereignty in favor of strengthening IGOs like the UN. While a middle ground can be reached to balance sovereignty and organizational effectiveness, this has not been reached in the area of peacebuilding as states so far have been reluctant to grant organs like the UN Peacebuilding Commission the authority to coordinate more effectively across state and organizational boundaries and because the Peacebuilding Commission’s membership is restricted to 31 UN member states. Additionally, to aid in better understanding IGO-NGO cooperation and in the hope of solving its problems, the literature would benefit from in-depth explorations of any existing partnerships between peacebuilding IGOs and NGOs and their effectiveness in creating sustainable peace with limited resources and possibly conflicting operational goals.
Lessons learned? In the future, the United States and other actors must be wary of imposing Western models of democracy in the process of foreign policy conduct and international peacebuilding efforts and must find an acceptable balance between ensuring it's (and other states') sovereignty while granting organizations like the UN sufficient authority (or at the very least, a better ability to cooperate with NGOs and civil society organizations) to help maintain a long-term peace for everyone.
Works Cited:
Barnett, M., Hunjoon, K., O’Donnell, M., & Sitea, L. (2007). Peacebuilding: What is in a Name? Global Governance, 13(1), 35-58.
Benner, T., & Rotmann, P. (2008). Learning to Learn? UN Peacebuilding and the Challenges of Building a Learning Organization. Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, 2(1), 43-62.
Costly, A. (n.d.). The Bush Doctrine. Retrieved April 01, 2017, from http://www.crf-usa.org/war-in-iraq/bush-doctrine.html
Doyle, M., & Sambanis, N. (2000). International Peacebuilding: A Theoretical and Quantitative Analysis. The American Political Science Review, 94(4), 779-801.
Paris, R. (2002). International Peacebuilding and the Mission Civilisatrice. Review of International Studies, 28(4), 637-656.
Ritterberger, V., Zangl, B., & Kruck, A. (2011). International Organization (2nd ed.). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Samuels, K. (2006). Post-Conflict Peace-Building and Constitution-Making. (Symposium: UN Reform). Chicago Journal of International Law, 6(2), 663-682.
Von Billerbeck, S. (2015). "Local Ownership and UN Peacebuilding: Discourse Versus Operationalization." Global Governance, 21(2), 299-315.
